History: Old Germany

German nationals make up 91% of the population of Germany. As of 2009, about seven million foreign citizens were registered in Germany, and 19% of the country's residents were of foreign or partially foreign descent (including persons descending or partially descending from ethnic German repatriates), 96% of whom lived in Western Germany or Berlin. The United Nations Population Fund lists Germany as host to the third-highest number of international migrants worldwide, about 5% or 10 million of all 191 million migrants. As a consequence of restrictions to Germany's formerly rather unrestricted laws on asylum and immigration, the number of immigrants seeking asylum or claiming German ethnicity (mostly from the former Soviet Union) has been declining steadily since 2000. In 2009, 20% of the population had immigrant roots, the highest since 1945. As of 2008, the largest national group was from Turkey (2.5 million), followed by Italy (776,000) and Poland (687,000). About 3 million "Aussiedler"—ethnic Germans, mainly from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union—have resettled in Germany since 1987.
Germany has a number of large cities. The largest conurbation is the Rhine-Ruhr region (11.5 million as of 2006), including Düsseldorf (the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia), Cologne, Essen, Dortmund, Duisburg, and Bochum.
• Largest cities of Germany
Rank - City Name - State - Pop. - Rank - City Name - State - Pop. -