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[German Version] I. General – II. History of Religion I. General Sometime after the Europeans became familiar with the New World, they gave it the name “America.” The German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, who was apparently unaware of the great deeds of Christopher Columbus, proposed in 1507 that the hemisphere be named “America” in honor of the voyages of discovery of Amerigo Vespuci. America's geopolitical situation reflects its geography and social history. As an object of exploration and colonization, America's most pressing geopolitical concern was not to become merely the bargaining chips in the conflicts of their colonizers, the West European sea powers Spain, Portugal, France, and England. The interests of the settlers soon deviated from those of their motherlands, and several wars of revolution produced independent states. The first and most successful of these wars led to the founding of the USA, whose tremendous growth in size, population, and industrial power soon made it the synonym for America. The American revolutions were followed by the Monroe Doctrine, which was written in 1832 as a warning against further interference by European powers in the internal affairs of the hemisphere, as well as an implicit declaration of intention by the USA to exercise hegemony …