An account of approximately hundred germanium and organogermanium derivatives have been included in this review. The unimolar and bimolar substitution products have been characterized by elemental analyses, conductance measurements, molecular weight determinations and spectral studies, viz., IR, 'H NMR, 13 C NMR, U.V. and mass spectra. Thermal stability has been explained on the basis of TGA data.From the analyses of these studies the donor sites of the ligands are located and geometries of the donor environment around the Ge(IV) acceptor centre have been proposed. Based on these studies, trigonal bipyramidal and octahedral geometries have been proposed for the resulting derivatives. The resulting coloured solids are soluble in most of the common organic solvents. These were found to be monomers, as evidenced by their molecular weight determinations. The low values of molar conductance of the resulting metal complexes in anhydrous DMF show them to be non-electrolytes in nature. The spectral data suggested that the ligands act in monofunctional bidentate, bifunctional tridentate and Afunctional tetradentate manners, coordinating through the hard nitrogen and soft sulfur atoms. All such important aspects, including the biological properties about the germanium complexes synthesized in our laboratory as well as other laboratories, are discussed in brief.