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1[[quoteright:328:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/luxembourg_4913.gif]]
2[[caption-width-right:328:Between Germany and Belgium, [[SincerityMode so nice]].... Currently]]
3Luxembourg, officially known as the '''Grand Duchy of Luxembourg''' ('''Luxembourgish:''' ''Groussherzogtum Lëtzebuerg'', '''French:''' ''Grand-Duché de Luxembourg'', '''German:''' ''Großherzogtum Luxemburg''), is a very small -- about 1,000 square miles -- and entirely land-locked country in Western Europe. Less than half a million people live there.
4
5History, though, was unkind: it stands at the border of the French and the Teutonic worlds -- and it sucks to be stuck in between (just ask UsefulNotes/{{Belgium}}). French, German, and the local Letzeburgisch (a bit Dutch, a bit German, mostly Letzeburgisch) are all spoken less on the grounds of "ethnicity" than by everyone at different times and situations.
6
7Luxembourg was part of the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire, then UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte's First French Empire, and finally the Kingdom of the [[UsefulNotes/TheNetherlands Netherlands]] (and simultaneously the [[UsefulNotes/AllTheLittleGermanies German Confederation]]). When Belgium left the Netherlands, Luxembourg stayed, but now it was stranded and it integrated its economy with that of UsefulNotes/{{Germany}}. Nevertheless, it was a poor country and many people headed for the UsefulNotes/UnitedStates.
8
9Then UsefulNotes/OttoVonBismarck took over in Germany, and his Germany was anything but lame-duck. He had no interest in allowing the Dutch king to participate and he kicked Luxembourg out. The French offered to buy it up and the Dutch said yes. Bismarck said no, demanding a neutral country (so the French couldn't invade Germany that way). [[UsefulNotes/FrancoPrussianWar Four years later,]] France learned that you don't cross a [[TheChessmaster chessmaster]] extraordinaire.
10
11[[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI Forty years later]], Luxembourg learned once again that being where it is sucks when Germany invaded (and had they not, the French, documents show, would have done so instead). But Luxembourg got off better than Belgium: their comically miniscule army was captured without loss of life by the Germans before war could be declared, and so the Germans legitimized their position by claiming that absolutely nothing had happened, allowing the civilian government to continue. [[BlatantLies Yeah right.]] In practice, Luxembourg was ruled as a German rear garrison with a permanent population, with all effective power being held by the military. Luxembourg was to be asked to join Germany (at gunpoint) after the expected German victory. Thankfully for Luxembourg, this was not to be, especially since -- in large part because of German high-handedness -- Luxembourg became culturally and politically estranged from Germany while defining itself as a free, independent, constitutional monarchy.
12
13[[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany The Nazis weren't so civil and didn't like this one bit.]] [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Luckily, they lost, too.]] Since then, Luxembourg has been independent and '''filthy rich''', having the highest GDP per capita in the world at around $108,000, compared to the United States' $47,000 (though the cost of living is a bit high, so by purchasing power, it's actually second after UsefulNotes/{{Qatar}} at $80,000, but still ridiculously high). And with UsefulNotes/{{France}} and Germany having sorted their thing out, today it's actually a real nice place to be. It was a founder member of UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion, and uses the euro as its currency.
14
15Luxembourg is a constitutional monarchy: the Grand Duke is currently Henri I. The Prime Minister is currently Xavier Bettel.
16
17Ever since the emergence of parties in 1918, Luxembourg has been governed by coalitions (except for a period between 1921-1925), making it one of the most stable democracies. The CSV (Christian Social People's Party) and its predecessor the PD (Party of the Right) probably deserve some sort of record for being in charge between 1918-1925, 1926-1974 (during which the PD became the CSV) and 1979-present. Prime Ministers tend to have quite long mandates, like the most recent Pierre Werner (1959-1974 and 1979-1984), Jacques Santer (1984-1995) and Jean-Claude Juncker (1995-2013).
18
19It has no navy (the no coast thing is a bit of a problem) and an army of c.450 people. Its air force consists of 17 AWACS planes, three trainers and a cargo plane, all bar the last NATO aircraft registered with the country for convenience purposes. That said, it does do peacekeeping a fair bit (when you're surrounded by allies, you don't need to worry too much about keeping troops at home).
20
21Low taxes on alcohol, [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus wink-wink nudge-nudge]]. Also, free public transport, with just a flat three euro charge for first class.
22
23'''Radio Luxembourg (RTL- Radio Television Luxembourg- for non-English listeners)'''
24
25One of the most famous things from the country is a long-wave (later medium-wave) radio station called Radio Luxembourg. This began in 1933, during a mini-boom in European stations that broadcast commercial programmes to the UsefulNotes/UnitedKingdom in defiance of the {{Creator/BBC}}'s non-commercial monopoly. During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the station fell under Nazi control, but an engineer had hidden some transmitter parts to prevent it broadcasting at full power.
26
27After the war ended there was some discussion about potentially using the Luxembourg transmitter to relay [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar anti-communist]] programming from London, but this plan was foiled by the change of British government and in 1946 Radio Luxembourg resumed commercial operations.
28
29From 1946 until 1973, Radio Luxembourg was the only English-language non-BBC radio station (not counting [[BuccaneerBroadcaster Radio Caroline and other pirate stations]]) that could be picked up in the UK. In the mid-1950s it switched to medium-wave and could only be heard at night. Its pop music station, Luxembourg 208, played on the fact the BBC Radio One only broadcast "part-time" and surrendered its airwaves to the far less hip Radio Two at seven p.m. every day. 208 started broadcasting at 6:45 every evening. Many shows were pre-recorded in London.
30
31By the early [[TheSixties 1960s]], most of the station's programming consisted of record shows sponsored by various labels (all of them owned by just four companies), but the advent of pirate radio forced Luxembourg to adopt a more conventional top 40 format.
32
33Luxembourg briefly operated on satellite as well as medium-wave from 1989 and added a 24-hour satellite service, but the medium-wave service closed at the end of 1991 and the satellite service a year later. A partly-owned companion station, Atlantic 252, operated on long-wave out of Ireland from 1989 until 2002 before being briefly replaced by a sport station.
34
35The parent company, RTL Group, today owns two British production companies (Creator/FremantleMedia, which in turn owns the remnants of Creator/ThamesTelevision), as well as several other European networks, these often using the RTL name.
36----
37!!Notable people from Luxembourg:
38* Jean-Claude Juncker, politician and statesman, Minister of Finances (1989-2009), Prime Minister (1995-2013) and President of the [[UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion European Commission]] (2014-2019).
39* Creator/VickyKrieps, actress.
40* Désirée Nosbusch, actress and TV host.
41* Robert Schuman, politician and statesman, one of the founders of the European Communities, the Council of Europe and UsefulNotes/{{NATO}}. His background is a bit complicated as, although Schuman was born in Luxembourg, his father was actually from just across the border in [[UsefulNotes/DepartementalIssues Moselle]], the part of Lorraine that became part of UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany after the UsefulNotes/FrancoPrussianWar and thus, he was born a German citizen and was educated (from secondary school on).mostly in Germany. He became a French citizen after UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, after Alsace and Moselle became French again, and entered politics there, eventually rising to the position of Prime Minister by early 1950s when European Coal and Steel Community (ESCS), the precursor to the EU, was formed. Supposedly, Schuman never lost his "German" accent even after decades in French politics, although his native language would have been Luxembourgish (besides his Luxembourgish birth, the Germanic dialect of the Moselle region, is basically the same as Luxembourgish and whether Luxembourgish is a dialect of German or its own language was not a sure thing before World War I).
42
43!!Luxembourg and Luxembourgers in fiction:
44* ''Series/{{MASH}}'', oddly enough, features an episode with a missing Luxembourger. Luxembourg participated in UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar, with two deaths and two injuries. The concern expressed by the Luxemburgouis officer for one missing soldier was there to emphasise how a country so much smaller than the USA would consider the loss of ''one'' man to be a tragedy that affected ''everybody'' - this at a time when the US Army was routinely feeding whole regiments into the meat-grinder.
45* ''WesternAnimation/MrHublot'' is an Oscar-winning 2013 cartoon short made in Luxembourg.
46* ''Film/TheRedSuitcase'' is an Oscar-nominated short film about a 16-year-old girl who arrives in the Luxembourg airport, where she is to be picked up by a man three times her age, whom she has been pledged to marry.
47* In ''VideoGame/{{Resistance}}: Retribution'', Luxembourg is the home of [[LaResistance the Maquis]] and one of the few the free countries in Europe. [[spoiler:Predictably, it is attacked and destroyed by the Chimera halfway through the game.]]
48* In ''Literature/SwarmOnTheSomme'', Luxembourg gets invaded and trashed severely by the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Grex]], but it has enough [[ActionSurvivor survivors]] (taking shelter in Germany) to potentially renew the country once the conflict ends. They are also determined to help the German (and later Entente) militaries with [[FightingForAHomeland the reclamation of their homeland]].
49* In the music video for 16 Military Wives by ''Music/TheDecemberists'', where every person is representing a country, America (Colin Meloy) declares war on Luxembourg (Chris Funk).
50* In the Literature/{{Discworld}}, as the series and the concepts evolved, including one-for-one mapping of Discworld states with "Roundworld" equivalents, it is strongly hinted that the Grand Duchy of Sto Helit, a "pocket state" relatively close to Ankh-Morpork (England) is the Discworld Luxembourg.
51* In ''Anime/TadaNeverFallsInLove'', the fictional European country of [[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed Larsenberg]] where the main heroine, Teresa Wagner came from was pretty obviously based on Luxembourg, down to their national flag below.
52* Volume 12 of ''Literature/InfiniteStratos'' reveals that Luxembourg is the sole source of [[{{Unobtanium}} "time crystals"]] which are an essential component in the manufacturing of IS cores. It also introduces a NewTransferStudent, Princess Iris of Luxembourg and her personal IS "Seventh Princess."
53----
54[[AC:The Luxembourger flag]]
55[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/flag_of_luxembourg.png]]
56->The flag was first introduced during the Belgian Revolution, and its red-white-blue color scheme is similar to that used by the Netherlands, though with the red and especially the blue having a lighter shade.
57----
58[[AC:Coat of arms of Luxembourg]]
59[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/coat_of_arms_of_luxembourg.png]]
60->The coat of arms is based on the coat of arms of the Duchy of Limburg (in what is now Liège Province in Belgium)
61----
62[[AC:The Luxembourger national anthem]]
63
64->Wou d'Uelzecht durech d'Wisen zéit,
65->Duerch d'Fielsen d'Sauer brécht,
66->Wou d'Rief laanscht d'Musel dofteg bléit,
67->Den Himmel Wäin ons mécht:
68->Dat as onst Land, fir dat mer géif
69->Hei nidden alles won,
70->Ons Heemechtsland dat mir so déif
71->An onsen Hierzer dron.
72
73->O Du do uewen, deen seng Hand
74->Duerch d'Welt d'Natioune leet,
75->Behitt Du d'Lëtzebuerger Land
76->Vru friemem Joch a Leed;
77->Du hues ons all als Kanner schon
78->De fräie Geescht jo ginn,
79->Looss viru blénken d'Fräiheetssonn,
80->Déi mir sou laang gesinn!
81
82--
83
84->Où l'Alzette arrose champs et prés
85->La Sûre baigne les rochers;
86->Où la Moselle, riante et belle
87->Nous fait cadeau du vin
88->C'est notre pays pour lequel
89->Nous risquons tout sur terre;
90->Notr'chère et adorable patrie
91->Dont notr'âme est remplie.
92
93->Ô Toi aux cieux qui nuit et jour
94->Diriges les nations du monde;
95->Écarte du pays de Luxembourg
96->L'oppression étrangère
97->Enfants nous avons reçu de Toi
98->L'esprit de la liberté;
99->Permets au soleil de liberté
100->De luire à tout jamais.
101
102--
103
104->Wo die Alzette durch die Wiesen zieht,
105->Durch die Felsen die Sauer bricht,
106->Die Rebe längs der Mosel blüht,
107->Der Himmel Wein verspricht:
108->Dort ist das Land, für dessen Ehr
109->Kein Opfer uns zu schwer,
110->Die Heimat, die als teures Gut
111->In unseren Herzen ruht.
112
113->O Du dort droben, dessen Hand
114->Den Völkern gibt Geleit,
115->Behüt das Luxemburger Land
116->Vor fremdem Joch, vor Leid!
117->Als Kind empfingen wir von Dir
118->Den freiheitlichen Sinn,
119->Die Freiheitssonne, unsre Zier,
120->Lass leuchten fernerhin!
121
122--
123
124->Where the Alzette through meadows flow,
125->And pebbles the Sauer mow,
126->Along the Moselle bloom the vines,
127->As Heav'n gifts us wine:
128->This is the land, for honour whose,
129->No ordeal proves too great:
130->Our homeland which could never lose,
131->Our hearts' rank and rate.
132
133->O Thou above, who night and day,
134->Guides nations with thine own hand,
135->Guard this, our Luxembourger land,
136->From alien yoke and pain!
137->As children, thou us bestowed,
138->A spirit, free, unbowed,
139->Let once more freedom's sun,
140->For now and all time glow!
141----
142[[AC:Government]]
143* Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
144** Monarch: Henri
145** Prime Minister: Luc Frieden
146** Deputy Prime Minister: Xavier Bettel
147----
148[[AC:Miscellaneous]]
149* '''Capital and largest city:''' Luxembourg City
150* '''Population:''' 633,622
151* '''Area:''' 2,586.4 km
152 (998.6 sq mi) (167th)
153* '''Currency:''' Euro (€) (EUR)
154* '''ISO-3166-1 Code:''' LU
155* '''Country calling code:''' 352
156* '''Highest point:''' Kneiff (560 m/1,837 ft) (177th)

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