The main objective of this book on the soils of Germany is a geographic and thus regional differentiation of typical settings of soil formation and the related soils. Accordingly, soil-landscapes form the main structural element of the book. Basically, the spatial distribution of soils in Germany is a function of topography and parent material. Recent climate does not have such a differentiating influence, because the country is too small for large differences in temperature and precipitation on a country-wide scale. Both, topography and parent material have been considerably shaped last during the Pleistocene. Thus, pedogenesis and the resulting distribution of the soils of Germany are based on geomorphological grounds.