Stone Witnesses to Power : Germany

At the turn of the 10th century Hildesheim (1 06,000 inhabitants) was the center of theOttoman Empire; in the 12th century Bardowick was the most important hub of trade between East and West. Brunswick grew to become one of the four major metropolises of the Late Middle Ages. At the end of the 1 6th century Emden boasted more ships than any other port in Europe; in the 18th century Claus-thal-Zellerfeld in the Harz Mountains was one of the world’s principal industrial centers. Stone witnesses to the past are everywhere: The 900-year-old church in Idesen is considered the most outstanding ecclesiastical structure of its time in Germany.

The world’s largest medieval library, where Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz worked, is located in Wolfenbuttel; Goslar, with its magnificent old townscape, is the site of the Kaiserpfalz, Germany’s largest medieval secular building. Brunswick’s Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum is the oldest art museum on the European continent. Celle is the home of Germany’s oldest theater in which performances are still staged. Notable collections of modern art can be found in the Art Gallery in Emden and the Sprengel Museum of Modern Art in Hanover, whereas Hildesheim’s Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum has a fine collection of Egyptian antiquities. Hanover’s “Violinale” is one of the world’s preeminent violin competitions.

Explorers and Inventors, Intellect and Politics : Germany

Diederik Pining of Hildesheim landed in America 19 years before Columbus. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz developed the binary system of numeration in Hanover and built the world’s first functional calculating machine. Carl Friedrich Gauss of Brunswick invented the telegraph, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen of Gottingen the carbon-zinc battery, Werner von Siemens of Lenthe the generation of electricity by means of a dynamo, and Emil Berliner of Hanover the Gramophone.

Karl Jatho completed the first successful powered flight at the Vahrenwalder Heide in Hanover - three months before the Wright brothers’ attempt in the United States. Walter Bruch, also from Hanover, developed the PAL color system for color television. 1961 marked the appearance of the last volume of the “Deutsches Worterbuch", a comprehensive dictionary of the German language begun in 1838 by the brothers Grimm at the University of Gottingen. In 1837 the brothers Grimm and five other professors - the “Gottingen Seven” - had protested against the sovereign’s decision to repeal the constitution. In 1957 the “Gottingen 18″, a group that included the Nobel Prize laureates Max Born, Otto Hahn, Werner Heisenberg and Max von Laue, warned against the dangers of nuclear rearmament.

Home of the “Beetle” : Germany

center of alternative energy produc- tion. Two thirds of the state’s total area is given over
to farming; the food industry produces a wide variety of delicacies . Nevertheless, Lowe Saxony cannot be
Classfied as an agricultural state: In addition to tradi- tional industries such as steel, chemicals and shipbuilding, it now also has thriving electronics and computer industries. The VWBeetle, made in Wolfs-burg, is the most frequently built car in the world; it still rolls off the line in Mexico. Volkswagen AG is the state’s biggest company and has manufactured more than 50 million automobiles in Lower Saxony to date. The Volkswagen Foundation is the largest non-governmental foundation for the promotion of science and scholarship in Germany. Schimmel pianos and Rollei cameras are made in Brunswick (253,000 inhabitants). Brunswick is also the home of the Federal Institute of Physics and Metrology, which determines the exact

Central European Time (CET) per radio signal. Video recorders and CD players are built in Peine and in Osterode. The firm MAN in Salzgitter manufactures trucks; Wilhelmshaven is the only German deepwater port for supertankers. The Transrapid magnetic levi-tation train is currently being tested in Emsland. Hanover, the state capital, is an industrial and service center. Each year the latest developments are presented at the Hanover Fair, the world’s largest industrial fair, and at “CeBIT", the international fair for communications technology. At the turn of the millennium, Hanover will be the venue of the World Exposition EXPO 2000, which will have the theme “Humankind - Nature - Technology". Natural gas from Lower Saxony satisfies one fifth of the Federal Republic’s requirement. Between the Ems and the Elbe rivers, the Lower Saxony Energy Agency is already exploring alternatives for the next millennium: electricity generated by wind power, solar power, landfill gas and animal excrement.

Tidal Mud Flats and Heathland : Germany

Lower Saxony is the second largest state in Germany (47,338 square kilometers). It stretches from the North Sea island of Borkum to [he Harz Mountains; in between lie remote heathland regions, greater metropolitan Hanover (523,000 inhabitants) and the Hildesheimer Borde with the most fertile arable soil in the Federal Republic. Lower Saxony has about 7.8 million inhabitants. They are joined every year by millions of visitors who seek rest and recreation on the seven East Frisian islands of Borkum, Juist, Norderney, Baltrum, Langeoog, Spiekeroog and Wangerooge, in the Harz Mountains, in the Weser Hills, in the Teutoburg Forest or in the Luneburg Heath (Germany’s oldest nature park) or who wish to keep abreast of the latest developments at the world’s two largest trade fairs held in the state capital.

Another popular attraction, especially when the apple orchards are in bloom, is the “Altes Land", Europe’s largest fruit-growing area. Here, just outside the gates of Hamburg, begins the “wet triangle": the lowlands between the mouths of the Weser and Elbe rivers with the tidal jnud fiats known as the “Wattenmeer” (Germany’s largest nature park), the fishing town of Cuxhaven and » artists’ colony of Worpswede. Lower Saxony offers cyclists the most extensive network of biking paths in Germany.