Culture of German-speaking Europe

This article is about the culture of the German-speaking Europe; for an article on the culture of Germany as a political state see Culture of Germany.

Culture of German-speaking Europe (German: deutschsprachige Kultur) is a term that refers to the heritage and worldview of the people from the German-speaking world, or deutschsprachige Welt. It refers to the worldview and culture of the people of the countries of Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and some German speaking people from Belgium, (mostly Eupen-Malmedy area), Switzerland, Danzig (Now Gdansk, Poland), Prussia & Königsberg (Now dissolved into Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia and Lithuania), Alsace-Lotharingen (now in France), Bohemia & Sudetenland (now the Czech Republic).

Despite their varied and turbulent past, and a politically divided German-speaking people, their worldview and expression remain common and unsegmented, exemplified in the music of German-speaking composers (e.g. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler or Schönberg), lyrical poetry and literature (e.g. Walter von der Vogelweide, Goethe, the Brothers Grimm, Schiller, Heine, Brecht or Thomas Mann as well as important works written by authors as the Nibelungenlied or Ludwigslied) and scientific philosophy (e.g. Albertus Magnus, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein or Adorno).

These cultures are quite diverse as a result of the varied history of the German speaking people. The German speaking world have been independent principalities (e.g: Liechtenstein or incorporated into larger confederations, such as the Holy Roman Empire, Prussia or the Confederation of the Rhine, or have been political units like Bohemia, or are political states like Germany, Austria; etc.)

The German language was once the lingua franca of central, eastern and northern Europe, and remains one of the most popular foreign languages taught worldwide, and in Europe it is the second most popular after English