Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: What's the biggest union in Germany?
The most important labor organization is the German Confederation of Trade Unions ("", or "DGB"), which is the umbrella association of eight single trade unions for individual economic sectors, representing more than 6 million people . The largest single trade union is the IG Metall, which organizes about 2.3 million members in metal (including automobile and machine building), electronics, steel, textile, wood and synthetics industries.
Since 2002, the association has extended to cover the whole of Germany, including camp communities of former prisoners of the concentration camps as incorporated associations. The VVN-BdA claims to be the biggest antifascist organisation in the Federal Republic of Germany.
In organized politics, his first major position was Hessian leader of the Marxist German Peace Union (Deutsche Friedensunion, DFU) as managing director—a partial successor of the banned Communist Party of Germany — in 1976. The GPU was always a minor party, and it changed its status to "political union" in 1984, the same year that Willi van Ooyen became federal leader of the party across the whole of West Germany. This organisation was mainly founded by East Germany.
Companies with big logistic hubs for Germany and Europe in Dortmund include:Dortmund is home to Germany's twelve biggest exhibition centre, Halls of Westphalia which lies near the city center next to Dortmund Airport. With around 77.000 visitors each year, Jagd & Hund is by far the largest event held there. Other important fairs open to consumers include "Intermodelbau", the world's biggest consumer fair for model making, and one of the leading fairs for youth culture "YOU". Important fairs restricted to professionals include "D.I.M" (Deutsche Immobilienmesse, German property fair), Creativa (Hobby) and InterTabac (Tabaco).
The Catholic Church in Germany () or Roman-Catholic Church in Germany () is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in communion with the Pope, assisted by the Roman Curia, and of the German bishops. The current "speaker" (i.e., the chairperson) of the episcopal conference is Cardinal Reinhard Marx, metropolitan Archbishop of Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. It is divided into 27 dioceses, 7 of them with the rank of metropolitan sees. All the archbishops and bishops are members of the Conference of German Bishops. Due to a church tax compulsory for those who register civilly as Catholics, it is the wealthiest part of the Catholic Church in Europe.
Since almost all German universities are public (most private universities do not have the official German "Universitätsstatus"), and therefore mainly paid by taxes and generally egalitarian, there is no German Ivy League of institutions of higher education. However, the Excellence Initiative aims to strengthen some selected universities more than others in order to raise their international visibility. The initiative is conducted by the German Research Foundation (DFG) together with the German Council of Science and Humanities (WR). More than 30 universities in total received funding. It includes three lines of funding:
The United Nations Population Fund lists Germany as host to the second-highest number of international migrants worldwide, behind the United States. More than 16,000,000 people are descended from immigrants (first and second generation, including mixed heritage and ethnic German repatriates and their descendants). 96.1% of those reside in western Germany and Berlin. About 7,000,000 of them are foreign residents, defined as those without German citizenship. The largest ethnic group of non-German origin are the Turkish. Since the 1960s, West and later reunified Germany has been attracting immigrants primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe as well as Turkey, many of whom (or their children) have acquired German citizenship over time. While most of these immigrants initially arrived as guest workers, Germany has also been a prime destination for refugees who have applied for asylum in Germany, in part because the German constitution has long had a clause guaranteeing political asylum as a human right; but restrictions over the years have since limited the scope of this guarantee.
Despite Cologne's status as the largest city in the region, nearby Düsseldorf was chosen as the political capital of the federated state of North Rhine-Westphalia. With Bonn being chosen as the provisional federal capital ("provisorische Bundeshauptstadt") and seat of the government of the Federal Republic of Germany (then informally West Germany), Cologne benefited by being sandwiched between two important political centres. The city became–and still is–home to a number of federal agencies and organizations. After reunification in 1990, Berlin was made the capital of Germany.
German ( ) is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol (Italy), the German-speaking Community of Belgium, and Liechtenstein. It is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg and a co-official language in the Opole Voivodeship in Poland. The languages which are most similar to German are the other members of the West Germanic language branch: Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German/Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, and Yiddish. There are also strong similarities in vocabulary with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, although those belong to the North Germanic group. German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English.
In April 2005, the Free University of Berlin, in conjunction with Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU Munich), opened a joint representative office in New York. This German University Alliance, located in German House, the seat of the German Consulate General and the German UN Mission, represents the interests of the two universities in the United States and Canada and works to increase the exchange of students and scientists.
Around the world, German has approximately 100 million native speakers and also about 80 million non-native speakers. German is the main language of about 90 million people (18%) in the EU. 67% of German citizens claim to be able to communicate in at least one foreign language, 27% in at least two languages other than their first.
The foundation for the influential position held by Germany today was laid during the (economic miracle) of the 1950s when West Germany rose from the enormous destruction wrought by World War II to become the world's third-largest economy. The first chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who remained in office until 1963, had worked for a full alignment with NATO rather than neutrality. He not only secured a membership in NATO but was also a proponent of agreements that developed into the present-day European Union. When the G6 was established in 1975, there was no question whether the Federal Republic of Germany would be a member as well.
At the end of the war, the Wirtschaftsvereinigung Maschinenbau (business association for mechanical engineering, WVMA) was founded. A year later, the Verein Bayerischer Maschinenbau-Anstalten (association of Bavarian mechanical engineering institutes, VBMA), the Wirtschaftsvereinigung der Maschinenbau-Anstalten in Groß-Hessen (business association for mechanical engineering institutes in Greater Hesse, WVMH) and the Wirtschaftsverband Maschinenbau in Berlin (business association for mechanical engineering in Berlin) were founded. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verbände der Deutscher Maschinenbau-Anstalten (working group of the associations of German mechanical engineering institutes, AVDMA) was the first supra-regional association to be founded, in 1947. In 1949, the Mechanical Engineering Industry Association (VDMA) was re-established in Königstein im Taunus.
Only after Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck gradually built a unified German state under the Prussian royal house of Hohenzollern did "Kleinstaaterei" largely end in 1871 with the founding of the German Empire. (The only surviving petty states—Luxembourg and Liechtenstein—lie at the periphery of the German-speaking world.) The founding of the German Empire created a largely German nation-state. While the German Empire excluded the partly German but multinational Habsburg domains of Austria–Hungary, it included a substantial Polish minority in parts of eastern Prussia and other minorities along its northern and western borders. The unification of the German Empire put Germany on the map as a major European power, albeit too late to become a major colonial presence. Internally in the nation some of these fragmented boundaries and small political units continued to exist until the modern States of Germany were established in the Federal Republic after World War II.
Within the United States, several of these actors are members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) or American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA); both merged into the SAG-AFTRA union in October 2012. The merged union has around 165,000 members as of 2016, with about 6,000 members that perform regularly for video games. As early as the 1990s, these unions had developed Interactive Media Agreements with the video game industry to set standard rates for a typical four-hour recording session; around 2005, this was about $759, and around 2013, it was about $800–825 per session. These are considered as minimum assured rates, but actors are free to negotiate higher rates with the game's developer or publisher. Alternatively, companies can employ non-union actors.
The capital of Germany is the city state of Berlin. It is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States ("Bundesländer") of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany.
In the Federal Republic of Germany, each of its constituent states (or "Länder" - plural of "Land") has its own capital city, such as Dresden, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, and Munich, as do all of the republics of the Russian Federation. The national capitals of Germany and Russia: the Stadtstaat of Berlin and the Federal City of Moscow, are also constituent states of both countries in their own right. Each of the States of Austria and Cantons of Switzerland also have their own capital cities. Vienna, the national capital of Austria, is also one of the states, while Bern is the ("de facto") capital of both Switzerland and the Canton of Bern.
Germany is Kenya's third largest export market in Europe after the UK and the Netherlands.
Compound words, including nouns, are written together, e.g. "Haustür" (Haus+Tür; house door), "Tischlampe" (Tisch+Lampe; table lamp), "Kaltwasserhahn" (Kalt+Wasser+Hahn; cold water tap/faucet). This can lead to long words: the longest word in regular use, "Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften" ("legal protection insurance companies"), consists of 39 letters; while the longest German word ever published ("Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft", "Association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services") has 79 letters.
The union also found it nearly impossible to organize garment workers in communities such as Los Angeles, even when going after established manufacturers such as Guess?. Organizing on a shop by shop basis proved largely futile, given the proliferation of "fly by night" contractors, the number of workers willing to take striking or fired workers' jobs, the uncertain immigration status of many workers and the kinship connections that bound many workers to their foremen and other low-level managers. The union found itself in 1995 in nearly the same position that it had been in more than ninety years earlier, but without any prospect of the sort of mass upsurge that had produced the general strikes of 1909 and 1910.
Rhineland-Palatinate is located in western Germany covering an area of and a population of 4.05 million inhabitants, the seventh-most populous German state. Mainz is the state capital and largest city, while other major cities include Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Koblenz, Trier, Kaiserslautern, and Worms. Rhineland-Palatinate is surrounded by the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Baden-Württemberg, and Hesse. It also borders three foreign countries: France, Luxembourg and Belgium.
In terms of total TV viewing market share Germany's market leaders in 2018 were again the two biggest public-service broadcasters (ZDF with 13.9% and Das Erste with 11.5%) and the two leading commercial channels (RTL with 8.3% and SAT.1 with 6.2%). The leading pay TV provider was Sky Deutschland (see below). The biggest teleshopping providers in Germany are QVC and HSE24.
The EMA has more about 120 members, both individuals and businesses, making it one of the biggest country-specific associations in Hamburg. The majority of the businesses are small and medium enterprises from sectors such as waste and water management, finance, and investment as well as logistics and infrastructure. Moreover, the EMA has a number of cooperation agreements with institutions in the EMA region and Germany, such as the Chamber of Commerce of Annaba (Algeria), the Chamber of Commerce of Casablanca (Morocco) as well as the Union des Jeunes Euro-Maghrébins (UJEM).
In modern Germany with its parliamentary system of government on federal and on state level, grand coalition () describes a governing coalition of the two biggest parties in one parliament. In most cases (but not necessarily) this means a coalition of the Union (consisting of the sister parties CDU and CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD).
In March 1990, the CDU became the main element of the Alliance for Germany, a centre-right coalition. It won the first (and as it turned out, only) free general elections and became the biggest party in the People's Chamber. In April de Maizière became Prime Minister of the GDR, heading a grand coalition that immediately set about reuniting the country with the West.