| abstract
| - Germany has a long history. Culture and traditions play a significant part in influencing the cuisine as well. In most German areas there are large plantations of potatoes, Oats, Wheat, Sugar beets, Barley, and Rye. cabbage and carrots are the most important vegetable crops, and are used in many dishes, from soups to stews and even roasted meat.. After the Second World War, foreign workers came to Germany in large numbers and to nearly all German regions, influencing culture as well as eating habits. Pizza, spaghetti, and French fries are all part of the legacy left by those foreign workers coming from Italy or France. Turkish immigrants have brought the kebab dish, and oriental influences have started to show lately, such as Indian or Thai foods. Germany's contributions to the world's cultural heritage are numerous, and the country is often known as das Land der Dichter und Denker (the land of poets and thinkers). German literature can be traced back to the Middle Ages, in particular to such authors as Walter von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach. The Nibelungenlied, whose author is not known, is also a major contribution to German literature. Theologian Luther, who translated the Bible into German, is widely credited for having set the basis for modern "High German" language. The mostly admired German poets and authors are without doubt Goethe and Schiller, as well as Heine and, in the 20th century, Nobel prize winners Bertold Brecht and Günter Grass. Other authors include Hesse, Mann, Böll and Hans Magnus Enzensberger. Germany's influence on world philosophy was major as well, as exemplified by Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Engels, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Heidegger. In the field of music, Germany's influence is noted through the works of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Orff and Wagner. In the arts, there are several fine German painters such as the Renaissance artist Dürer, the romanticist Friedrich, the surrealist Ernst, the expressionist marc, the conceptual artist Beuys or the neo expressionist Baselitz. Architecture also flourished in Germany. Several UNESCO World Heritage Sites are scattered throughout Germany (including, for instance, the cathedral of Cologne and the Museum Island in Berlin). Famous architects include neoclassicist Schinkel and Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus. Germany was also the homeland of scientists like Boltzmann, Helmholtz, Fraunhofer, Fahrenheit, Kepler, Haeckel, Humboldt, Einstein, Born, Planck, Heisenberg, Creuzfeldt, Hertz, Koch, Hahn, Leibniz, Liebig and Bunsen; and inventors and engineers such as Gutenberg, Otto, Siemens, Braun, Daimler, Benz and Diesel. Important mathematicians were born in Germany such as Bessel, Euler, Gauss, Hilbert, Jacobi, Riemann and Weierstrass. Many historical figures, though not citizens of Germany in the modern sense, were important and influential figures in German culture, such as Copernicus (Kopernikus),Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Kafka and Stefan Zweig. The German language was once the lingua franca of central, eastern and northern Europe, and in Europe it is the second most popular language after English. As a foreign language, German is the third most taught worldwide. It is also the second most used language on the Internet. The language has its origin in Old High German. Germany had two languages: High German and Low German, which—from a linguistic standpoint—were two different languages. Whilst High German was subject to the so-called consonant shift, Low German was not. Today's standard language is based on High German rather than Low German; the latter has been given the status of a minority language by the European Union, although it is less used today in the traditionally Low German-speaking areas of northern Germany. Since about 1970 Germany has once again had a thriving popular culture, now increasingly being led by its new old capital Berlin, and a self-confident music and art culture. Germany is also well known for its many opera houses, the most famous of which being located in Bayreuth. This is true!
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