Germans () are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture and history, and speak the German language as their mother tongue. The English term Germans has historically referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages. Before the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany in 1990, Germans constituted the largest divided nation in Europe by far. Ever since the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, German society has been characterized by a Catholic-Protestant divide. Of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, roughly 70 million consider themselves Germans. There are an additional 80 million people of German ancestry mainly in the United States, Brazil (almost all in the South Region of the country), Argentina, Canada, South Africa, the post-Soviet states (mainly in Russia and Kazakhstan), France, Australia, Venezuela, Chile and Italy (mainly in South Tyrol). Thus, the total number of Germans lies somewhere between 66 and more than 150 million, depending on the criteria applied (native speakers, single-ancestry ethnic Germans, partial German ancestry, etc.). Today, people from countries with a German-speaking majority such as Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and other historically-tied countries like Luxembourg, have developed their own national identity (not ethnic identity), and since the end of World War II, have not referred to themselves as “Germans” in a modern context.