Today I went to a Rotary meeting. Ben Wolber, the president of Addison Midday Rotary, is from Germany. He has arranged a joint meeting via Zoom with another Rotary club in Germany next week, and today we got to learn all about the German club which represents three towns: Wangen, Isny and Leutkirch with populations of 27,232; 14,493; and 22,132, respectively. Leutkirch is the town where he grew up. The school system in Germany is such that by the 8th or 9th grade, you must make a career decision about whether to go to college or a trade school and know what you want to study. All schooling — including college — in Germany is free. However, taxes are much higher than in the U.S. There is a much higher rate of volunteerism in the U.S. than in Germany. My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was German — Hubbart. The only German words I know are: “Sprechen die Deutsch?” or “Do you speak German?”, “sauerbraten” or a traditional German roast of heavily marinated meat, “lederhosen” or knee-length leather breeches that are worn as traditional garments in some regions of German-speaking countries, “auf wiedersehen” or until we meet again and “eins, zwei, drei” or “one, two, three.” Since I have never been to Germany, my main experience with German culture is from attending Oktoberfest a few times. There I have had beer in a giant stein, seen a dachshund race, listened to an oompah band and watched polka dancers. I’m sure there’s more to Germany than that. Let’s find out.
According to Wikipedia, Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second-most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated between the Baltic and North seas to the north, and the Alps to the south; it covers an area of 137,847 square miles, with a population of over 83 million within its 16 constituent states. It borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south and France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands to the west. The nation's capital and largest city is Berlin, and its financial center is Frankfurt; the largest urban area is the Ruhr.
Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity. A region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. In the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the center of the Protestant Reformation. Following the Napoleonic Wars and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the German Confederation was formed in 1815. In 1871, Germany became a nation-state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the semi-presidential Weimar Republic.
The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to the establishment of a dictatorship, World War II and the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, Germany was divided into the Federal Republic of Germany — generally known as West Germany — and the German Democratic Republic, East Germany. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community and the European Union, while the German Democratic Republic was a communist Eastern Bloc state and member of the Warsaw Pact. After the fall of communism, German reunification saw the former East German states join the Federal Republic of Germany on October 3, 1990 — becoming a federal parliamentary republic.
Germany is a great power with a strong economy; it has the largest economy in Europe, the world's fourth-largest economy by nominal gross domestic product, and the fifth-largest by gross domestic product based on purchasing power parity. As a global leader in several industrial, scientific and technological sectors, it is both the world's third-largest exporter and importer of goods. As a developed country, which ranks very high on the Human Development Index, it offers social security and a universal health care system, environmental protections and a tuition-free university education. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G7, the G20 and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It has the third-greatest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
History
Ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The first non-modern human fossil — the Neanderthal — was discovered in the Neander Valley. Similarly dated evidence of modern humans has been found in the Swabian Jura, including 42,000-year-old flutes which are the oldest musical instruments ever found, the 40,000-year-old ivory sculpture Lion Man and the 35,000-year-old mammoth ivory Venus figurine found in Hohle Fels that is the oldest undisputed example of a depiction of a human being. The Nebra sky disk — created during the European Bronze Age — is attributed to a German site.
Germanic tribes and Frankish Empire
The Germanic tribes are thought to date from the Nordic Bronze Age or the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From southern Scandinavia and north Germany, they expanded south, east and west, coming into contact with the Celtic, Iranian, Baltic and Slavic tribes.
Under Augustus, the Roman Empire began to invade lands inhabited by the Germanic tribes, creating a short-lived Roman province of Germania between the Rhine and Elbe rivers. In 9 AD, three Roman legions were defeated by Arminius. By 100 AD, when Tacitus wrote “Germania,” Germanic tribes had settled along the Rhine and the Danube — the Limes Germanicus — occupying most of modern Germany. However, Baden Württemberg, southern Bavaria, southern Hesse and the western Rhineland had been incorporated into Roman provinces. Around 260, Germanic peoples broke into Roman-controlled lands. After the invasion of the Huns in 375 — and with the decline of Rome from 395 — Germanic tribes moved farther southwest: the Franks established the Frankish Kingdom and pushed east to subjugate Saxony and Bavaria, and areas of what is today eastern Germany were inhabited by Western Slavic tribes.
East Francia and Holy Roman Empire
Charlemagne founded the Carolingian Empire in 800; it was divided in 843 and the Holy Roman Empire emerged from the eastern portion. The territory initially known as East Francia stretched from the Rhine in the west to the Elbe River in the east and from the North Sea to the Alps. The Ottonian rulers (919–1024) consolidated several major duchies. In 996 Gregory V became the first German Pope, appointed by his cousin Otto III, whom he shortly after crowned Holy Roman Emperor. The Holy Roman Empire absorbed northern Italy and Burgundy under the Salian emperors (1024–1125), although the emperors lost power through the Investiture controversy, a conflict between the church and the state in medieval Europe over the ability to choose and install bishops or investiture and abbots of monasteries and the pope himself.
Under the Hohenstaufen emperors (1138–1254), German princes encouraged German settlement to the south and east during Ostsiedlung, the High Medieval migration period of ethnic Germans into and beyond the territories at the eastern periphery of the Holy Roman Empire. Members of the Hanseatic League, mostly north German towns, prospered in the expansion of trade. Population declined starting with the Great Famine in 1315, followed by the Black Death of 1348–50. The Golden Bull issued in 1356 provided the constitutional structure of the Empire and codified the election of the emperor by seven prince-electors.
Johannes Gutenberg introduced moveable-type printing to Europe, laying the basis for the democratization of knowledge. In 1517, Martin Luther incited the Protestant Reformation and his translation of the Bible began the standardization of the language; the 1555 Peace of Augsburg tolerated the "Evangelical" faith or Lutheranism, but also decreed that the faith of the prince was to be the faith of his subjects. From the Cologne War through the Thirty Years' Wars (1618–1648), religious conflict devastated German lands and significantly reduced the population.
The Peace of Westphalia ended religious warfare among the Imperial Estates; their mostly German-speaking rulers were able to choose Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism or the Reformed faith as their official religion. The legal system initiated by a series of Imperial Reforms (approximately 1495–1555) provided for considerable local autonomy and a stronger Imperial Diet, deliberative body of the Holy Roman Empire. The House of Habsburg held the imperial crown from 1438 until the death of Charles VI in 1740. Following the War of Austrian Succession and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Charles VI's daughter Maria Theresa ruled as Empress Consort when her husband, Francis I, became Emperor.
From 1740, dualism between the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Prussia dominated German history. In 1772, 1793 and 1795, Prussia and Austria, along with the Russian Empire, agreed to the Partitions of Poland, three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 123 years. During the period of the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic era and the subsequent final meeting of the Imperial Diet, most of the free imperial cities — a self-ruling city that had a certain amount of autonomy and was represented in the Imperial Diet — were annexed by dynastic territories; the ecclesiastical territories were secularized and annexed. In 1806 the Imperium was dissolved; France, Russia, Prussia and the Habsburgs in Austria competed for hegemony in the German states during the Napoleonic Wars.
German Confederation and Empire
Following the fall of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna founded the German Confederation, a loose league of 39 sovereign states. The appointment of the Emperor of Austria as the permanent president reflected the Congress's rejection of Prussia's rising influence. Disagreement within restoration politics partly led to the rise of liberal movements, followed by new measures of repression by Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich. The Zollverein, a tariff union, furthered economic unity. In light of revolutionary movements in Europe, intellectuals and commoners started the revolutions of 1848 in the German states, raising the German Question, a debate over the best way to achieve a unification of all or most lands inhabited by Germans. King Frederick William IV of Prussia was offered the title of Emperor, but with a loss of power; he rejected the crown and the proposed constitution, a temporary setback for the movement.
King William I appointed Otto von Bismarck as the Minister President of Prussia in 1862. Bismarck successfully concluded the war with Denmark in 1864; the subsequent decisive Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 enabled him to create the North German Confederation which excluded Austria. After the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War, the German princes proclaimed the founding of the German Empire in 1871. Prussia was the dominant constituent state of the new empire; the King of Prussia ruled as its Kaiser, and Berlin became its capital.
In the Gründerzeit period following the unification of Germany, Bismarck's foreign policy as Chancellor of Germany secured Germany's position as a great nation by forging alliances and avoiding war. However, under Wilhelm II, Germany took an imperialistic course, leading to friction with neighboring countries. A dual alliance was created with the multinational realm of Austria-Hungary; the Triple Alliance of 1882 included Italy. Britain, France and Russia also concluded alliances to protect against Habsburg interference with Russian interests in the Balkans or German interference against France. At the Berlin Conference in 1884, Germany claimed several colonies including German East Africa, German South West Africa, Togoland and Kamerun. Later, Germany further expanded its colonial empire to include holdings in the Pacific and China. The colonial government in South West Africa — present-day Namibia — from 1904 to 1907, carried out the annihilation of the local Herero and Namaqua peoples as punishment for an uprising; this was the 20th century's first genocide.
The assassination of Austria's crown prince on June 28, 1914 provided the pretext for Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia and trigger World War I. After four years of warfare, in which approximately two million German soldiers were killed, a general armistice ended the fighting. In the German Revolution in November 1918, Emperor Wilhelm II and the ruling princes abdicated their positions, and Germany was declared a federal republic. Germany's new leadership signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, accepting defeat by the Allies. Germans perceived the treaty as humiliating, which was seen by historians as influential in the rise of Adolf Hitler. Germany lost around 13% of its European territory and ceded all of its colonial possessions in Africa and the South Sea.
Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany
On August 11, 1919, President Friedrich Ebert signed the democratic Weimar Constitution. In the subsequent struggle for power, communists seized power in Bavaria, but conservative elements elsewhere attempted to overthrow the Republic in the Kapp Putsch. Street fighting in the major industrial centers, the occupation of the Ruhr by Belgian and French troops and a period of hyperinflation followed. A debt restructuring plan and the creation of a new currency in 1924 ushered in the Golden Twenties, an era of artistic innovation and liberal cultural life.
The worldwide Great Depression hit Germany in 1929. Chancellor Heinrich Brüning's government pursued a policy of fiscal austerity and deflation which caused unemployment of nearly 30% by 1932. The Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler won a special election in 1932 and Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. After the Reichstag fire, a decree abrogated basic civil rights and the first Nazi concentration camp opened. The Enabling Act gave Hitler unrestricted legislative power, overriding the constitution; his government established a centralized totalitarian state, withdrew from the League of Nations, and dramatically increased the country's rearmament. A government-sponsored program for economic renewal focused on public works, the most famous of which was the autobahn.
In 1935, the regime withdrew from the Treaty of Versailles and introduced the Nuremberg Laws which targeted Jews and other minorities. Germany also reacquired control of the Saarland in 1935, remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936, annexed Austria in 1938, annexed the Sudetenland in 1938 with the Munich Agreement and in violation of the agreement occupied Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass saw the burning of synagogues, the destruction of Jewish businesses and mass arrests of Jewish people.
In August 1939, Hitler's government negotiated the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact that divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, beginning World War II in Europe; Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3. In the spring of 1940, Germany conquered Denmark and Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, forcing the French government to sign an armistice. The British repelled German air attacks in the Battle of Britain in the same year. In 1941, German troops invaded Yugoslavia, Greece and the Soviet Union. By 1942, Germany and its allies controlled most of continental Europe and North Africa, but following the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad, the allies' reconquest of North Africa and invasion of Italy in 1943, German forces suffered repeated military defeats. In 1944, the Soviets pushed into Eastern Europe; the Western allies landed in France and entered Germany despite a final German counteroffensive. Following Hitler's suicide during the Battle of Berlin, Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, ending World War II in Europe. Following the end of the war, surviving Nazi officials were tried for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.
In what later became known as the Holocaust, the German government persecuted minorities, including interning them in concentration and death camps across Europe. In total 17 million people were systematically murdered, including 6 million Jews, at least 130,000 Romani, 275,000 disabled people, thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses, thousands of homosexuals and hundreds of thousands of political and religious opponents. Nazi policies in German-occupied countries resulted in the deaths of an estimated 2.7 million Poles, 1.3 million Ukrainians, 1 million Belarusians and 3.5 million Soviet prisoners of war. German military casualties have been estimated at 5.3 million, and around 900,000 German civilians died. Around 12 million ethnic Germans were expelled from across Eastern Europe, and Germany lost roughly one-quarter of its pre-war territory.
East and West Germany
After Nazi Germany surrendered, the Allies partitioned Berlin and Germany's remaining territory into four occupation zones. The western sectors — controlled by France, the United Kingdom and the United States — were merged on May 23, 1949 to form the Federal Republic of Germany on October 7, 1949, the Soviet Zone became the German Democratic Republic or GDR. They were informally known as West Germany and East Germany. East Germany selected East Berlin as its capital, while West Germany chose Bonn as a provisional capital, to emphasize its stance that the two-state solution was temporary.
West Germany was established as a federal parliamentary republic with a "social market economy." Starting in 1948, West Germany became a major recipient of reconstruction aid under the Marshall Plan. Konrad Adenauer was elected the first Federal Chancellor of Germany in 1949. The country enjoyed prolonged economic growth beginning in the early 1950s. West Germany joined NATO in 1955 and was a founding member of the European Economic Community.
East Germany was an Eastern Bloc state under political and military control by the USSR via occupation forces and the Warsaw Pact. Although East Germany claimed to be a democracy, political power was exercised solely by leading members of the communist-controlled Socialist Unity Party of Germany, supported by the Stasi, an immense secret service. While East German propaganda was based on the benefits of the GDR's social programs and the alleged threat of a West German invasion, many of its citizens looked to the West for freedom and prosperity. The Berlin Wall, built in 1961, prevented East German citizens from escaping to West Germany, becoming a symbol of the Cold War.
Tensions between East and West Germany were reduced in the late 1960s by Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. In 1989, Hungary decided to dismantle the Iron Curtain and open its border with Austria, causing the emigration of thousands of East Germans to West Germany via Hungary and Austria. This had devastating effects on the GDR, where regular mass demonstrations received increasing support. In an effort to help retain East Germany as a state, the East German authorities eased border restrictions, but this actually led to an acceleration of the Wende reform process culminating in the Two Plus Four Treaty under which Germany regained full sovereignty. This permitted German reunification on October 3, 1990, with the accession of the five re-established states of the former GDR. The fall of the Wall in 1989 became a symbol of the fall of communism, dissolution of the Soviet Union, German reunification and Die Wende, the Peaceful Revolution.
Reunified Germany and the European Union
United Germany was considered the enlarged continuation of West Germany so it retained its memberships in international organizations. Based on the Berlin/Bonn Act in 1994, Berlin again became the capital of Germany, while Bonn obtained the unique status of a federal city retaining some federal ministries. The relocation of the government was completed in 1999, and modernization of the east German economy was scheduled to last until 2019.
Since reunification, Germany has taken a more active role in the European Union, signing the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and the Lisbon Treaty in 2007, and co-founding the Eurozone. Germany sent a peacekeeping force to secure stability in the Balkans and sent German troops to Afghanistan as part of a NATO effort to provide security in that country after the ousting of the Taliban.
In the 2005 elections, Angela Merkel became the first female chancellor. In 2009 the German government approved a €50 billion stimulus plan. Among the major German political projects of the early 21st century are the advancement of European integration, the energy transition for a sustainable energy supply, the "debt brake" for balanced budgets, measures to increase the fertility rate and high-tech strategies for the transition of the German economy, summarized as Industry 4.0. During the 2015 European migrant crisis, the country took in over a million refugees and migrants.
Culture
Culture in German states has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular. Historically, Germany has been called “Das Land der Dichter und Denker“ or “the land of poets and thinkers” because of the major role its scientists, writers and philosophers have played in the development of Western thought. A global opinion poll for the BBC revealed that Germany is recognized for having the most positive influence in the world in 2013 and 2014.
Germany is well known for such folk festival traditions as Oktoberfest and Christmas customs, which include Advent wreaths, Christmas pageants, Christmas trees, Stollen cakes and other practices. As of 2016 UNESCO inscribed 41 properties in Germany on the World Heritage List. There are a number of public holidays in Germany determined by each state; October 3 has been a national day of Germany since 1990, celebrated as the Tag der Deutschen Einheit or German Unity Day.
Music
German classical music includes works by some of the world's most well-known composers. Dieterich Buxtehude, Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Händel were influential composers of the Baroque period. Ludwig van Beethoven was a crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras. Carl Maria von Weber, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms were significant Romantic composers. Richard Wagner was known for his operas. Richard Strauss was a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. Karlheinz Stockhausen and Wolfgang Rihm are important composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries.
As of 2013, Germany was the second-largest music market in Europe, and fourth-largest in the world. German popular music of the 20th and 21st centuries includes the movements of Neue Deutsche Welle, pop, Ostrock, heavy metal/rock, punk, pop rock, indie, Volksmusik or folk music, schlager pop and German hip hop. German electronic music gained global influence, with Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream pioneering in this genre. DJs and artists of the techno and house music scenes of Germany have become well known e.g., Paul van Dyk, Felix Jaehn, Paul Kalkbrenner, Robin Schulz and Scooter.
Art and design
German painters have influenced Western art. Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Matthias Grünewald and Lucas Cranach the Elder were important German artists of the Renaissance, Johann Baptist Zimmermann of the Baroque, Caspar David Friedrich and Carl Spitzweg of Romanticism, Max Liebermann of Impressionism and Max Ernst of Surrealism. Several German art groups formed in the 20th century; Die Brücke or The Bridge and Der Blaue Reiter or The Blue Rider influenced the development of expressionism in Munich and Berlin. The New Objectivity arose in response to expressionism during the Weimar Republic. After World War II, broad trends in German art include neo-expressionism and the New Leipzig School.
Architectural contributions from Germany include the Carolingian and Ottonian styles, which were precursors of Romanesque. Brick Gothic is a distinctive medieval style that evolved in Germany. Also in Renaissance and Baroque art, regional and typically German elements evolved e.g., Weser Renaissance. Vernacular architecture in Germany is often identified by its timber-framing traditions and varies across regions and among carpentry styles. When industrialization spread across Europe, classicism and a distinctive style of historicism developed in Germany, sometimes referred to as Gründerzeit style. Expressionist architecture developed in the 1910s in Germany and influenced Art Deco and other modern styles. Germany was particularly important in the early modernist movement; it is the home of Werkbund — a German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists — initiated by Hermann Muthesius from the New Objectivity school and of the Bauhaus movement founded by Walter Gropius. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became one of the world's most renowned architects in the second half of the 20th century; he conceived of the glass façade skyscraper. Renowned contemporary architects and offices include Pritzker Prize winners Gottfried Böhm and Frei Otto.
German designers became early leaders of modern product design. The Berlin Fashion Week and the fashion trade fair Bread & Butter are held twice a year.
Literature and philosophy
German literature can be traced back to the Middle Ages and the works of writers such as Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach. Well-known German authors include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Theodor Fontane. The collections of folk tales published by the Brothers Grimm popularized German folklore on an international level. The Grimms also gathered and codified regional variants of the German language, grounding their work in historical principles; their “Deutsches Wörterbuch” or German Dictionary — sometimes called the Grimm dictionary — was begun in 1838 and the first volumes published in 1854.
Influential authors of the 20th century include Gerhart Hauptmann, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass. The German book market is the third-largest in the world, after the United States and China. The Frankfurt Book Fair is the most important in the world for international deals and trading, with a tradition spanning over 500 years. The Leipzig Book Fair also retains a major position in Europe.
German philosophy is historically significant: Gottfried Leibniz's contributions to rationalism; the enlightenment philosophy by Immanuel Kant; the establishment of classical German idealism by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling; Arthur Schopenhauer's composition of metaphysical pessimism; the formulation of communist theory by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; Friedrich Nietzsche's development of perspectivism; Gottlob Frege's contributions to the dawn of analytic philosophy; Martin Heidegger's works on Being; Oswald Spengler's historical philosophy; the development of the Frankfurt School has been particularly influential.
Media
The largest internationally operating media companies in Germany are the Bertelsmann enterprise, Axel Springer SE and ProSiebenSat.1 Media. Germany's television market is the largest in Europe, with some 38 million TV households. Around 90% of German households have cable or satellite TV, with a variety of free-to-view public and commercial channels. There are more than 300 public and private radio stations in Germany; Germany's national radio network is the Deutschlandradio and the public Deutsche Welle is the main German radio and television broadcaster in foreign languages. Germany's print market of newspapers and magazines is the largest in Europe. The papers with the highest circulation are Bild, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt. The largest magazines include ADAC Motorwelt and Der Spiegel. Germany has a large video gaming market, with over 34 million players nationwide.
German cinema has made major technical and artistic contributions to film. The first works of the Skladanowsky Brothers were shown to an audience in 1895. The renowned Babelsberg Studio in Potsdam was established in 1912, thus being the first large-scale film studio in the world. Early German cinema was particularly influential with German expressionists such as Robert Wiene and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. Director Fritz Lang's “Metropolis” in 1927 is referred to as the first major science-fiction film. After 1945, many of the films of the immediate post-war period can be characterized as trümmerfilm or rubble film. East German film was dominated by state-owned film studio DEFA, while the dominant genre in West Germany was the heimatfilm or "homeland film." During the 1970s and 1980s, New German Cinema directors such as Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder brought West German auteur cinema to critical acclaim.
The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film went to the German production “The Tin Drum” or “Die Blechtrommel” in 1979, to “Nowhere in Africa” or “Nirgendwo in Afrika” in 2002 and to “The Lives of Others” or “Das Leben der Anderen” in 2007. Various Germans won an Oscar for their performances in other films. The annual European Film Awards ceremony is held every other year in Berlin, home of the European Film Academy. The Berlin International Film Festival, known as "Berlinale" — awarding the "Golden Bear" and held annually since 1951 — is one of the world's leading film festivals. The "Lolas" are annually awarded in Berlin at the German Film Awards.
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