From the early Middle Ages to the Berlin Republic - in this compact overview, a group of recognised experts explains how what we now call Germany came into being. Anyone who wants to understand why the German principalities became a nation state relatively late, how the catastrophe of the Holocaust came about and how the two German states emerged after 1945 will find answers in this book, which has been comprehensively updated and expanded for the new edition, with a new chapter on the Merkel era and the "turn of an era".