The official name for the state of Germany is Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland). "Bund" means that Germany consists of 16 different federal states. Republic means that there is no king or queen in Germany, but that the people decide on their representatives by elections and votes.

Germany is a free democratic and social constitutional state with over 82 million inhabitants.

The country of Germany shares borders with 9 states, with the North Sea and the Baltic Sea in the north and the Alps in the south. It lies in the temperate climate zone and has 16 national parks and over 100 nature parks. The federal capital and largest German city is Berlin.

The Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region lies between the federal states of Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate and stretches from the Palatinate Forest in the west to the Odenwald and Kraichgau in the east and from the French border in the southwest to the Hessian fen in the north.

With 7 administrative districts and 8 independent towns, the metropolitan region comprises a total of 290 municipalities. The largest cities are Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg. Approximately 2.4 million people live on an area of around 5,600 km²