Lower Saxony

Flag

Coat of arms
Statistics
Capital:	Hanover
Area:	47,618 km²
Inhabitants:	8,002,916 September 30, 2004
pop. density:	168 inh./km²
Website:	niedersachsen.de
ISO 3166-2:	DE-NI
Politics
Minister-president:	Christian Wulff (CDU)
Ruling party:	CDU/FDP
Map

With an area of 47,618 km² and nearly eight 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) of Germany. In rural areas Low German is still spoken, but the number of speakers is declining.

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 forms two enclaves 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 Frisia; it is called Ostfriesland (East Frisia) and lies on the coast of the North Sea. It includes seven islands, known as the East Frisian Islands. In the southwest of Lower Saxony is the Emsland, a sparsely populated area, once full of inaccessible swamps. The northern half of Lower Saxony is absolutely flat, 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 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.

Lower Saxony is divided into 38 districts (Landkreise or simply Kreise):

Furthermore there are eight independent cities, which do not belong to any district:

History

The area is named for the Saxons. The Saxons lived in today's state of Schleswig-Holstein and merged with the Chauci on the left bank of the river Elbe until the middle of the 1st millennium AD. They then expanded over the whole of today's Lower Saxony and further. Originally the region was simply called Saxony, 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 Prussian 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 (Regierungsbezirke):

Braunschweig (Brunswick)
Hannover (Hanover)
Lüneburg
Weser-Ems

Coat of arms

The coat of arms shows a white horse (Sachsenross) on red ground, which is an old symbol of the Saxon people.

Politics

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.

February 2, 2003 state elections

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).

Party	Party List votes	Vote percentage	Total Seats	Seat percentage
Christian Democratic Union (CDU)	1,925,055	48.3% (+12.4)	91 (+29)	49.7%
Social Democratic Party (SPD)	1,330,156	33.4% (-14.5)	63 (-20)	34.4%
Alliance '90/The Greens	304,532	7.6% (+0.6)	14 (+2)	7.7%
Free Democratic Party (FDP)	323,107	8.1% (+3.2)	15 (+15)	8.2%
Law and Order Offensive Party	40,342	1.0% (+1.0)	0 (=)	0.0%
All Others	60,817	1.5% (-2.7)	0 (=)	0.0%
Totals	3,984,009	100.0%	183 (+26)	100.0%

List of minister presidents of Lower Saxony

External links

Official governmental portal
www.niedersachsen-tourism.com - Official website for tourism, holiday and leisure in Lower Saxony
www.niedersachsen-karte.de - Interactive map with tourist highlights, notepad and personal guide

Lower Saxony | States of Germany | NUTS 1 Statistical Regions of Europe