Germany is bounded at its extreme north on the Jutland peninsula by Denmark. East and west of the peninsula, the Baltic Sea (Ostsee) and North Sea coasts, respectively, complete the northern border. To the west, Germany borders The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg; to the southwest it borders France. Germany shares its entire southern boundary with Switzerland and Austria. In the southeast the border with the Czech Republic corresponds to an earlier boundary of 1918, renewed by treaty in 1945. The easternmost frontier adjoins Poland along the northward course of the Neisse River and subsequently the Oder to the Baltic Sea, with a westward deviation in the north to exclude the former German port city of Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland) and the Oder mouth. This border reflects the loss of Germany’s eastern territories to Poland, agreed to at the Yalta Conference (February 1945), mandated at the Potsdam Conference (July–August 1945) held among the victorious World War II Allies, and reaffirmed by subsequent governments.
Barge on the Rhine River, with vineyards in the background, at the town of Kaub, Germany.E. Streichan—Shostal Associates/Superstock
The major lineaments of Germany’s physical geography are not unique. The country spans the great east-west morphological zones that are characteristic of the western part of central Europe. In the south Germany impinges on the outermost ranges of the Alps. From there it extends across the Alpine Foreland (Alpenvorland), the plain on the northern edge of the Alps. Forming the core of the country is the large zone of the Central German Uplands, which is part of a wider European arc of territory stretching from the Massif Central of France in the west into the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland in the east. In Germany it manifests itself as a landscape with a complex mixture of forested block mountains, intermediate plateaus with scarped edges, and lowland basins. In the northern part of the country the North German Plain, or Lowland, forms part of the greater North European Plain, which broadens from the Low Countries eastward across Germany and Poland into Belarus, the Baltic states, and Russia and extends northward through Schleswig-Holstein into the Jutland peninsula of Denmark. The North German Plain is fringed by marshes, mudflats, and the islands of the North and Baltic seas. In general, Germany has a south-to-north drop in altitude, from a maximum elevation of 9,718 feet (2,962 metres) in the Zugspitze of the Bavarian Alps to a few small areas slightly below sea level in the north near the coast.
Eastern summit of the Zugspitze, GermanyHans Huber
It is a common assumption that surface configuration reflects the underlying rock type; a hard resistant rock such as granite will stand out, whereas a softer rock such as clay will be weathered away. However, this assumption is not always borne out. The Zugspitze, for example, is Germany’s highest summit not because it is composed of particularly resistant rocks but because it was raised by the mighty earth movements that began some 37 to 24 million years ago and created the Alps, Europe’s highest and youngest fold mountains. Another powerful force determining surface configuration is erosion, mainly by rivers. In the Permian Period (some 290 million years ago) an earlier mountain chain—the Hercynian, or Variscan, mountains—had crossed Europe in the area of the Central German Uplands. Yet the forces of erosion were sufficient to reduce these mountains to almost level surfaces, on which a series of secondary sedimentary rocks of Permian to Jurassic age (about 300 to 145 million years old) were deposited. The entire formation was subsequently fractured and warped under the impact of the Alpine orogeny. This process was accompanied by some volcanic activity, which left behind not only peaks but also a substantial number of hot and mineral springs. Dramatic erosion occurred as the Alpine chains were rising, filling the furrow that now constitutes the Alpine Foreland. The pattern of valleys eroded by streams and rivers has largely given rise to the details of the present landscape. Valley glaciers emerging from the Alps and ice sheets from Scandinavia had some erosive effect, but they mainly contributed sheets of glacial deposits. Slopes outside the area of the actual ice sheets—those under tundra conditions and unprotected by vegetation—were rendered less steep by the periglacial slumping of surface deposits under the influence of gravitation. Winds blowing over unprotected surfaces fringing the ice sheets picked up fine material known as loess; once deposited, it became Germany’s most fertile soil-parent material. Coarser weathered material was carried into alluvial cones and gravel-covered river terraces, as in the Rhine Rift Valley (Rhine Graben).
The detailed morphology of Germany is significant in providing local modifications to climate, hydrology, and soils, with consequent effects on vegetation and agricultural utilization. Relief The Central German Uplands
Geographically, the Central German Uplands form a region of great complexity. Under the impact of the Alpine orogeny, the planed-off remnants of the former Hercynian mountains were shattered and portions thrust upward to form block mountains, with sedimentary rocks preserved between them in lowlands and plateaus. The Central German Uplands may be divided into three main parts: a predominantly lowland country in the south, an arc of massifs and plateaus running from the Rhenish Uplands to Bohemia, and a fairly narrow northern fringe, composed of folded secondary rocks. Southern Germany
In southern Germany Hercynian massifs are of restricted extent. The Black Forest (Schwarzwald) was once continuous with the Vosges massif in what is now France, but they were broken apart through the sinking of a central strip to form the Rhine Rift Valley, which extends 185 miles (300 km) in length. The Black Forest reaches its greatest elevation at Mount Feld (Feldberg; 4,898 feet [1,493 metres]) in the south and declines northward beneath secondary sediments before rising to the smaller Oden Forest. For the most part, however, southern Germany consists of scarplands, mainly of Triassic age (about 250 to 200 million years old). The work of erosion on eastward-dipping strata has left the sandstones standing out as west- or northwest-facing scarps, overlooking valleys or low plateaus of clays or Muschelkalk (Triassic limestone formed from shells). The sequence of Triassic rocks ends south and east against the great Jurassic scarp of the Swabian Alp (Schwäbische Alb), rising to more than 3,300 feet (1,000 metres), and its continuation, the lower Franconian Alp (Fränkische Alb). Large parts of the plateaus and lowlands in the eastern region are covered with loess and are farmed, but the massive Bunter Sandstone fringing the Black Forest and the Keuper scarp are mainly wooded. West of the Rhine there are again wide stretches of forested Bunter Sandstone, with more open country in the Saar region and along the foot of the Hunsrück upland.
Germany: Black ForestMountain village in the Black Forest region, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.© peresanz/Fotolia
The barrier arc
The open land of southern Germany ends against a great barrier arc of Hercynian massifs and forested sandstone plateaus. In the west the Rhenish Uplands (Rheinisches Schiefergebirge) consist mainly of resistant slates and shales. The complex block is tilted generally northwestward, with a steep fault-line scarp in the south. The intensely folded rocks are planed off by erosion surfaces that give the massif a rather monotonous appearance, broken only by quartzite ridges, especially in the south, where the Hunsrück rises to 2,684 feet (818 metres) and the Taunus to 2,884 feet (879 metres).
The Rhine River flowing through Germany.© Goodshoot/Jupiterimages
Katz Castle; Sankt Goarshausen; Rhine RiverKatz Castle, overlooking Sankt Goarshausen and the middle Rhine River, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.Ted McGrath (A Britannica Publishing Partner)The valleys are quite different. They range from narrow forested slots—a great hindrance to passage—to the spectacular gorge of the Rhine, the most important natural routeway through the barrier arc. The most dramatic section of the gorge runs from Bingen to the vicinity of Koblenz; hilltop castles look down over vineyards to picturesque valley towns. In this section is the Lorelei rock, from which a legendary siren is said to have lured fishermen to their death on the rocks.