Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a federal state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of 70,550.19 square kilometres (27,239.58 sq mi), Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total land area of Germany. With over 13 million inhabitants, it is second in population only to North Rhine-Westphalia, but due to its large size its population density is below the German average. Bavaria's main cities are Munich, Nuremberg, and Augsburg.
The Palatinate is a historical region of Germany (Deutschland). In the Middle Ages it was known as the Rhenish Palatinate (Rheinpfalz) and Lower Palatinate (Unterpfalz), which strictly speaking designated only the western part of the Electorate of the Palatinate, as opposed to the Upper Palatinate (Oberpfalz). It occupies roughly the southernmost quarter of the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz), covering an area of 2,105 square miles (5,450 km2) with about 1.4 million inhabitants. Its residents are known as Palatines (Pfälzer).
Swabia is one of the seven administrative regions of Bavaria, Germany.
Bavarian is a West Germanic language variety variously described as a dialect of German or as a language in its own right, spoken in parts of Bavaria and most of Austria. Before 1945, Bavarian was also prevalent in parts of the southern Czech Republic and western Hungary. Bavarian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants. Its mutual intelligibility with Standard German is very limited, but most of its speakers can code-switch to Standard German.
Upper Bavaria is one of the seven administrative districts of Bavaria, Germany.
Lower Bavaria is one of the seven administrative regions of Bavaria, Germany, located in the east of the state.
The Upper Palatinate is one of the seven administrative districts of Bavaria, Germany, and is located in the east of Bavaria.
The Iller is a river of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg in Germany. It is a right tributary of the Danube, 146 kilometres (91 mi) long.
Altötting is a Landkreis (district) in Bavaria, Germany. It is bounded by Austria and the Bavarian districts of Traunstein, Mühldorf and Rottal-Inn.
The Regen is a river in Bavaria, Germany, and a left tributary of the Danube, at Regensburg, Germany. The source of its main headstream, the Great Regen, is in the Bohemian Forest on the territory of the Czech Republic, near Železná Ruda. The river crosses the border after a few kilometres, at Bayerisch Eisenstein. The name in German evolved from the name in Latin, but its meaning is unknown. The Romans called the river variously Regana, Reganus (masculine), and Reganum (neuter).
Freyung-Grafenau is a Landkreis (district) in Bavaria, Germany. It is bounded by the districts of Passau, Deggendorf and Regen, the Czech Republic and by Austria.
The Bavarian Alps is a collective name for several mountain ranges of the Northern Limestone Alps within the German state of Bavaria.
Bavarians are an ethnographic group of Germans of the Bavaria region, a state within Germany. The group's dialect or speech is known as the Bavarian language, native to Altbayern, roughly the territory of the Electorate of Bavaria in the 17th century.
Central Bavarian form a subgroup of Bavarian dialects in large parts of Austria and the German state of Bavaria along the Danube river, on the northern side of the Eastern Alps. They are spoken in the 'Old Bavarian' regions of Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria and in the adjacent parts of the Upper Palatinate region around Regensburg, in Upper and Lower Austria, in Vienna, in the state of Salzburg, as well as in the northern and eastern parts of Styria and Burgenland.
The Duchy of Bavaria was a frontier region in the southeastern part of the Merovingian kingdom from the sixth through the eighth century. It was settled by Bavarian tribes and ruled by dukes (duces) under Frankish overlordship. A new duchy was created from this area during the decline of the Carolingian Empire in the late ninth century. It became one of the stem duchies of the East Frankish realm which evolved as the Kingdom of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.
The Kingdom of Bavaria was a German state that succeeded the former Electorate of Bavaria in 1805 and continued to exist until 1918. With the unification of Germany into the German Empire in 1871, the kingdom became a federated state of the new empire and was second in size, power, and wealth only to the leading state, the Kingdom of Prussia.
Southern Germany as a region has no exact boundary but is generally taken to include the areas in which Upper German dialects are spoken. This corresponds roughly to the historical stem duchies of Bavaria and Swabia or, in a modern context, to Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg within the Federal Republic of Germany, to the exclusion of the areas of the modern states of Austria and Switzerland. The Saarland and the southern parts of Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate are sometimes included as well and correspond to the historical Franconia.
The Bavarian State Police is the state police force of the German state of Bavaria under the umbrella of the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior. It has approximately 33,500 armed officers and roughly 8,500 other civilian employees.
The Margraviate of Austria was a medieval frontier march, centered along the river Danube, between the river Enns and the Vienna Woods (Wienerwald), within the territory of modern Austrian provinces of Upper Austria and Lower Austria. It existed from c. 972 to 1156.
The Kahl is a river in the northern Spessart in Bavaria and Hesse, Germany. It is a right tributary of the Main and is 35.6 km (22.1 mi) long. The name Kahl comes from the Old High German word kaldaha, which means cool and clear. The Kahl rises from two sources left and right of the road at the foot of the Spessart hills, near Kleinkahl. These springs produce 50–60 litres per second. The Kahl flows into the river Main in Kahl am Main. The mouth is near the old Kahl Nuclear Power Plant. The largest tributaries are Westerbach, Sommerkahl, Reichenbach and Geiselbach.
