With an area of 47,618 km&
2 and nearly eight million inhabitants, ( and is second in area and fourth in population among the country's sixteen ''
Bundesländer '' (federal states). In rural areas
Low German is still spoken, but the number of speakers is declining.
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 forms two
Enclave s within Lower Saxony. The state's principal cities include
Hanover ,
Braunschweig (Brunswick),
Osnabrück ,
Oldenburg , and
Göttingen .
The northwestern portion of Lower Saxony is a part of ,
Hildesheim ,
Wolfsburg ,
Salzgitter and
Braunschweig . 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, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg. The area on the southern banks is called ''
Altes Land '', and it is characterised by thousands of fruit trees.
See also
List Of Places In Lower Saxony .
Lower Saxony is divided into 38 districts (''Landkreise'' or simply ''Kreise''):
Furthermore there are eight independent cities, which do not belong to any district:
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Braunschweig (Brunswick)
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Delmenhorst
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Emden
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Oldenburg
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Osnabrück
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Salzgitter
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Wilhelmshaven
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Wolfsburg
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. Originally the region was simply called , but as the center of gravity of the
Duchy Of Saxony gradually moved up the Elbe, towards the present-day states of
Saxony-Anhalt and
Saxony , the region was given the name of Lower Saxony, which it bore as an
Imperial Circle Estate from the late
15th Century on.
The state was founded in
1946 by the
British military administration, who merged the former states of
Brunswick-Lüneburg ,
Oldenburg , and
Schaumburg-Lippe with the former
Prussia n province of
Hanover .
After the
Second World War , the military authorities appointed the first Legislative Assembly (''Landtag'') in
1946 , followed by a direct election of Lower Saxony's legislature a year later. It resulted in the election of
Social Democrat leader
Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf , who became the first prime minister. Kopf led a five-party coalition, whose basic task was to rebuild a state affected by the war's rigours. Kopf's cabinet had to organise an improvement of food supplies and the reconstruction of the cities and towns destroyed by the Allied air raids of the war years. In addition, the first state government also faced the challenge of integrating hundreds of thousands of refugees from Germany's former territories in the east (such as
Silesia and
East Prussia ), which had been annexed by
Poland and the
Soviet Union .
Between
1978 and
2004 , the state's districts and independent towns were grouped into four administrative regions (''
Regierungsbezirk e''):
The
Horse in the coat of arms is the horse that the Saxon leader
Widukind rode after his baptism, given to him by
Charlemagne .
The political direction of the State of Lower Saxony has evolved and has been a reflection of its times. In general terms, the political preferences of Lower Saxony's citizens tend to be oriented along the lines of Germany's federal politics. Basically, the parties constituting the federal government could often rely on a state administration sympathetic to its policy aims. Particularly in recent times, however, this rule has given way to a more flexible and, to some extent, volatile attitude amongst voters in one of Germany's most populous states.
''See also:
Lower Saxony State Election, 2003 ''
The SPD vote share fell dramatically, and
Christian Wulff (CDU) was able to form a CDU-FDP coalition and become Prime Minister instead of
Sigmar Gabriel (SPD).
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SPD )
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DP )
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CDU )
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