German language in the context of "Austrian People's Party"

The House of Wittelsbach (German: Haus Wittelsbach) is a former Bavarian dynasty, with branches that have ruled over territories including the Electorate of Bavaria, the Electoral Palatinate, the Electorate of Cologne, Holland, Zeeland, Sweden (with Swedish-ruled Finland), Denmark, Norway, Hungary, Bohemia, and Greece. Their ancestral lands of Bavaria and the Palatinate were prince-electorates, and the family had three of its members elected emperors and kings of the Holy Roman Empire. They ruled over the Kingdom of Bavaria which was created in 1805 and continued to exist until 1918.

The House of Windsor, the reigning royal house of the British monarchy, are descendants of Sophia of Hanover (1630–1714), a Wittelsbach Princess of the Palatinate by birth and Electress of Hanover by marriage, who had inherited the succession rights of the House of Stuart and passed them on to the House of Hanover.

The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau, with additional native branches found in regions such as parts of Central Asia (e.g., Tajikistan and Afghanistan), southern Indian subcontinent (Sri Lanka and the Maldives) and Armenia. Historically, Indo-European languages were also spoken in Anatolia and Northwestern China. Some European languages of this family—English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Dutch—have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, including Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic, all of which contain present-day living languages, as well as many more extinct branches.

Today the individual Indo-European languages with the most native speakers are English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Hindustani, Bengali, Punjabi, French, and German; many others spoken by smaller groups are in danger of extinction. Over 3.4 billion people (42% of the global population) speak an Indo-European language as a first language—by far the most of any language family. There are about 446 living Indo-European languages, according to an estimate by Ethnologue, of which 313 belong to the Indo-Iranian branch.

The Ruhr (/ˈrʊər/ ROOR; German: Ruhrgebiet [ˈʁuːɐ̯ɡəˌbiːt] , also Ruhrpott German pronunciation: [ˈʁuːɐ̯pɔt] ), also referred to as the Ruhr Area, sometimes Ruhr District, Ruhr Region, or Ruhr Valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 1,160/km and a population of over 5 million (2017), it is the largest urban area in Germany and the third of the European Union. It consists of several large cities bordered by the rivers Ruhr to the south, Rhine to the west, and Lippe to the north. In the southwest it borders the Bergisches Land. It is considered part of the larger Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region of more than 10 million people, which is the third largest in Western Europe, behind only London and Paris.

The Ruhr cities are, from west to east: Duisburg, Oberhausen, Bottrop, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Bochum, Herne, Witten, Hagen, Dortmund, Hamm and the districts of Wesel, Recklinghausen, Unna and Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis. The most populous cities are Dortmund (with a population of approximately 612,065), Essen (about 583,000) and Duisburg (about 497,000).

Luxembourg (Luxembourgish: Lëtzebuerg; French: Luxembourg; German: Luxemburg), also known as Luxembourg City (Luxembourgish: Stad Lëtzebuerg or d'Stad; French: Ville de Luxembourg; German: Stadt Luxemburg or Luxemburg-Stadt), is the capital city of Luxembourg and the country's most populous commune. Standing at the confluence of the Alzette and Pétrusse rivers in southern Luxembourg, the city lies in the center of Western Europe, situated 213 km (132 mi) by road from Brussels and 209 km (130 mi) from Cologne. The city contains Luxembourg Castle, established by the Franks in the Early Middle Ages, around which a settlement developed.

As of 31 December 2024, Luxembourg City has a population of 136,208 inhabitants, which is more than three times the population of the country's second most populous commune (Esch-sur-Alzette). The population consists of 160 nationalities. Foreigners represent 70.1% of the city's population, whilst Luxembourgers represent 29.9% of the population, making it the commune with the highest proportion of foreign residents in Luxembourg.

The Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region (German: Metropolregion Rhein-Ruhr) is the largest metropolitan region in Germany, with over ten million inhabitants. A polycentric conurbation with several major urban concentrations, the region covers an area of 7,110 square kilometres (2,750 sq mi), entirely within the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region spreads from the Ruhr area (Dortmund-Bochum-Essen-Duisburg) in the north to the urban areas of the cities of Mönchengladbach, Düsseldorf (the state capital), Wuppertal, Leverkusen, Cologne (the region's largest and Germany's fourth largest city), and Bonn in the south. The location of the Rhine-Ruhr at the heart of the European Blue Banana makes it well connected to other major European cities and metropolitan areas such as the Randstad, the Flemish Diamond and the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region.

The metropolitan area is named after the Rhine and Ruhr rivers, which are the region's defining geographical features and historically its economic backbone.

The social market economy (SOME; German: soziale Marktwirtschaft, German pronunciation: [zoˌt͡si̯aːlə ˈmaʁktˌvɪʁtʃaft] ), also called Rhine capitalism, Rhine-Alpine capitalism, the Rhenish model, and social capitalism, is a socioeconomic model and ideology combining a free-market capitalist economic system with social policies and enough regulation to establish both fair competition within the market and generally a welfare state. It is sometimes classified as a regulated market economy. The social market economy was originally promoted and implemented in West Germany by the Christian Democratic Union under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1949 and today it is used by ordoliberals, social liberals and social democrats alike. Its origins can be traced to the interwar Freiburg school of economic thought.

The social market economy was designed to be a middle way between laissez-faire forms of capitalism and socialist economics. It was strongly inspired by ordoliberalism, which was influenced by the political ideology of Christian democracy. Social market refrains from attempts to plan and guide production, the workforce, or sales but support planned efforts to influence the economy through the organic means of a comprehensive economic policy coupled with flexible adaptation to market studies. Combining monetary, credit, trade, tax, customs, investment, and social policies, as well as other measures, this type of economic policy aims to create an economy that serves the welfare and needs of the entire population, thereby fulfilling its ultimate goal.

German philosophy, meaning philosophy in the German language or philosophy by German people, in its diversity, is fundamental for both the analytic and continental traditions. It covers figures such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and the Frankfurt School, who now count among the most famous and studied philosophers of all time. They are central to major philosophical movements such as rationalism, German idealism, Romanticism, dialectical materialism, existentialism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, logical positivism, and critical theory. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is often also included in surveys of German philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers.

Dialectic (Ancient Greek: διαλεκτική, romanized: dialektikḗ; German: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. Dialectic resembles debate, but the concept excludes subjective elements such as emotional appeal and rhetoric; the object is more an eventual and commonly-held truth than the 'winning' of an (often binary) competition. It has its origins in ancient philosophy and continued to be developed in the Middle Ages.

Hegelianism refigured "dialectic" to no longer refer to a literal dialogue. Instead, the term takes on the specialized meaning of development by way of overcoming internal contradictions. Dialectical materialism, a theory advanced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, adapted the Hegelian dialectic into a materialist theory of history. The legacy of Hegelian and Marxian dialectics has been criticized by philosophers, such as Karl Popper and Mario Bunge, who considered it unscientific.