Aachen is the 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and the 27th-largest city of Germany, with around 261,000 inhabitants.
Bonn is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. It has a population of over 300,000. About 24 km (15 mi) south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region, Germany's largest metropolitan area and the second biggest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union, with over 11 million inhabitants. The city served as the capital of West Germany from its formation in 1949 until 1990 and as the capital of reunited Germany from 1990 until 1999 when the seat of government was moved back to Berlin. Bonn is the birthplace of Germany's present day constitution, the Basic Law.
Brandenburg, officially the State of Brandenburg, is a state in northeastern Germany. Brandenburg borders Poland and the states of Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. It is the fifth-largest German state by area and the tenth-most populous, with 2.5 million residents. Potsdam is the state capital and largest city, and other major towns are Cottbus, Brandenburg an der Havel and Frankfurt (Oder).
German Unity Day is the National Day of Germany, celebrated on 3 October as a public holiday. It commemorates German reunification in 1990 when the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany, so that for the first time since 1945 there existed a single German state. German Unity Day on 3 October has been the German National Holiday since 1990, when the reunification was formally completed.
Reich is a German word whose meaning is analogous to the English word "realm"; this is not to be confused with the German adjective "reich" which means "rich". The terms Kaiserreich and Königreich are respectively used in German in reference to empires and kingdoms. The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary indicates that in English usage, the term "Third Reich" refers to "Germany during the period of Nazi control from 1933 to 1945".
West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany from its formation on 23 May 1949 until its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republic after its capital city of Bonn. During the Cold War, the western portion of Germany and the associated territory of West Berlin were parts of the Western Bloc. West Germany was formed as a political entity during the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, established from 12 states formed in the three Allied zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.
The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany is the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The seat of government is "the building, complex of buildings or the city from which a government exercises its authority".
The Reichstag, a historic legislative government building on Platz der Republik in Berlin, is the seat of the German Bundestag. It is also the meeting place of the Federal Convention, which elects the President of Germany.
German Reich was the constitutional name for the German nation state that existed from 18 January 1871 to 5 June 1945. The Reich became understood as deriving its authority and sovereignty entirely from a continuing unitary German Volk, with that authority and sovereignty being exercised at any one time over a unitary German "state territory" with variable boundaries and extent. Although commonly translated as "German Empire", the word Reich here better translates as "realm" or territorial "reach", in that the term does not in itself have monarchical connotations.
A Landtag is generally the legislative assembly or parliament of a federated state or other subnational self-governing entity in German-speaking nations. It is usually a unicameral assembly exercising legislative competence in non-federal matters.
The coat of arms of Germany displays a black eagle with a red beak, a red tongue and red feet on a golden field, which is blazoned: Or, an eagle displayed sable beaked langued and membered gules. This is the Bundesadler, formerly known as Reichsadler. It is one of the oldest coats of arms in the world, and today the oldest national symbol used in Europe.
The Provinces of Prussia were the main administrative divisions of Prussia from 1815 to 1946. Prussia's province system was introduced in the Stein-Hardenberg Reforms in 1815, and were mostly organized from duchies and historical regions. Provinces were divided into several Regierungsbezirke, sub-divided into Kreise (districts), and then into Gemeinden (townships) at the lowest level. Provinces constituted the highest level of administration in the Kingdom of Prussia and Free State of Prussia until 1933, when Nazi Germany established de facto direct rule over provincial politics, and were formally abolished in 1946 following World War II. The Prussian provinces became the basis for many federal states of Germany, and the states of Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein are direct successors of provinces.
The Federal Ministry of Defence, abbreviated BMVg, is a top-level federal agency, headed by the Federal Minister of Defence as a member of the Cabinet of Germany. The ministry is headquartered at the Hardthöhe district in Bonn and has a second office in the Bendlerblock building in Berlin, which is occasionally used as a metonym to denote the entire Ministry.
The Free State of Prussia was one of the constituent states of Germany from 1918 to 1947. The successor to the Kingdom of Prussia after the defeat of the German Empire in World War I, it continued to be the dominant state in Germany during the Weimar Republic, as it had been during the empire, even though most of Germany's post-war territorial losses in Europe had come from its lands. It was home to the federal capital Berlin and had 62% of Germany's territory and 61% of its population. Prussia changed from the authoritarian state it had been in the past and became a parliamentary democracy under its 1920 constitution. During the Weimar period it was governed almost entirely by pro-democratic parties and proved more politically stable than the Republic itself. With only brief interruptions, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) provided the Minister President. Its Ministers of the Interior, also from the SPD, pushed republican reform of the administration and police, with the result that Prussia was considered a bulwark of democracy within the Weimar Republic.
The Embassy of the United States of America in Berlin is the diplomatic mission of the United States of America in the Federal Republic of Germany. It started in 1797, with the appointment of John Quincy Adams to Berlin, the capital of Prussia. There was no permanent building for the embassy until 1930, with the purchase of the Blücher Palace. During the United States involvement in World War II, the embassy ceased operations.
The Federal Convention was the only general joint institution of the German Confederation from 1815 until 1848, and from 1851 until 1866. The Federal Convention had its seat in the Palais Thurn und Taxis in Frankfurt. It was organized as a permanent congress of envoys of the member states.
The Apostolic Nunciature to Germany is an ecclesiastical office of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. It is a diplomatic post of the Holy See, whose representative is called the Apostolic Nuncio to Germany with the rank of an ambassador. The office of the nunciature has been located in Berlin since 1925, in union with the new Apostolic Nuncio to Prussia until 1934. Between 1920 and 1925 the nunciature was held in personal union by the Apostolic Nuncio to Bavaria, seated in Munich. With the unconditional surrender of Germany in 1945 the diplomatic ties were interrupted and reestablished for West Germany only in 1951, then in Bonn. In 2001 the nunciature moved again to Berlin.
The "German question" was a debate in the 19th century, especially during the Revolutions of 1848, over the best way to achieve a unification of all or most lands inhabited by Germans. From 1815 to 1866, about 37 independent German-speaking states existed within the German Confederation. The Großdeutsche Lösung favored unifying all German-speaking peoples under one state, and was promoted by the Austrian Empire and its supporters. The Kleindeutsche Lösung sought to unify only the northern German states and did not include any part of Austria ; this proposal was favored by the Kingdom of Prussia.
The capital decision was made by the German Bundestag on 20 June 1991, as a result of German reunification, to move its headquarters from Bonn to Berlin. The term is misleading, since Berlin had already become the federal capital of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990 as one of the stipulations of the Unification Treaty.
