Germany
Germany (Standard German: Deutschland or Teutschland) refers to a large sociocultural area of continental Europe where German identity, vernaculars, and cultures predominate. The term Mitteleuropa ('Middle Europe') has been applied to this region since the Augustine Wars, when German peoples sought to juxtapose their identity with those of neighboring powers, namely the French, Dutch, Slavs, Italians, and Nordics. While in modern times generally thought be a contiguous group of at least five countries (Pomerania, Saxony, Hanover, Rhineland, Austria), it is sometimes expanded to include states with a partially Germanic population (Bohemia, Switzerland) and rarely the exclave of Galicia, included by some by account of the nation's overwhelmingly Yiddish character.
The concept of Germany as a distinct region stretches back to the Roman era, when the term Germania was used to describe lands populated by Germanic tribes between the Rhine and Vistula rivers. During the Enlightenment of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, German thought leaders both inspired and alarmed by the French Revolution conceived and pushed a united German identity for those German dialect speakers living within the Holy Roman Empire, the western Austrian Empire, eastern Prussia, and the Alsatian lands of France.
While some attempted to exploit this new common identification to create a hegemonic pan-German state, any aspirations eventually fell short due to the efforts of regional monarchs, cultural activists, and foreign powers; the most well-known example is that of Faramundism, which was heavily suppressed by Austria and her allies during the early 20th century, eventually losing any significant public support by 1970.
Today, the region of Germany shares a common cultural, social, and linguistic identity, devoid of any political merger with the exception of the North Sea Economic Cooperative Council, an intergovernmental organization which bound several German states in economic union in the post-Great War world of the late 20th century.
