Free Republic

Why should Germany name their currency after the Austrian house of Habsburg?
The Prussian royalty were of house Hohenzollern

Strange thing, that one of the wealthiest and most populous countries in europe has some influence in the political theatre of the EU.
For the most part Germany is just the most visible part of a block of nations with more or less the same agendas (BeNeLux, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and recently Poland and the baltic nations) and still they need one of the other big 4(UK, Spain, Italy or most likely France) to achieve the influence they currently possess.

There is more than one view of europe inside the CDU/CSU there is Schäuble, who is affected by Kohl, and the more sceptical faction of Seehofer or even more extreme Bosbach, Steinbach et al.
And inbetween is Merkel and her clique of secretaries who see the EU as a necessity to be able to compete with USA, China, India, Russia and Brazil in the future

Sometimes, it is really funny comparing, Olog-hai’s version of the super smart and nefarious german politicans, with the german view of them as tumb, provincial administrators who blunder from one crisis to another.

Yes, the church tax (Kirchensteuer)is about 8-9% of your income tax.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax

I never heard of actual believers leaving the churches because of the tax, but there are a lot of people who are not into religion but never bothered to go to the offices and change their religious affiliation. They normally leave when they have money problems or they read another catholic child abuse story.

The SPD is a middle-left party in the same way as CDU is middle-right. Most of the really left base split with the SPD after the Harz reforms in the Schröder era and founded together with the PDS(former SED) a new party named Die Linke.

If red is an indicator of a socialist party then the us repulicans are in big trouble.
If you look a the german flag and the color assosiated with the three main parties after WWII(CDU/CSU, FDP, SPD) you will see the connection.

Actually this competitiveness was achieved through a center-left/left (SPD/Greens) government under Schröder between ‘98-’05 and the center-left/center-right coalition (CDU/SPD) between ‘05-’09

There are plenty of good japanese and korean players in the european top leagues.
And beeing small and fine-boned is no hinderance in soccer as you can see with Maradonna, Garrincha, Romario etc
Messi the three time balon d’or winner is only 5’5’’ tall

“Mitter-” means in this case indeed middle and there are two othe villages called Vorderfirmiansreut and Hinterfirmiansreut.
They were founded by “Fürstbischof Leopold Ernst Kardinal von Firmian” in 1764 so there is the middle part and “-reut” is just an old word for a settlement in the woods.

“You can do a lot if you depend on someone else to provide for your security.”

Thats a myth. Germany can defend itself against anybody on their own, aside from USA or China and perhaps an ideological renewed Russia and even those three would take heavy losses in an attempted invasion.
The military budget of the USA is pure self-interest nothing more and the bases in germany are there for logistical reasons and not to defend poor old defenseless germany.

Somehow all the breaks got eaten up. Sorry for this wall of text.

"It imposed the Prussian tyranny and brute force over lands that had not known it -- indeed the differences between the Prussians and say the Bavarians still exist and the western Germans were different.The Germans of pre-Prussian era (before the 30-years war) were cultured, scholarly etc., quite unlike our image of Germans which is really the Prussian image" Actually, the 30-years war ended in 1648, the first Prussian King(Frederic I) was crowned in 1701 and before that it was a fairly average duchy in the grand scheme of the Holy Roman Empire. And nobody would have used the terms 'cultured and scholarly' after the horrors of the 30-years war which killed 1/3 of the German population. Germany back then was regarded as a fairly backwards and barbaric cesspool with constant wars and strife between all the little nations, duchies, fiefdoms and city states. Or with the words of Charles V 'I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse' which was later changed by Frederic II 'I speak French to my ambassadors, English to my accountant, Italian to my mistress, Latin to my God and German to my horse' Only after 1740 with the coronation of his grandson Frederic II and the Silesian Wars did Prussia became a hegemonic power in Europe. And Frederic II was also one of the first 'enlightened' monarchs in Europe and was a big advocate of religious tolerance, freedom of speech, independence of court of justice, he strengthened the rights of his commoners and limited the powers of his nobles, all that some time before the french and american revolutions. And the image of germany as a cultured and scholarly people probably started with Frederic II, he spoke several languages fluently, was an accomplished philosopher and historian and invited the brightest thinkers of his time to Potsdam and his academies. He reformed and modernized the state and was one of the first nations to introduced state funded schools and education and literacy became widely spread and was later copied by many nations. Sure Prussia was never squeamish in using military power to accomplish their national interests but 'tyranny' isn't the first trait I would associate with Prussia and for sure not in the context of "over lands that had not known it" most monarchs and their nobles of this time were a lot more autocratic and abusive with their powers. The Prussians were protestants and the Bavarians were catholics and close allies of the Austro-Hungarian empire which were the other big fish in the pond and both empires struggled for centuries over the predominance over the other German states, so no wonder there were big cultural differences. 'The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices.' 'All religions must be tolerated...for...every man must get to heaven in his own way' 'My people and I have come to an agreement which satisfied us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please. ' Frederic II

” If 35% of your population is Islamic and the other 65% is split and afraid, we know what will happen.”

You should check your numbers. There are about 3-5 % Islamic people in europe and mostly as secular as the other religions

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html