Rhineland-Palatinate is a western state of Germany. It covers 19,846 km2 (7,663 sq mi) and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Koblenz, Trier, Kaiserslautern, Worms and Neuwied. It is bordered by North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Baden-Württemberg and Hesse and by France, Luxembourg and Belgium.
The Electoral Palatinate or the Palatinate, officially the Electorate of the Palatinate, was a constituent state of the Holy Roman Empire. The electorate had its origins under the rulership of the Counts Palatine of Lotharingia in 915; it was then restructured under the Counts Palatine of the Rhine in 1085. From 1214 until the Electoral Palatinate was merged into the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1805, the House of Wittelsbach provided the Counts Palatine or Electors. These counts palatine of the Rhine would serve as prince-electors from "time immemorial", and were noted as such in a papal letter of 1261; they were confirmed as electors by the Golden Bull of 1356.
The Palatinate, or the Rhenish Palatinate (Rheinpfalz), is a historical region of Germany. Palatinate occupies most of the southern 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).
The Rhineland is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section.
Edgar Julius Jung was a German lawyer born in Ludwigshafen in the Kingdom of Bavaria. He was a leader of the conservative revolutionary movement in Germany which stood not only in opposition to the Weimar Republic, whose parliamentarian system he considered decadent and foreign-imposed, but also opposed National Socialism. Jung was murdered in the 1934 Night of the Long Knives purge.
The Cisrhenian Republic was a planned client state during the French Revolutionary Wars in 1797 on the Left Bank of the Rhine under occupation by France, where the Coup of 18 Fructidor caused a decision to annex the area instead.
Neustadt an der Weinstraße is a town in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. With 53,300 inhabitants as of 2020, it is the largest town called Neustadt.
Pirmasens is an independent town in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, near the border with France. It was famous for the manufacture of shoes. The surrounding rural district was called Landkreis Pirmasens from 1818 until 1997, when it was renamed to Südwestpfalz.
Germersheim is a town in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, of around 20,000 inhabitants. It is also the seat of the Germersheim district. The neighboring towns and cities are Speyer, Landau, Philippsburg, Karlsruhe and Wörth.
Kurt Beck is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), who served as the 7th Minister President of Rhineland-Palatinate from 1994 to 2013 and as the 55th President of the Bundesrat in 2000–01. In May 2006, he succeeded Matthias Platzeck as chairman of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). He resigned from that post in September 2008.
The Republic of Mainz was the first democratic state in the current German territory and was centered in Mainz. A product of the French Revolutionary Wars, it lasted from March to July 1793.
Deidesheim is a town in the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany with some 3,700 inhabitants.
Schifferstadt is a town in the Rhein-Pfalz-Kreis, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. If not including Ludwigshafen, Schifferstadt is the only urban municipality in the Rhein-Pfalz-Kreis.
The Deutschhaus or Deutschordenskommende is a historical building in Mainz, western Germany, which is the seat of the Rhineland-Palatinate Landtag.
The Rhenish Republic was proclaimed at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) in October 1923 during the occupation of the Ruhr by troops from France and Belgium and subjected itself to French protectorate. It comprised three territories, named North, South and Ruhr. Their regional capitals were, respectively, Aachen, Koblenz and Essen.
The Occupation of the Rhineland placed the region of Germany west of the Rhine river and four bridgeheads to its east under the control of the victorious Allies of World War I from 1 December 1918 until 30 June 1930. The occupation was imposed and regulated by articles in the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the Treaty of Versailles and the parallel agreement on the Rhineland occupation signed at the same time as the Versailles Treaty. The Rhineland was demilitarised, as was an area stretching fifty kilometres east of the Rhine, and put under the control of the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission, which was led by a French commissioner and had one member each from Belgium, Great Britain and the United States. The purpose of the occupation was to give France and Belgium security against any future German attack and serve as a guarantee for Germany's reparations obligations. After Germany fell behind on its payments in 1922, the occupation was expanded to include the industrial Ruhr valley from 1923 to 1925.
Josef Friedrich Matthes was head of the short lived Rhenish Republic.
Hans Adam Dorten was a German career lawyer who in 1919 became a separatist leader in the militarily occupied Rhineland, following German defeat in the First World War.
The Viking League was a German political and paramilitary organization in existence from 1923 to 1928. It was founded on 2 May 1923 in Munich by members of the banned Organisation Consul as the successor to this group.
