ABSTRACT
The economic development of Germany’s regions has attracted considerable attention among economists, historians, geographers and political scientists alike. This chapter focuses on the economic development of Germany in the borders of 1990 at the level of Nomenclature of Territorial Statistics for Units (NUTS) 2 regions, and do this over the period 1895–2010. It deals with a brief description of Germany’s “first nature” geography, including the very basic features of topography and geology of the country. The chapter describes Germany’s “second nature” geography, namely the city system, the most important elements of infrastructure, the development of population density over time and the location of main clusters of economic activity. Germany was historically fragmented into a multitude of sovereign and part-sovereign territories, which started to be unified during the Napoleonic Wars and Prussia’s westward expansion after 1815. Germany in modern borders had a slightly higher GDP per capita than Germany in historical borders before 1945.
