Last year more babies were born in Germany than at any time in the past 15 years - 738,000 little bundles of joy opened their eyes on the world for the first time.
That was a 3.2 percent increase on 2014, or in concrete numbers 23,000 more, the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) revealed on Thursday.
The last time that Destatis recorded more births was in 2000 when 767,000 births were born in the Bundesrepublik.
And there could be more births on the way too, after 400,000 couples said their wedding vows in 2015, which was an increase of 3.6 percent on 2014 - and again the highest number recorded since 2000.
But the bad news is that more people died in 2015 than has been the case for three decades.
In every year since 1972, more people have died in Germany than have been born.
Of the 16 German states, only the city states Hamburg and Berlin recorded more births than deaths in 2015.
Germany has one of the lowest birthrates in the Western world and desperately needs young people to replace the ageing Baby Boomer generation who are set to leave the job market over the coming 15 years.
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