Territorial organization of Germany

Germany is a federal republic made up of sixteen federal states, called Länder (sing. Land, 'State' in German) or, informal, Bundesländer (sing. Bundesland, 'federated state'). There are, in turn, other levels of administration, such as administrative regions (sing. Regierungsbezirk), districts (sing. Kreis) at an intermediate level and municipalities (sing.. Gemeinde) at the local level.

Land (Bundesländer)

Lower Saxony

Bremen

Hamburg

Mecklenburg-West Pomerania

Saxony-Anhalt

Saxony

Brandenburg

Berlin

Turingia

Hesse

North Rhine-Westphalia

Renania-Palatinado

Bavaria

Baden-Wurtemberg

Sarre

Schleswig-Holstein

Switzerland

Austria

Czech Republic

Poland

France

Countries

Bélgi-ca

Denmark

The Länder are original subjects of international law with their own state personality, although in general they only exercise it among themselves and are represented abroad by the federal State (Bund). "The constitutional order of the Länder must respond to the principles of the republican, democratic and social rule of law" (art 28.1 GG [Grundgesetz], German Constitution). Thus, each of the sixteen states The federated states have their own government and parliament (the Landtag), which is elected every four or five years, depending on the case.

At the federal level, the governments of each state are represented in the Federal Council (Bundesrat), to which the German Constitution attributes the competence to hear the initiatives of the Federation when they affect the states federated. Unlike the Spanish system of autonomous communities, all the German federal states have the same powers and competences. Articles 70 to 74 of the German Constitution define the areas of competence that belong to the federal state and those that incumbent on the federated states.

Although the name Land applies generally to the sixteen federal states, there are three that officially use the designation Freistaat, 'free state& #39; (Bavaria, Saxony, Thuringia) and three other Stadt-Staat, 'city-states' (Berlin) or Freie (und) Hansestadt, 'free (and) Hanseatic city' (Bremen and Hamburg). All but the last three are called Flächenländer, 'surface states'.

Throughout the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, the federal state tended to assume more and more powers, while admitting a greater participation of the federal state governments through the Bundesrat. However, this caused greater complexity in the legislative system and prevented quick decisions, even leading to a virtual legislative deadlock whenever the opposition party in the lower house of the German Parliament (Bundestag) achieved a majority. of seats in the Bundesrat. In 2006, the so-called "Federalism Reform" was addressed through a constitutional reform and other minor legislative changes to rearrange the powers of the federal State and the federated states, reducing the powers of the Bundesrat and increasing the powers genuine regional governments.

Administrative Regions (Regierungsbezirk)

Map of Germany with the names of the administrative regions (Regierungsbezirke) in German

A Regierungsbezirk (usually translated as administrative region) is a governmental-administrative region of Germany, a subdivision of some federal states (Länder). The Regierungsbezirke are at the same time divided into districts (Kreise) which can be urban or rural (Landkreise). The Regierungsbezirk is governed by a Bezirksregierung headed by the Regierungspräsident.

Not all Bundesländer (federated states) have this subdivision; some are divided directly into districts (Kreise). Currently, five states are divided into 22 Regierungsbezirke, with a population ranging from 5,255,000 in the Düsseldorf region to 1,065,000 in the Gießen region:

Baden-Wurtemberg: Fribourg, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Tubinga

Bavaria: Upper Bavaria, Baja Bavaria, Alta Franconia, Franconia Central, Baja Franconia, Alto Palatinado, Suabia

Hesse: Darmstadt, Gießen, Kassel

North Rhine-Westphalia: Arnsberg, Cologne, Detmold, Düsseldorf, Münster

Saxony: Chemnitz, Dresden, Leipzig

Districts (Kreis)

The 401 districts of Germany. Rural districts are shown in light yellow and urban areas in dark yellow.

There are 439 districts (Kreise) in Germany, administrative units of Germany (literally 'circles'). The districts are in an intermediate level between the Länder (federated states) and the municipalities. Most of the districts (295) are rural (Landkreise). Cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants (or less, in some states) do not belong to any rural district, but assume such responsibilities themselves by forming an urban district (Stadtkreise). They are also called 'districtless cities' (Kreisfreie Städte). In 2011 there were 107 urban districts, forming together with the rural ones a total of 402 districts. In North Rhine-Westphalia there are some cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants that do not form urban districts, such as Iserlohn, Recklinghausen, Siegen, Paderborn, Bergisch Gladbach, Witten or Neuss.

• List of German urban districts
• List of German rural districts

Other supra-municipal administrations

There may be other intermediate administrations between the municipalities and the federated states, whether the districts exist or not.

• Municipal Special Type Union (Kommunalverband besonderer Art). It arises by the union of a rural district and an unregistered city and leads to think of the concept of 'regional district'. This type of organization in Germany are:

Region Hanover (since 1 November 2001)

Regionalverband Saarbrücken (since 1 January 2008)

Städteregion Aachen (since 21 October 2009)

• Community (Landschaftsverband). It is a form of municipal union that occurs in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. The communities in these states are:

• North Rhine-Westphalia: RenaniaLandschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR)and Westfalia-Lippe (Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL)).
• Landschafts.

Municipalities (Gemeinde)

In the administrative structure of the Federal Republic of Germany, municipalities (sing. Gemeinde) are the lowest rung; they are all part of a higher level of administration, be it district (Kreis), state (Land) or federal (Bund) level.. They can also encompass one of those levels, as is the case with non-attached cities or urban districts (Kreisfreien Städten/Stadtkreisen) and city-states (Stadtstaaten, viz.: Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg).

Municipalities administer the programs authorized by the federal or state government, especially related to youth, schools, public health and social assistance, but they are also designated in the German Constitution as the territorial political entities in charge of «regulating under their own responsibility, within the framework of the laws, for all matters of the local community" (Art. 28 (2) [GG]), which allows them to act in a wide range of activities. The funds that allow the promotion of such tasks come mainly from higher levels of the administration, rather than from taxes established and collected by themselves, with municipal parliaments and political leaders constituting the formal bodies for their development. The local executive is led by a mayor who is elected by the municipal parliament itself or directly by the voters, depending on the federal state.

Historically, the organization of the municipal regime had been the responsibility of the federated states, however during the period of the Weimar Republic it became a federal competence under the rule called Deutsche Gemeindeordnung which was later modified by the Nazi regime to adapt it to his political and legal philosophy. With the promulgation of the German Constitution in 1949, after the Second World War, the powers of the management of the municipal regime passed back to the federated states (Art. 77 [GG]), there being a single rule (Gemeindeordnung ) for each federated state that unifies the basic and specific rules of each type of local administration. A special case are the city-states of Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen, since being administrations equivalent to the federated states have their own rules, Bremen also allows the municipality of Bremerhaven to have its own.

After the phase of formation of modern municipalities, at the beginning of the XIX century, various unions of municipalities, especially due to the great growth of industrial cities that have been incorporating neighboring municipalities. In the pre-reunification Federal Republic of Germany (1949-1990), mostly in the first half of the 1970s, mergers of municipalities took place under so-called «territory reform» (Gebietsreform), many times contrary to the will of the administrations involved. In the federal states that belonged to the German Democratic Republic, a similar merger process has taken place since reunification in 1990, while in the other federal states mergers after the 1970s have been very few, and the mostly due to economic reasons (for example the connection of Tennenbronn to Schramberg on May 1, 2006, being the first case of modification of the municipal map in Baden-Württemberg since 1977).

Unincorporated Areas (Gemeindefreies Gebiet)

In five of the federal states there are unincorporated areas, in many cases they are forested or mountainous areas, although there are also four Bavarian lakes that are not part of any municipality. The incorporated areas may administratively belong either to the federal state in which they are located or to the federal administration, which manages them through the Federal Institute for Real Estate (Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben). The governing authority is usually located in the rural district administration (Landkreis) while the registry office is located in a neighboring municipality. Exceptions are the two inhabited areas in Lower Saxony, with their own government, and the two in Schleswig-Holstein, for which there are common offices (Ämter), to which the areas belong.

As of January 1, 2005, there were 246 such areas, with a total area of 4,167.66 km², which is 1.2% of the total area of Germany. At the beginning of 2010 only three of these areas were inhabited, with a total population of 1,710 (Osterheide and Lohheide in Lower Saxony and Gutsbezirk Münsingen in Baden-Württemberg). As time goes by, the figures for these areas decrease as they are being fully or partially incorporated into neighboring municipalities. The following table shows the evolution of unincorporated areas from 2000 to 2005: