Standard German is used as the official language in many countries and is spoken widely in even more. Below is a summary of the statistics about Standard German published in Ethnologue’s latest release.

Population - 75,300,000 in Germany (1990). Population total all countries 100,000,000 first language speakers (1999 WA); 128,000,000 including second language speakers (1999 WA).

Alternate names - DEUTSCH, HOCHDEUTSCH, HIGH GERMAN
Dialects - ERZGEBIRGISCH
Classification - Indo-European, Germanic, West, High German, German, Middle German, East Middle German

Also Spoken In:

Austria - Used as a National Language
Belgium - Used as the Official Language
Czech Republic - Bilingualism; ERZGEBIRGISCH used.
Denmark - Used as the Official Language. With plenty of German schools.
Hungary - Germans in Hungary speak other Germanic varieties than Standard German at home.
Italy - Used as the Official Language. With plenty of German schools.
Kazakhstan - 57% of ethnic Germans speak it as mother tongue.
Liechtenstein - Used as a National Language. Different dialects used.
Luxembourg - Used as a National Language. Taught in schools as a second language. Used as a second language by industrial workers and rural people.

Paraguay - Used by 166,000 people including 19,000 who speak Plautdietsch as their mother tongue

Poland - With a half million speakers
Romania - With around 150,000 speakers.
Slovakia - Bilingualism; Slovakian and Hungarian also used.
Switzerland - Used as Official Language although it is not the mother tongue of many. Used as primary language in schools in Schwyzerdütsch- (German) and Rheto-Romansch-speaking areas.

Major related
language areas - Bavarian, Schwäbisch, Allemannisch, Mainfränkisch, Hessisch, Palatinian, Rheinfränkisch, Westfälisch, Saxonian, Thuringian, Brandenburgisch, and Low Saxon.

Additional
Information - Standard German is just one variety of High German. many varieties of High German are not inherently intelligible with each other. Standard German developed from the chancery of Saxony and gained acceptance as a written standard way back in the 16th and 17th centuries. High German refers to dialects and languages in the upper Rhine region and is 60 percent lexical similarity with English and only 29 percent with French. It is used as a National language and are used in dictionaries, Grammar books, poetry, newspapers, radio programs, films, TV, videos and Christian Bibles that were published between 1466 to 1982.