North Rhine-Westphalia or North-Rhine/Westphalia, commonly shortened to NRW, is a state (Land) in Western Germany. With more than 18 million inhabitants, it is the most populous state in Germany. Apart from the city-states, it is also the most densely populated state in Germany. Covering an area of 34,084 square kilometres (13,160 sq mi), it is the fourth-largest German state by size.
The Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region is the largest metropolitan region in Germany, with over ten million inhabitants. A polycentric conurbation with several major urban concentrations, the region covers an area of 7,110 square kilometres (2,750 sq mi), entirely within the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region spreads from the Ruhr area (Dortmund-Bochum-Essen-Duisburg) in the north to the urban areas of the cities of Mönchengladbach, Düsseldorf, Wuppertal, Leverkusen, Cologne, and Bonn in the south. The location of the Rhine-Ruhr at the heart of the European Blue Banana makes it well connected to other major European cities and metropolitan areas such as the Randstad, the Flemish Diamond and the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is Germany's federal domestic intelligence agency. Together with the Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz (LfV) at the state level, the federal agency is tasked with intelligence-gathering on efforts against the liberal democratic basic order, the existence and security of the federation or one of its states, and the peaceful coexistence of peoples; with counter-intelligence; and with protective security and counter-sabotage. The BfV reports to the Federal Ministry of the Interior and tasks and powers are regulated in the Bundesverfassungsschutzgesetz. The President is Thomas Haldenwang; he was appointed in 2018.
Norbert Blüm was a German politician who served as a federal legislator from North Rhine-Westphalia, chairman of the CDU North Rhine-Westphalia (1987–1999), and Minister of Labour and Social Affairs.
Die Partei für Arbeit, Rechtsstaat, Tierschutz, Elitenförderung und basisdemokratische Initiative, or Die PARTEI, is a German political party. It was founded in 2004 by the editors of the German satirical magazine Titanic. It is led by Martin Sonneborn. In the 2014 European Parliament election, the party won a seat, marking the first time that a satirical party has won a seat to the European Parliament. With the 2019 European Parliament election, the party gained a second seat, held by Nico Semsrott.
The Artgemeinschaft Germanic Faith Community was a German Neopagan and neo-Nazi organization founded in 1951 by Wilhelm Kusserow, a former member of the SS. In 1983, it merged with the Nordungen. From 1989 to 2009, it was headed by Jürgen Rieger. In September 2023, the Federal Ministry of the Interior banned the Association.
konkret has been the name of two German magazines.
The Junge Freiheit is a German weekly newspaper on politics and culture that was established in 1986. Junge Freiheit is politically conservative, right-wing, nationalistic and described as the "ideological supply ship of right-wing populism" in Germany.
Data retention defines the policies of persistent data and records management for meeting legal and business data archival requirements. Although sometimes interchangeable, it is not to be confused with the Data Protection Act 1998.
The bilateral relations between Germany and the United Kingdom span hundreds of years, and the countries have been aligned since the end of World War II.
The State Criminal Police Office, or Landeskriminalamt in German, is an independent law enforcement agency in all 16 German states that is directly subordinate to the state's ministry of the interior.
The Left, commonly referred to as the Left Party, is a democratic socialist political party in Germany. The party was founded in 2007 as the result of the merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative. Through the PDS, the party is the direct descendant of the Marxist–Leninist ruling party of former East Germany, that being the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). Since 2022, The Left's co-chairpersons have been Janine Wissler and Martin Schirdewan. The party holds 28 seats out of 736 in the Bundestag, the federal legislature of Germany, having won 4.9% of votes cast in the 2021 German federal election. Its parliamentary group is the smallest of six in the Bundestag, and is headed by parliamentary co-leaders Heidi Reichinnek and Sören Pellmann.
The far-right in Germany slowly reorganised itself after the fall of Nazi Germany and the dissolution of the Nazi Party in 1945. Denazification was carried out in Germany from 1945 to 1949 by the Allied forces of World War II, with an attempt of eliminating Nazism from the country. However, various far-right parties emerged in the post-war period, with varying success. Most parties only lasted a few years before either dissolving or being banned, and explicitly far-right parties have never gained seats in the Bundestag post-WWII.
Germany is a country in Central and Western Europe that stretches from the Alps, across the North European Plain to the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. It is the second-most populous country in Europe after Russia, and is seventh-largest country by area in the continent. The area of Germany ranked 63rd and covers 357,021 km2 (137,847 sq mi), consisting of 349,223 km2 (134,836 sq mi) of land and 7,798 km2 (3,011 sq mi) of waters, smaller than Japan but larger than Republic of the Congo.
The old states of Germany is a jargon referring to the ten of the sixteen states of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) that were part of West Germany and that unified with the eastern German Democratic Republic's 5 states, which are given the contrasting term new states of Germany. Usage of this terminology usually excludes one other state, Berlin, conterminous with the capital city of the reunified nation which used to be divided, with its western part linked with West Germany.
The Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists (VVN-BdA) is a German political confederation founded in 1947 and based in Berlin. The VVN-BdA, formerly the VVN, emerged from victims' associations in Germany founded by political opponents to Nazism after the Second World War and the end of the Nazi rule in Germany.
The Pro Germany Citizens' Movement was a far-right political party in Germany. It was founded in Cologne on 20 January 2005 after Pro Cologne members had been elected to the Cologne City Council. Manfred Rouhs, treasurer of the Pro Cologne movement and former candidate of the German League for People and Homeland and the National Democratic Party of Germany, was elected its first chairman. The federal party convent decided at its ninth ordinary meeting in Wuppertal on 11 November 2017 to dissolve the party.
Bernd Lucke is a German economist, professor, author and former politician. He was a co-founder of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in 2013 and served as the party's federal chairman. He was elected a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for AfD in 2014.
The Left of North Rhine-Westphalia is the chapter of the Left Party in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Young Alternative for Germany is a right-wing extremist youth organisation in Germany. Founded on 15 June 2013 in Darmstadt for people aged 14 to 35 years, the JA presents itself as the youth wing of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, but remains legally independent. It has been categorized as a confirmed extremist organization by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) since 2023.
