The Federal States : Germany

The Federal Republic of Germany consists of 16 states known as “Lander” (capitals in parentheses): Baden-Wurttemberg (Stuttgart), Bavaria (Munich), Brandenburg (Potsdam), Hesse (Wiesbaden), Lower Saxony (Hanover), Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Schwerin), North Rhine-Westphalia (Dusseldorf), Rhineland-Palatinate (Mainz), Saarland (Saarbrucken), Saxony (Dresden), Saxony-An halt (Magdeburg), Schleswig-Holstein (Kiel) and Thuringia (Erfurt). Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg are city-states.

Germany has always been divided into slates, but the map has changed its shape over the centuries. The most important changes in the modern age resulted from the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the 1 9th century, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the First World War and the Second World War. After ihe latter Germany was divided, and the country’s largest state, Prussia, was dissolved. Most of the federal states as we know them today were established after 1945, but they have largely retained their ethnic traditions and characteristics and some of the old boundaries.

Until Germany was reunited in 1990, the Federal Republic consisted of eleven states which had been created in the former Western occupation zones and had adopted democratic constitutions between 1946 and 1957.

In the Soviet-occupied zone, which later became the German Democratic Republic (GDR), five states were likewise formed, but these were soon replaced by a centralized administration. After the first free election in the former GDR on 1 8 March 1990, five new federal states were created with boundaries largely conforming to those of the period prior to 1952. On 3 October 1990 the German Democratic Republic, and hence the states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, acceded to the Federal Republic of Germany. At the same time, Berlin (East) was merged with Berlin (West).