Lower Saxony

With an area of 47,600 km² and nearly 7.9 million inhabitants, Lower Saxony (German Niedersachsen) lies in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the country's sixteen Bundesländer (federal states).

File:Niedersachsen flag.jpg flag of Lower Saxony

Geography

Lower Saxony borders on (from north and clockwise) the North Sea, the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, and the kingdom of the Netherlands. The state of Bremen is enclosed by Lower Saxony. The state's principal cities include Hanover, Brunswick, Osnabrück, Oldenburg and Göttingen.

The northwestern portion of Lower Saxony is a part of Frisia; it is called Ostfriesland (Eastern Frisia) and lies at the coast of the North Sea. It includes seven islands, known as the East Frisian Islands. In the southwest of Lower Saxony there is the Emsland, a sparsely populated area, which was once full of unaccessible swamps. The northern half of Lower Saxony is absolutely plain, but there are two mountain chains in the south: the Weserbergland ("Weser Hilly Region") and the Harz. The middle of the state houses the largest cities and the economic centres: Hanover, Hildesheim, Wolfsburg, Salzgitter and Brunswick. The region in the northeast is called Lüneburger Heide (Lüneburg Heath), the largest heath of Germany and in medieval times wealthy due to the salt trade. To the north the Elbe river separates Lower Saxony from Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. The lands on the southern banks are called Altes Land (literally "Old Land"), and they are characterised by thousands of fruit-trees.

Lower Saxony is divided into 38 Kreise (districts):

File:Niedersachsen.jpg
Ammerland Aurich Bentheim Celle Cloppenburg Cuxhaven Diepholz Emsland Friesland Gifhorn Goslar Göttingen Hamelin-Pyrmont (Hameln-Pyrmont)	Hanover (Hannover) Harburg Helmstedt Hildesheim Holzminden Leer Lüchow-Dannenberg Lüneburg Nienburg Northeim Oldenburg Osnabrück Osterholz	Osterode Peine Rotenburg Schaumburg Soltau-Fallingbostel Stade Uelzen Vechta Verden Wesermarsch Wittmund Wolfenbüttel

Furthermore there are nine independent towns, which don't belong to any district:

The districts are grouped into four Regierungsbezirke:

History

The area is named for the Saxons, who moved there from what is today the neighbouring state of Schleswig-Holstein towards the middle of the 1st millennium AD.

The state was founded in 1946 by the British military administration by merging the former states of Brunswick, Oldenburg, Schaumburg-Lippe and Hanover.

External link

For the state's own website, see http://www.niedersachsen.de/