German tourism marketing is leveraging one of the most powerful tourism brands, UNESCO. While other countries apply national branding campaigns to market their tourism, Germany’s National Tourism Board (GNTB) employs annual themes like wellness in 2010, wine in 2011 and youth in 2013. In 2014 the GNTB theme is “UNESCO World Heritage – Sustainable, cultural and natural tourism” (www.germany.travel/unesco). How have these themes fared as opposed to establishing national identity? The 2013 Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index placed Germany second to the U.S. out of 50 countries. Germany also ranked fifth among cultural destinations and eighth as a tourism destination. “In times of international economic and financial crisis,” says GNTB’s CEO Petra Hedorfer, Germany’s numbers “are well above those of many other European destinations.”

UNESCO began recognizing the world’s most significant heritage sites when it introduced its World Heritage list in 1972. Today, the list features 981 sites from 160 countries, and it includes natural and cultural treasures that transcend national identity and belong to the common heritage of humanity the world over. With 38 such sites, Germany is surpassed only by Italy (49) and by China and Spain (44). France also has 38 such sites. In terms of tourism, the citation is a major endorsement with travelers.

Germany’s UNESCO sites (35 cultural and three natural) reflect the destination’s diversity. “The UNESCO World Heritage label is a major selling point for cultural tourism from abroad,” says Hedorfer. “For 34 percent of cultural tourists visiting Germany, the UNESCO designation represents an incentive to travel.”

The Aachen Cathedral was designated a World Heritage Site in 1978, Germany’s first. Built by the architects of Charlemagne in the 8th century, the cathedral was the coronation site of some 30 German kings. The Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, a Baroque parkland, became the latest German site in 2013.

“Germany’s UNESCO Sites contrast breathtaking nature with cutting-edge design and technology, modern art collections and contemporary cuisine,” says Riccarda Lindner, the GNTB’s director of the Americas. “One of the country’s greatest assets is its diversity. Germany is romantic, active, creative and above all historic. There is no end to our museums, but we also have the Alps in the south and the beaches and mudflats in the north. You can visit churches from the Middle Ages, and synagogues, as well as experience startling new architectural designs in Wolfsburg and Munich.”

While most people would expect the likes of Bach and Goethe to highlight Germany’s UNESCO trail, it contains a good measure of modernity as well. The Bauhaus school of design (based in Weimar and Dessau) was a prototype for visual art, design and architecture that still dominates the skylines of cities around the world. Henry van de Velde created the School of Arts and Crafts in the early 1900s and brought his style of Art Nouveau to Weimar. Walter Gropius, who took over the school from van de Velde, founded the Bauhaus University in 1919. Today, the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar comprises the four faculties of Architecture, Civil Engineering, Art and Design and Media. Gropius’ Fagus Shoe Factory made the list in 2011.

Diversity is one of the major themes in a soon-to-launch two-year GNTB campaign under the tagline “25 Perspectives on Destination Germany.” The campaign emphasizes the wide choices available to visitors in all parts of the country.

Though UNESCO includes natural as well as man-made sites, the heart of its list is cultural, and German culture is as central to European culture as Germany is to the European map. Germany’s cultural credentials include its leading role in the Reformation, its heritage of living folk traditions, a legacy in the visual arts led by the likes of Cranach and Durer, a literature rooted in folk lore, its role as the center of modern philosophy and its countless innovations in the field of music.

In 1989, perhaps inspired by the experience of the global significance of its own Berlin Wall, Germany’s UNESCO sites decided to band together to form the German UNESCO World Heritage Sites Association. It was a marketing collaboration that extended a welcome to the country’s tourism marketing organizations responsible for promoting the World Heritages Sites. In 2001 it became a full-fledged organization with such partners as the German Commission for UNESCO, the German National Tourist Board, the German Foundation for Monument Protection and many sponsors.

As we approach the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017, Martin Luther (1483-1564) will be a major figure in 2014. Whatever your religious affiliation, Luther in political and cultural terms alone remains one of Europe’s most significant figures. Germany is in the middle of the Luther Decade promotion (2007 to 2017). Another campaign, LutherCountry (www.visit-luther.com), highlights the places associated with him: from his hiding place at Wartburg Castle (where he translated the New Testament into German) and the house where he was born, to Wittenberg’s Schlosskirche, where he nailed his 95 Theses in 1517, and the Pfarrkirche St. Marien, the church where he preached.

UNESCO lists Eisleben and Lutherstadt Wittenberg as the original sites of the Reformation. Eisleben, where Luther was born and where he died, understood his significance as far back as 1693, when the town turned his birth house into a memorial and Germany’s first museum. Thuringia, Saxony and Lower Saxony are the so-called “Motherland of the Reformation,” because of the revolutionary trail Luther blazed there as a teacher and a preacher. These former East German states are rich in all kinds of attractions. For agents, the almost 9 million American Lutherans offer a rich potential for travelers who want to explore the footprints and sites, arts, architecture, exhibitions and buildings relating to Martin Luther in this area.

Weimar, also in the former East, makes a strong case for being the heart of German culture. It was a home to Goethe, Schiller, Nietzsche and the birthplace of the Bauhaus.