What Germans googled in 2019

Greta Thunberg, the European Parliament election, how to do "The Floss" dance and the death of Karl Lagerfeld were among Germany's most popular Google searches in 2019, according to data released by Google on Wednesday.

The most popular search term overall was "Rebecca Reusch," the name of a teenager from Berlin who has been missing since February 2019.  Authorities still do not her whereabouts and are working to find the potential perpetrators behind her disappearance.

In second place was Notre-Dame, followed by the World Woman's Handball Championship. The fourth most popular search topic was  fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who died in February. In fifth came "Julen," in reference to Julen Rosello Garcia, a two-year-old Spanish boy who died after falling into an illegally excavated narrow shaft near Totalán in Málaga, on January 13, 2019.

Read more: How Karl Lagerfeld made an icon of himself

The most googled people were climate activist Greta Thunberg, TV personality Evelyn Burdecki, singer-songwriterAlice Merton, German schlager singer Peter Orloff and German entrepreneur Bastian Yotta.

The most popular "how to" or "how is" searches — formulated in German as "Wie?" — were: "How to do The Floss," a dance where the person holds their arms out straight and then swings them in front and behind their back, "What is Prince Harry's baby called" and "How does the Queen sign [her name]."

For the "what is" questions, Germans wanted to know about "Article 13" in the EU's new copyright directive, Brexit, and "Kappa," an emote used in chats on the streaming video platform Twitch, often to convey sarcasm or irony or troll people.

Some of the most popular "where is" questions included, "Where is October 31 a holiday?" (while most people know the date to be Halloween, in Germany, some states have a holiday for Reformation Day), "Where is Rebecca?" ( the missing teenager from Berlin), "Where is appendicitis pain?" and "Where is Sri Lanka?"

People also google the names of personalities who died over the year: Karl Lagerfeld, German actress Lisa Martinek, who died in a swimming accident, Ingo Kantorek, who died with his wife in a car accident, race car driver Niki Lauda, and young US actor Cameron Boyce, who died after having an epilepsy-related seizure.

The political headlines people were most interested in were the European parliament elections, Article 13 in the EU's copyright directive and Sri Lanka, due to the Easter terror attacks.

The five most googled films were Joker, Avengers Endgame, The Perfect Secret, The Irishman and Captain Marvel.

For sports stars, footballers Leroy Sane (Germany), Neymar da Silva Santos Junior (Brazil), Philippe Coutinho Correia (Brazil), German basketballer Andrej Mangold and German bobsledder Sandra Kiriasis were the names that obtained the most inquiries