Germania (personification)

In the country itself, the use of the Latin "Germania" was mainly literary and poetical, linked with patriotic and nationalist feelings, like "Helvetia" for Switzerland, "Hibernia" for Ireland, "Caledonia" for Scotland, "Lusitania" for Portugal etc.

She often wields the Reichsschwert (imperial sword), and possesses a medieval-style shield that sometimes bears the image of a black eagle on a gold field.

[15] During the reign of Maximilian I, the emperor ("an arch-publicist and mythmaker", according to Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly) and his humanists reinvented Germania as the Mother of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

[19] The humanist Heinrich Bebel also spread a story about his dream, in which Germania told him to talk to her son (Maximilian).

[20] Colvin and Watanabe-O'Kelly opine that during the Early Modern period, the virtues incorporated into the German identity (ethnic purity, fertility.

liberty, loyalty, morality, together with virtus and fortitudo as described by Tacitus through the image of Germania were for the Adelsnation (aristocracy) only, relying on a 1519 document that called on the princes and counts (presented as sons of Germania and dedicated to Mars) to support the "German candidate", who would become Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (although at that point he could not speak German and had never set foot in Germany) against the French king Francis I.

[29] The most notable recent interpretation is Heiner Müller (1929–1995)'s Germania Tod, in which she functions as a midwife who witnesses Goebbels gives birth to Hitler's child, a deformed wolf.

[30] In 2019, Ruby Commey portrayed Germania in the music video for Rammstein's song Deutschland, which was a number-one single in several countries, but also attracted significant controversy due to her being Afro-German.