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Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony "Niedersachsen" lies in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the country's sixteen Federal States "Bundesländer" of Germany. In rural areas Low German is still spoken, but the number is declining. Lower Saxony, from north and clockwise, borders on the North Sea, the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Hessen and North Rhine-Westphalia, and the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
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The area is named for the Saxons who lived in what today is called 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.
Hanover Hanover is located on the river Leine and is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is also a part of the Hanover district which is a municipal body made up from the former district and city of Hanover. The town was founded in medieval times and was a small village of ferrymen and fishermen, which became a comparatively large town in the 13th century. In the 14th century the main churches of Hanover were built, as well as a city wall with three town gates to secure the city. In 1636 the Duke of Calenberg decided to move his residence to Hanover. His duchy was afterwards known as the Duchy of Hanover. His descendants would later become kings of Great Britain, the first of them was George I, who ascended to the British throne in 1714. Three kings of Great Britain or the United Kingdom were at the same time Electoral Princes of Hanover. During the Seven Years' War on July 26, 1757 the Battle of Hastenbeck took place. The French army defeated the Hanoverian Army of Observation, leading to the occupation of Hanover. After Napoleon imposed the Convention of Artlenburg on July 5, 1803 about 30,000 French soldiers occupied Hanover. The convention also meant the disbanding of the army of Hanover. George III did not recognize the Convention of the Elbe and made an effort to recruit foreign troops. As a result a great number of soldiers of Hanover eventually emigrated to England leading to the King's German Legion which later played an important role in the Battle of Waterloo. At the Congress of Vienna in 1814 George III elevated the electorate to the Kingdom of Hanover and the capital town Hanover expanded to the western bank. It was an independent kingdom from 1814 to 1866. Hanover was originally called the Principality of Calenberg, which was a subdivision of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg. In 1837 the personal union of the United Kingdom and Hanover ended as William IV's heir in the United Kingdom was female, later to be known as Queen Victoria, and Hanover could be inherited only by males. Hanover passed to William IV's brother, Ernest Augustus, and continued as a kingdom until 1866, when it was annexed by Prussia. After the annexation, even though the people of Hanover opposed the Prussian regime the growth of Hanover continued until World War II, when two thirds of the town was bombed to ruins. After the war, Hanover was in the British zone of occupation of Germany, and became part of the new länder of Lower Saxony in 1946. 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 known as "Regierungsbezirke":
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