I do have numbers, thanks to John Roake, and membership
in Germany
is actually collapsing faster than anywhere in the
world - (32,229
members in 2006 vs 37,624 in 1996, continuous decline).
I have no
idea why (does anyone else know?).

Much of that decline could be explained by demographics.
The German
population is getting older because of a very low birth
rate and many of
their well educated youth are leaving for jobs in lower
tax rate countries.

I Googled German demographics and found this article
from 2006. This
is a problem throughout Europe. Somewhere around 56%
of the
specialist doctors in England are from Asia and the
Middle East because
most of the British trained doctors live and work in
the US.

'The exodus of Germans being lured away from home is
greater today
than at any time since statisticians began collecting
figures about
population movements in the 1950s.

Last year, for the first time since 1968, more people
left Germany than
arrived, according to Destatis, the federal statistical
office. It estimates
that 144,815 Germans left the country last year because
of high
unemployment, better opportunities or, in some cases,
tax.''

German demographers were shocked in 1987 when the latest
census put
the population at 82.4m – 1.3m lower than projected.
But a more
unpleasant surprise could be in store for Germans as
work for the next
census gets under way this week. The previous emigration
record of
1956 was breached in 1994 and, after several years
of decline, the
outflow began rising again in 2001, and continued to
rise up to 2004,
although 2005’s figure of 144,815 was slightly down
on the year before.

“There has definitely been an increase [in German emigration]
over the
past two to three years,” said Christina Busch at the
Raphael-Werke, an
organisation that counsels would-be emigrants. “What
worries me is that
99.9 per cent of those I see have qualifications. Many
have children.
Some even have good jobs. And most want a clean break
– they do not
intend to come back.”

Architects, engineers, lorry drivers, scientists and
social workers are
leaving in droves, according to figures. The outflow
of doctors towards
Scandinavia is such that the medical faculty of Erlangen
University
recently started offering Swedish courses to its students.'

'For former East Germany, the outlook is particularly
grim. Another IAB
study estimates the region’s population will drop from
15m to 9m by
2050.'