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Germans

Germans
Deutsche
Total population
c. 100 – c. 150 million worldwide
Regions with significant populations
 Germany
 Netherlands 368,512
 Poland 178,409
 Hungary 131,951
 Uruguay 40,000
 Romania 36,000
 Mexico 15–40,000
 Dominican Republic 25,000
 Czech Republic 18,772
Languages
German: High German (Upper German, Central German), Low German (see German dialects)
Religion
Roman Catholicism
Protestantism (mainly Lutheranism, Calvinism, and United Protestant; further details: Evangelical Church in Germany)
Irreligion
Related ethnic groups
other Germanic peoples

Germans (German: Deutsche) are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture and history. German is the shared mother tongue of a substantial majority of ethnic Germans.

The English term Germans has historically referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages. Before the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany in 1990, Germans constituted the largest divided nation in Europe by far. Ever since the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, German society has been characterized by a Catholic-Protestant divide.

Of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, roughly 80 million consider themselves Germans. There are an additional 80 million people of German ancestry mainly in the United States, Brazil (mainly in the South Region of the country), Argentina, Canada, South Africa, the post-Soviet states (mainly in Russia and Kazakhstan), and France, each accounting for at least 1 million. Thus, the total number of Germans lies somewhere between 100 and more than 150 million, depending on the criteria applied (native speakers, single-ancestry ethnic Germans, partial German ancestry, etc.).


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