On 18 May 1990, the two German states signed a treaty agreeing on Monetary, Economic and Social Union. This came into force on 1 July 1990, with the Deutsche Mark replacing the East German mark as the official currency of East Germany. The Deutsche Mark had a very high reputation among the East Germans and was considered stable. While the GDR transferred its financial policy sovereignity to West Germany, the West started granting subsidies for the GDR budget and social security system. At the same time many West German laws came into force in the GDR. This created a suitable framework for a political union by diminishing the huge gap between the two existing political, social and economic systems.

A treaty between West Germany and the GDR was negotiated in mid-1990 and finally approved by large majorities in the legislative chambers of both countries on September 20, 1990. After that last step Germany was officially united at 00:00 CET on 3 October 1990. The five re-established federal states (Bundesländer) of East Germany – Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia – formally joined the Federal Republic of Germany, along with the city-state Berlin which formally came into being at the same time, created out of the still formally occupied West Berlin and East Berlin, and admitted to the federation. In practice however, West Berlin had already acted as an 11th state for most purposes, so Berlin is generally not included in the list of “New Länder”.

The process chosen was one of two options implemented in the West German constitution (Grundgesetz). As these five newly-founded German states formally joined the Federal Republic in accordance with (the then-existing) Article 23, the area in which the constitution served as the constitution was simply extended to include them. The alternative would have been for East Germany to join as a whole along the lines of a formal union between two German states that then would have had to, amongst other things, create a new constitution for the newly established country.

Fiscal policy can be contrasted with the other main type of economic policy, monetary policy, which attempts to stabilize the economy by controlling interest rates and the supply of money. The two main instruments of fiscal policy are government spending and taxation. Changes in the level and composition of taxation and government spending can impact on the following variables in the economy:

* Aggregate demand and the level of economic activity;
* The pattern of resource allocation;
* The distribution of income.

Fiscal policy refers to the overall effect of the budget outcome on economic activity. The three possible stances of fiscal policy are neutral, expansionary and contractionary:

* A neutral stance of fiscal policy implies a balanced budget where G = T (Government spending = Tax revenue). Government spending is fully funded by tax revenue and overall the budget outcome has a neutral effect on the level of economic activity.

* An expansionary stance of fiscal policy involves a net increase in government spending (G > T) through rises in government spending or a fall in taxation revenue or a combination of the two. This will lead to a larger budget deficit or a smaller budget surplus than the government previously had, or a deficit if the government previously had a balanced budget. Expansionary fiscal policy is usually associated with a budget deficit.

* A contractionary fiscal policy (G < T) occurs when net government spending is reduced either through higher taxation revenue or reduced government spending or a combination of the two. This would lead to a lower budget deficit or a larger surplus than the government previously had, or a surplus if the government previously had a balanced budget. Contractionary fiscal policy is usually associated with a surplus.

In 1921, Dietrich auditioned unsuccessfully for theatrical director and impressario Max Reinhardt’s drama academy; however, she soon found herself working in his theatres as a chorus girl and playing small roles in dramas, without attracting any special attention at first.

Dietrich made her film debut playing a bit part in the 1922 film, So sind die Männer. She met her future husband, Rudolf Sieber, on the set of another film made that year, Tragödie der Liebe. In the G. W. Pabst film, Die freudlose Gasse (1925), the actress playing Elsa is Hertha von Walther (1903-1987), who looks very much like the young Marlene Dietrich, giving rise to the false rumor that Dietrich has a bit part in this film.

Dietrich and Sieber were married on 17 May 1924. Her only child, daughter Maria Elisabeth Sieber, later billed as actress Maria Riva, was born on 13 December 1924.

Dietrich continued to work on stage and in film both in Berlin and Vienna throughout the 1920s. On stage, she had roles of varying importance in Frank Wedekind’s Pandora’s Box, William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream as well as George Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah and Misalliance. It was in musicals and revues, such as Broadway, Es Liegt in der Luft and Zwei Krawatten, however, that she attracted the most attention.

Marlene Dietrich (German pronunciation: [maɐˈleːnə ˈdiːtrɪç]; 27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992)[1] was a German-born American actress and singer.

Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself. In 1920s Berlin, she acted on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel, directed by Josef von Sternberg, brought her international fame and a contract with Paramount Pictures in the USA. Hollywood films such as Shanghai Express and Desire capitalised on her glamour and exotic looks, cementing her stardom and making her one of the highest paid actresses of the era. Dietrich became a US citizen in 1939; during World War II, she was a high-profile frontline entertainer. Although she still made occasional films in the post-war years, Dietrich spent most of the 1950s to the 1970s touring the world as a successful show performer.

Riefenstahl heard presidential candidate Adolf Hitler speak at a rally in 1932 and was mesmerized by his talent as a public speaker. Describing the experience in her memoir, Riefenstahl wrote: “I had an almost apocalyptic vision that I was never able to forget. It seemed as if the earth’s surface were spreading out in front of me, like a hemisphere that suddenly splits apart in the middle, spewing out an enormous jet of water, so powerful that it touched the sky and shook the earth.” According to the Daily Express of April 24, 1934, Leni Riefenstahl had read Mein Kampf during the making of the Blue Light. This newspaper article quotes her as having commented, “The book made a tremendous impression on me. I became a confirmed National Socialist after reading the first page. I felt a man who could write such a book would undoubtedly lead Germany. I felt very happy that such a man had come.” She wrote to Hitler requesting a meeting. The questionable decisions by Riefenstahl do not end there. After meeting with Hitler she was offered the opportunity to direct Victory of Faith an hour-long feature film about the fifth Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg in 1933. By now Jewish filmmakers had been banned from their trade and others had fled to other countries, which created a vacuum in talent. Riefenstahl agreed to direct the movie after returning from filming a movie in Greenland. Impressed with Riefenstahl’s work, Hitler asked her to film the upcoming 1934 Party rally in Nuremberg, the sixth such rally. At first, according to Riefenstahl’s memoir, she resisted and did not want to create further Nazi films; instead, she wanted to direct a feature film based on Hitler’s favorite opera, Eugen d’Albert’s Tiefland. Riefenstahl received private funding for the production of Tiefland, but the filming in Spain was derailed. Hitler was able to convince her to film Triumph instead, on the condition that she not be required to make further films for the party. She also told Hitler she wanted the freedom to act again: “I would not be able to go on living if I had to give up acting.” The resulting chronicle of the Nuremberg Rally, Triumph of the Will (named by Hitler), was generally recognized as a masterful, epic, innovative work of documentary filmmaking. Triumph of the Will became a rousing success in Germany. However, it was widely banned in America as a propaganda film for the Nazi Party; a copy was kept at the Museum of Modern Art and shown to a select few. The film won many international awards as a ground-breaking example of filmmaking and is widely regarded as one of the most effective pieces of propaganda ever produced. It made Riefenstahl the first female film director to achieve international recognition. In interviews for the 1993 film The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, Riefenstahl adamantly denied any deliberate attempt to create pro-Nazi propaganda and said she was disgusted that Triumph of the Will was used in such a way. Despite again vowing not to make any more films about the Nazi Party, in 1935, Riefenstahl made the 18-minute Day of Freedom: Armed Forces about the German army. Like Victory of Faith and Triumph of The Will this was filmed at the annual Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg. Over a million Germans had participated in the 1934 rally in Nuremberg and later, yearly rallies held there got even bigger. The 1935 rally is noted for pronouncements about the status of Jews in Germany. These became known as the Nuremberg Laws, which for Jews in Europe would soon become matters of life and death. Riefenstahl denied making this film until a copy was found in 1971. In 1936, Hitler invited Riefenstahl to film the Olympic Games in Berlin, a film which Riefenstahl claimed had been commissioned by the International Olympic Committee. She also went to Greece to take footage of the games’ original site at Olympia, where she was aided by Greek photographer Nelly’s. This material became Olympia, a successful film which has since been widely noted for its technical and aesthetic achievements. She was one of the first filmmakers to use tracking shots in a documentary, placing a camera on rails to follow the athletes’ movement, and she is noted for the slow motion shots included in the film. Riefenstahl’s work on Olympia has been cited as a major influence in modern sports photography. Although Joseph Goebbels told Riefenstahl to ignore non-Aryan athletes at the Games, Riefenstahl filmed competitors of all races, including African-American Jesse Owens in what would later become famous footage. Olympia was very successful in Germany after it premiered for Hitler’s 49th birthday in 1938, and its international debut led Riefenstahl to embark on an American publicity tour in an attempt to secure commercial release. In 1937, Riefenstahl told a reporter for the Detroit News: “To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived. He truly is without fault, so simple and at the same time possessed of masculine strength.” She arrived in New York City in November 1938, five days before “The Night of the Glass”; when news of the event reached America, Riefenstahl maintained that Hitler was innocent. This event completely derailed Riefenstahl’s tour in America.

Helene Bertha Amalie “Leni” Riefenstahl (German pronunciation: [ˈriːfənʃtaːl]; 22 August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party. Riefenstahl’s prominence in the Third Reich along with her personal friendships with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels thwarted her film career following Germany’s defeat in World War II, after which she was arrested but never convicted of any crimes.

Triumph of the Will gave Riefenstahl instant and lasting international fame. Although she made only eight films, just two of which received significant coverage outside of Germany, Riefenstahl was widely known throughout the rest of her life. The propaganda value of her films made during the 1930s repels most modern commentators but many film histories cite the aesthetics as outstanding. The Economist wrote that Triumph of the Will “sealed her reputation as the greatest female filmmaker of the 20th century.”

In the 1970s Riefenstahl published her still photography of the Nuba tribes in Africa in several books such as The Last of the Nuba. She was active up until her death and also published marine life stills and released the marine-based film Impressionen unter Wasser in 2002.

After her death, the Associated Press described Riefenstahl as an “acclaimed pioneer of film and photographic techniques.” Der Tagesspiegel newspaper in Berlin noted, “Leni Riefenstahl conquered new ground in the cinema.” The BBC said her documentaries “were hailed as groundbreaking film-making, pioneering techniques involving cranes, tracking rails, and many cameras working at the same time.”

An all-time medal table for all Olympic Games from 1896 to 2008, including Summer Olympic Games, Winter Olympic Games and a combined total of both, is tabulated below. These counts do not include the 1906 Intercalated Games which are no longer recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as official Games.

The IOC itself does not publish all-time tables, and publishes unofficial tables only per single Games. This table was thus compiled by adding up single entries from the IOC database.[1]

The results are attributed to the IOC country code as currently displayed by the IOC database. Usually, a single code corresponds to a single National Olympic Committee (NOC). When different codes are displayed for different years, medal counts are combined in the case of a simple change of IOC code (such as from HOL to NED for the Netherlands) or simple change of country name (such as from Ceylon to Sri Lanka). As the medals are attributed to each NOC, not all totals include medals won by athletes from that country for another NOC, such as before independence of that country (see individual footnotes for special cases such as combined teams). Names in italic are national entities that no longer exist.

The town is served by Federal Highway 2 as a continuation of the A95 Autobahn (motorway), which ends at Eschenlohe 16 km north of the city. Garmisch-Partenkirchen has railway connections to Munich, Innsbruck, Reutte and to the Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany (2,962 m high). The views of the majestic peak from the town are especially spectacular and several accessible hiking trails cover both the lower and higher elevations.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a market town in Bavaria, southern Germany. It is the administrative centre of the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the Oberbayern region, not far from the border with Austria. A subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp was located in the town.

Berlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is the country’s largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan area, comprising 5 million people from over 190 nations.

First documented in the thirteenth century, Berlin was successively the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701-1918), the German Empire (1871-1918), the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and the Third Reich (1933-1945). After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a Western exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall from 1961-1989, and Bonn instead becoming the capital of West Germany. Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of all Germany hosting 147 foreign embassies.

Berlin is a major center of culture, politics, media, and science in Europe. Its economy is primarily based on the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, media corporations, environmental services, congress and convention venues. The city serves as a continental hub for air and rail transport, and is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the EU. Other industries include traffic engineering, optoelectronics, information technology, vehicle manufacturing, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.