The major lineaments of Germany’s physical geography are not

unique. The country spans the great east-west morphological zones

that are characteristic of the western part of central Europe. In the
south Germany impinges on the outermost ranges of the Alps. From
there it extends across the Alpine Foreland (Alpenvorland), the plain
on the northern edge of the Alps. Forming the core of the country is
the large zone of the Central German Uplands, which is part of a wider
European arc of territory stretching from the Massif Central of France
in the west into the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland in the east.
In Germany it manifests itself as a landscape with a complex mixture
of forested block mountains, intermediate plateaus with scarped
edges, and lowland basins. In the northern part of the country
the North German Plain, or Lowland, forms part of the greater
North European Plain, which broadens from the Low
Countries eastward across Germany and Poland into Belarus,
the Baltic states, and Russia and extends northward
through Schleswig-Holstein into the Jutland peninsula of Denmark.
The North German Plain is fringed by marshes, mudflats, and the
islands of the North and Baltic seas. In general, Germany has a south-
to-north drop in altitude, from a maximum elevation of 9,718 feet
(2,962 metres) in the Zugspitze of the Bavarian Alps to a few small
areas slightly below sea level in the north near the coast.