According to usprivateschoolsfinder, the Germanic state (Deutsches Reich) is a federal republic that consists of 17 members (Länder); it has an area of 468,705 sq km. and 62,592,575 residents (1925; pop. Present), excluding the Saarland; the capital is Berlin. The southernmost point of its territory lies in the Allgäu Alps at 47 ° 16 ′ lat. N., the northernmost one on Kurisches Haff at 55 ° 17 ‘N.; the meridian that passes through the westernmost point near Havert in the Rhine province is that of 5 ° 52 ′ of long. E., the meridian that passes through the easternmost point (near Schirwindt, East Prussia) is that of 22 ° 53 E.; within these extremes not all the territory is Germanic: the so-called “Polish corridor” completely detaches East Prussia from the body of the state.
But the numbers reported above are not enough to define the geographical position of Germany if they are not integrated by the natural and political situation. Let us assume that the part of Europe located outside the external slope of the Alps and the western Carpathians between the circum-Mediterranean countries and the islands and peninsulas of NW can be called the median; it forms the narrow part of the European continental trunk from the shores of the Atlantic extending towards the east up to the line joining the mouth of the Memel (Niemen) with that of the Danube. Along this line, Middle Europe attaches itself to Eastern Europe. While forming an inseparable genetic unit, distinguished above all by the remains of the great varisco orogenic folding, a vast field of fractures with sinking basins, it is occupied by very different peoples and politically divided between large and small states. Of central Europe, Germany occupies the part located to the north of the great alpine barrier that extends from the Swiss-Badese course of the Rhine and the outer ranges of the Bavarian Prealps, the Ore Mountains and the Sudetenland to the North Sea and the Baltic: as the Germans say, from the cliffs to the sea “vom Fels zum Meer”; between Poland and Lithuania to the east, France, Luxembourg, Belgium and Holland to the west. In S. it borders with Switzerland and Austria, in SE. with Czechoslovakia, N. with the sea and Denmark. This position is also central to the whole of Europe: in some respects it is advantageous, in others unfavorable. It is advantageous out of respect for commercial exchanges and culture, because it allows Germany relations with almost all the European peoples, among which it also acts as an intermediary with its very large and very fine production of books. However, these can be full advantages for Germany provided that she is strong: under the concentric pressures of the surrounding states, a weak Germany always had to yield and become a battlefield and conqueror; a strong Germany tried to lighten the consequences of the closed position or with the union with Italy, as in the Middle Ages, when not only for the a weak Germany always had to yield and become a battlefield and a battlefield; a strong Germany tried to lighten the consequences of the closed position or with the union with Italy, as in the Middle Ages, when not only for the a weak Germany always had to yield and become a battlefield and a battlefield; a strong Germany tried to lighten the consequences of the closed position or with the union with Italy, as in the Middle Ages, when not only for the Sehnsucht of Italy, the emperors crossed the Alps, or with a policy of alliances, as were the triple between 1882 and 1915 and the penetration into Turkey with the dream of founding an empire extended from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf. The name of Central Europe is appropriate to the physical region largely occupied by Germany, which can be considered the section of middle Europe that lies to the east of the reliefs flanking the left of the Rhine. line that from the Strait of Calais reaches the Alps at Mont Blanc passing through the Artois, the Ardennes, the Lorraine shelves, the Vosges and the Swiss Jura. The Rhine, which would constitute a united and continuous line, no longer exercises the predominantly separating function it had in the age between Gaul and Germany and would not be properly chosen as a dividing line. Towards the east, since the main difference between Middle Europe and Eastern Europe is very different in their extension, the dividing line between the two regions is that which has as extremes the mouths of the Memel and the Danube that we have just indicated; but, strictly speaking, central Europe would end somewhat further west, about along the 18th meridian from Greenwich; the intermediate territory is a transition region that can be called Country of the Vistula, or Vistolian Region. This region can enter Central Europe taken in a broad sense. In S. the limits are at the foot of the Alps and the Carpazî; in fact the vast territory that lies between the eastern edge of the Alps and the great arc of the Carpazî (Carpathian-Danube region or region of the middle Danube) has such strong characteristics and has such close relations with the Balkan Region, that it must be considered as a region in its own right, and we will not unite, as some do, with Central Europe. Within the limits described, Central Europe in a broad sense measures 900,000 sq km: of these, more than half form the territory of the Republic of Germany.
If on a map we compare the limits indicated for the natural region with the political borders of Germany, we immediately notice that these are conventional and still that towards the NE. Germany with East Prussia extends beyond the limits of the natural region over a part of the adjacent Vistula region. To the west, largely conventional borders separate it from France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland. At noon the border that separates it from the Swiss Confederation is marked by Lake Constance and the Rhine, but around Schaffhausen it leaves this natural line and takes on a bizarre route in which, among other things, the Badese interlocking of Büsingen within the Swiss territory. To the east of Lake Constance, the border, while leaning on the Bavarian Prealps, it does not follow watershed lines, but rises to the peaks and descends from them to cut the bottoms of the valleys: it is a largely conventional line which then follows the lower courses of the Salzach and the Inn and from Passau climbs up to the Šumava, for the Ore Mountains and the Sudetenland towards E. Before the World War the border with the Russian Empire followed conventional lines, but supported by streams, forests and swamps: with Prussian Silesia and East Prussia the Germanic territory described as the branches of a pincer around Russian Poland. Of these branches the northern one was broken by the peace treaties and the border with Poland, which became independent, it has an even more bizarre shape than the previous one and is in full contrast with the modern tendency to round the borders and make them continuous lines around the states. Once Poland was reconstituted as an independent state, the Polish corridor, formed by Posnania and small Pomerania to give Polish compatriots to Poland and to this an outlet to the sea, detaches and isolates East Prussia territorially from the body of the state to which it belongs and the Republic of Gdansk still complicates a situation that cannot give guarantees of tranquility or duration.
In this article, dedicated to Germany within its political borders, the territories of the Germanic natural region outside the borders will be excluded. However, it will always be possible to take into consideration the natural sub-regions or the parts of the same that enter the sphere of the political entity considered here.
