The origins of the German people can be traced all the way back to the earliest of times. Migration, the commingling of tribes, invasions and the passage of time all played vital roles in the evolution and formation of what was to become the German people.

Germany was a confederation of Germanic nations that occupied both banks of the Rhine, which seems to have been formed in the times of Marcus Aurelius. This group of nations was defeated by Claude II the Gothic in 269, by Probo in 276 and by Julianus in 355 and 360. They tried to settle in Gaul but were defeated in 196 at the Battle of Tolbiac. Only after Charlemagne managed to group together the tribes that populated his territory in the early 9 th Century, can the notion of a Germany be perceived.

During the Middle Ages, the country was again divided until in 962 Otto the Great founded the Holy Roman Empire. From then on various different dynasties reigned the country, the Houses of Franconia and Hohenstaufen succeeding the House of Saxony. The princes' positions were becoming ever stronger as time passed until they themselves elected the king; therein lies the term used to refer to them: electors. Their importance grew with the Habsburgs, who enhanced their position by means of a convenient marriage policy.

The Empire climaxed with the coronation of Charles the Fifth, in the House of Austria. This peak lasted until the Reformist movement came about, bringing with it the Thirty Years War (1618) and the War of Spanish Succession (1701), which swept over the Empire and broke it apart, to which problems from the French Revolution were also added.

The Federal Republic of Germany is still relatively young, having emerged only after World War II, however, German ancestors have a thousand-year-old history that goes back all the way to ancient times: the age of the barbaric invasions and the fall of the Roman Empire, the creation of the Sacro Germanic Roman Empire, the confrontation between the papacy and the empire, the Reform, the Confederation of the Rhine, the German unification, the World War I defeat, the barbarous national-socialism, the reconstruction after World War II, the German economic miracle, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification.