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Front: Young Venetian Woman by Albrecht Durer

Back: Oak sprig

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Front: Young man by Albrecht Durer

Back: Sail training ship Gorch Fock

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Front: Bettina von Arnim (1785-1859), German writer and novelist

Bettina, born Elisabeth Catharina Ludovica Magdalena Brentano, was one of the foremost writers in modern German literature. Her three best-known works were based on her correspondence with the famous German philosopher-writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), with German poet Karoline von Günderode (1780-1806), and with her brother Clemens Brentano (1778-1842).

Back: Brandenburg Gate

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Front: Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), German mathematician and scientist

Gauss, a child prodigy, was a son of uneducated lower-class parents. At the age of 3, he corrected an arithmetical error made by his father in a complicated payroll calculation. In 1801, at age 24, Gauss published one of the most brilliant achievements in mathematics, Disquisitiones Arithmeticae. This work systematized the study of number theory.

Gauss made many fundamental mathematical discoveries: the fundamental theorem of algebra, the algebra of congruences, the method of least squares fitting, the non-Euclidean geometry, and the Cauchy integral theorem.

Back: Sextant

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Front: Annette von Droste-Hulshoff (1797-1848), German poet

Annette was a gifted German poet. Her cousin who was Archbishop of Cologne largely influenced her early training. Her verse tends to be strong and vigorous, but often unmusical. Her narrative poetry, and especially Das Hospiz auf dem Grossen St Bernard and Die Schlac/zt im Loener Bruch, both published in 1838, belongs to the best German poetry of its kind.

Back: Quill pen and beech tree

Germany came under Allied control from 1945 to 1949. It was divided into the German Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic in 1949. The two republics were reunited under the German Federal Republic in 1990. For a more detailed country profile, see CIA World Factbook on Germany.

Beginning on January 1, 2002 Euro becomes the official currency for German Federal Republic.