1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
3.
States of Germany
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Germany is a federal republic consisting of sixteen federal states. Since todays Germany was formed from a collection of several states, it has a federal constitution. The remaining 13 states are called Flächenländer, the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 was through the unification of the western states created in the aftermath of World War II. West Berlin, while not part of the Federal Republic, was largely integrated and considered as a de facto state. In 1952, following a referendum, Baden, Württemberg-Baden, in 1957, the Saar Protectorate rejoined the Federal Republic as the Saarland. Federalism is one of the constitutional principles of Germany. After 1945, new states were constituted in all four zones of occupation, in 1949, the states in the three western zones formed the Federal Republic of Germany. This is in contrast to the development in Austria, where the Bund was constituted first. The use of the term Länder dates back to the Weimar Constitution of 1919, before this time, the constituent states of the German Empire were called Staaten. Today, it is common to use the term Bundesland. However, this term is not used officially, neither by the constitution of 1919 nor by the Basic Law of 1949, three Länder call themselves Freistaaten, Bavaria, Saxony, and Thuringia. He summarizes the arguments for boundary reform in Germany. The German system of dual federalism requires strong Länder that have the administrative and fiscal capacity to implement legislation, too many Länder also make coordination among them and with the federation more complicated. But several proposals have failed so far, territorial reform remains a topic in German politics. Federalism has a tradition in German history. The Holy Roman Empire comprised many petty states numbering more than 300 around 1796, the number of territories was greatly reduced during the Napoleonic Wars. After the Congress of Vienna,39 states formed the German Confederation, the new German Empire included 25 states and the imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine. The empire was dominated by Prussia, which controlled 65% of the territory, after the territorial losses of the Treaty of Versailles, the remaining states continued as republics of a new German federation
4.
Saxony-Anhalt
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Saxony-Anhalt is a landlocked federal state of Germany surrounded by the federal states of Lower Saxony, Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia. Its capital is Magdeburg and its largest city is Halle, Saxony-Anhalt covers an area of 20,447.7 square kilometres and has a population of 2.34 million. Saxony-Anhalt should not be confused with Saxony or Lower Saxony, also German states, Saxony-Anhalt is one of 16 Bundesländer of Germany. It is located in the part of eastern Germany. By size, it is the 8th largest state in Germany and it borders four fellow Bundesländer, Lower Saxony to the north-west, Brandenburg to the north-east, Saxony to the south-east, and Thuringia to the south-west. In the north, the Saxony-Anhalt landscape is dominated by plain, the old Hanseatic towns Salzwedel, Gardelegen, Stendal, and Tangermünde are located in the sparsely populated Altmark. The Colbitz-Letzlingen Heath and the Drömling near Wolfsburg mark the transition between the Altmark region and the Elbe-Börde-Heath region with its fertile, sparsely wooded Magdeburg Börde. Notable towns in the Magdeburg Börde are Haldensleben, Oschersleben, Wanzleben, Schönebeck, Aschersleben, the Harz mountains are located in the south-west, comprising the Harz National Park, the Harz Foreland and Mansfeld Land. The highest mountain of the Harz is Brocken, with an elevation of 1,141 meters, in this area, one can find the towns of Halberstadt, Wernigerode, Thale, Eisleben and Quedlinburg. The wine-growing area Saale-Unstrut and the towns of Zeitz, Naumburg, Weißenfels, the metropolitan area of Halle forms an agglomeration with Leipzig in Saxony. This area is known for its highly developed industry, with major production plants at Leuna, Schkopau. Finally, in the east, Dessau-Roßlau and Wittenberg are situated on the Elbe in the Anhalt-Wittenberg region, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt is Magdeburg. It is the second-largest city in the state, closely after Halle, from 1994 to 2003, the state was divided into three regions, Dessau, Halle and Magdeburg, and, below the regional level,21 districts. Since 2004, however, this system has replaced by 11 rural districts. In April 1945 the US Army took control of most of the western and northern area of the future Saxony-Anhalt, group Control Council, Germany appointed the first non-Nazi officials in leading positions in the area. So Erhard Hübener, furloughed by the Nazis, was reappointed Landeshauptmann. By early July the US Army withdrew from the former Prussian Province of Saxony to make way for the Red Army to take it as part of the Soviet occupation zone, the previously Saxon Erfurt governorate had become a part of Thuringia. For the earlier history see the articles of these entities before 1945
5.
Districts of Germany
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A German district is an administrative subdivision known as Landkreis, except in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein where it is known simply as Kreis. Most major cities in Germany are not part of a rural district, in this context, those cities are referred to as Kreisfreie Stadt or Stadtkreis. Rural districts are at a level of administration between the German states and the municipal governments. They correspond to level 3 administrative units of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, previously, the similar title Reichskreis was given to groups of states in the Holy Roman Empire. The related term Landeskommissariat was used for administrative divisions in some German territories until the 19th century. The majority of German districts are rural districts of which there are 295, cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants do not usually belong to a district, but take over district responsibilities themselves, similar to the concept of independent cities. These are known as urban districts —cities which constitute a district in their own there are currently 107 of them. As of 2011, approximately 25 million people live in these 107 urban districts, in North Rhine-Westphalia, there are some cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants which are not urban districts, for example Recklinghausen, Siegen, Paderborn, Bergisch Gladbach, Neuss and Moers. Nevertheless, these cities take over many district responsibilities themselves, although they are part of a larger rural district. Midsize towns can perform particular administrative functions of the district as well, the classification as midsize town is usually based on a towns registered population, but varies from state to state. Aachen, Hanover and Göttingen retain certain rights of an urban district, urban districts have these responsibilities and also those of the municipalities. The district council is the highest institution of a district and is responsible for all fundamental guidelines of regional self-administration. This council is elected every five years, except in Bavaria where it is elected every six years. Usually the administrative seat of a district is located in one of its largest towns. However, district council and administrative seat of rural districts are not situated within the district proper. Most of those districts are named after this central city as well. Moers is the biggest city in Germany that is neither an urban district, in parts of northern Germany, Landrat is also the name of the entire district administration, which in southern Germany is known as Kreisverwaltung or Landratsamt. In urban districts similar administrative functions are performed by a mayor, rural districts in some German states have an additional administrative commission called Kreisausschuss
6.
Central European Summer Time
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It corresponds to UTC + two hours. Other names which have been applied to Central European Summer Time are Middle European Summer Time, Central European Daylight Saving Time, and Bravo Time. Since 1996 European Summer Time has been observed between 1,00 UTC on the last Sunday of March and 1,00 on the last Sunday of October, the following countries and territories use Central European Summer Time. In addition, Libya used CEST during the years 1951–1959, 1982–1989, 1996–1997, European Summer Time Other countries and territories in UTC+2 time zone Other names of UTC+2 time zone
7.
List of postal codes in Germany
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Postal codes in Germany, Postleitzahl, since 1 July 1993 consist of five digits. The first two digits indicate the area, the last three digits the postal district. Before reunification, both the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic used four-digit codes. Under a transitional arrangement following reunification, between 1989 and 1993 postal codes in the west were prefixed with W, e. g. W-100030 and those in the east with O, e. g. O-1xxx Berlin. City administrations and postal customers with high volumes, or Großkunden have their own postal codes. Postal regions do not necessarily follow state boundaries, so sorting by state is not practical, the postal regions and some postal codes are, The 5-digit postal codes were established on July 1,1993. All mail from, to and within this region is handled by the distribution center in Elmshorn
8.
List of dialling codes in Germany
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Country Code, +49International Call Prefix, 00Trunk Prefix,0 Area codes in Germany have two to five digits, not counting the leading trunk access code 0. The leading 0 must be dialed when calling from within Germany, when calling via fixed networks within the same area, the area code is not required. In general, shorter area codes are assigned to larger cities, private telephone numbers are usually inversely long, those in larger cities have seven or eight digits, while those in smaller towns may have as few as three or four digits. 1 are special numbers such as phones, shared cost service. The former codes 0130 for free phone numbers and 0190 for premium-rate numbers are now moved to 0800 and 0900 to meet international standards,0700 is used for personal national phone numbers. Prefix 01 is used for numbers, and is not tied to a geographic area. After reunification, East Germany was merged into the existing German numbering plan, neugersdorf 03587035872 Neusalza-Spremberg 035873 Herrnhut 035874 Bernstadt a. d.037296 Stollberg/Erzgeb. 037297 Thum 037298 Oelsnitz 03731 Freiberg 03732037320 Mulda/Sa,037433 Gutenfürst 037434 Bobenneukirchen 037435 Reuth 037436 Weischlitz 037437 Bad Elster 037438 Bad Brambach 037439 Jocketa 03744 Auerbach/Vogtl. 03745 Falkenstein 03746037462 Rothenkirchen 037463 Bergen, Vogtlandkreis 037464 Schöneck/Vogtl,037465 Tannenbergsthal 037467 Klingenthal 037468 Treuen 0375 Zwickau 037603760037600 Neumark 037601 Mülsen St.04443 Dinklage 04444 Goldenstedt 04445 Visbek Kr. Vechta 04446 Bakum Kr. 08553 Spiegelau 08554 Schönberg 08555 Perlesreut 08556 Haidmühle 08557 Mauth 08558 Hohenau 085608561 Pfarrkirchen Niederbay,08562 Triftern 08563 Bad Birnbach Rottal 08564 Johanniskirchen 08565 Dietersburg-Baumgarten 085708571 Simbach am Inn 08572 Tann Niederbay. 08573 Ering 08574 Wittibreut 085808581 Waldkirchen Niederbay,08582 Röhrnbach 08583 Neureichenau 08584 Breitenberg 08585 Grainet 08586 Hauzenberg 085908591 Obernzell 08592 Wegscheid Niederbay. 09549 Lisberg 095509551 Burgwindheim 09552 Burghaslach 09553 Ebrach Oberfr,09704 Euerdorf 09708 Bad Bocklet 0971 Bad Kissingen 097209720 Üchtelhausen 09721 Schweinfurt 09722 Werneck 09723 Röthlein 09724 Stadtlauringen 09725 Poppenhausen Unterfr. 09726 Euerbach 09727 Schonungen-Marktsteinach 09728 Wülfershausen Unterfr,097609761 Bad Königshofen 09762 Saal a. d. Saale 09763 Sulzdorf a. d. d. Heide 09823 Leutershausen 09824 Dietenhofen 09825 Herrieden 09826 Weidenbach Mittelfr,09828 Rügland 09829 Flachslanden 098309831 Gunzenhausen 09832 Wassertrüdingen 09833 Heidenheim Mittelfr. 098609861 Rothenburg ob der Tauber 09865 Adelshofen 09867 Geslau 09868 Schillingsfürst 09869 Wettringen Mittelfr,098709871 Windsbach 09872 Heilsbronn 09873 Abenberg-Wassermungenau 09874 Neuendettelsau 09875 Wolframs-Eschenbach 09876 Rohr Mittelfr
9.
Vehicle registration plate
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A vehicle registration plate, also known as a number plate or a license plate, is metal or plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle or trailer for official identification purposes. The registration identifier is a numeric or alphanumeric ID that uniquely identifies the owner within the issuing regions database. The first two letters indicate the state to which the vehicle is registered, the next two digit numbers are the sequential number of a district. Due to heavy volume of vehicle registration, the numbers were given to the RTO offices of registration as well, the third part indicates the year of registration of the vehicle and is a 4 digit number unique to each plate. In some countries, the identifier is unique within the entire country, whether the identifier is associated with a vehicle or a person also varies by issuing agency. In the vast majority of jurisdictions, the government holds a monopoly on the manufacturing of vehicle registration plates for that jurisdiction. Thus, it is illegal for private citizens to make and affix their own plates. Alternately, the government will merely assign plate numbers, and it is the owners responsibility to find an approved private supplier to make a plate with that number. In some jurisdictions, plates will be assigned to that particular vehicle for its lifetime. If the vehicle is destroyed or exported to a different country. Other jurisdictions follow a policy, meaning that when a vehicle is sold the seller removes the current plate from the vehicle. Buyers must either obtain new plates or attach plates they already hold, as well as register their vehicles under the buyers name, a person who sells a car and then purchases a new one can apply to have the old plates put onto the new car. One who sells a car and does not buy a new one may, depending on the laws involved, have to turn the old plates in or destroy them. Some jurisdictions permit the registration of the vehicle with personal plates, in some jurisdictions, plates require periodic replacement, often associated with a design change of the plate itself. Vehicle owners may or may not have the option to keep their original plate number, alternately, or additionally, vehicle owners have to replace a small decal on the plate or use a decal on the windshield to indicate the expiration date of the vehicle registration. Plates are usually fixed directly to a vehicle or to a frame that is fixed to the vehicle. Sometimes, the plate frames contain advertisements inserted by the service centre or the dealership from which the vehicle was purchased. Vehicle owners can also purchase customized frames to replace the original frames, in some jurisdictions licence plate frames are illegal
10.
Mulde
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The Mulde is a river in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is a tributary of the Elbe and is 124 kilometres long. The river is formed by the confluence, near Colditz, of the Zwickauer Mulde, from here the river runs northwards through Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. The Mulde flows into the Elbe 3 kilometres north of Dessau, in August 2002 a flood caused severe damage, that even endangered the UNESCO World Heritage Site Dessau-Wörlitzer Gartenreich and the city Dessau. Especially the cities of Döbeln and Grimma suffered from the damages of the flood and its name could be derived from Old German Mulda, meaning dust and a cognate of English mould). But more possibly it is related to the German mahlen which means to mill, therefore, Mulde probably means the milling river and corresponds to the great number of water mills driven by the river in former times. Nowadays, there are power stations in use
11.
Elbe
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The Elbe is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Krkonoše Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia, then Germany and its total length is 1,094 kilometres. The Elbes major tributaries include the rivers Vltava, Saale, Havel, Mulde, Schwarze Elster, the Elbe river basin, comprising the Elbe and its tributaries, has a catchment area of 148,268 square kilometres, the fourth largest in Europe. The basin spans four countries, with its largest parts in Germany, much smaller parts lie in Austria and Poland. The basin is inhabited by 24.5 million people, the Elbe rises at an elevation of about 1,400 metres in the Krkonoše on the northwest borders of the Czech Republic near Labská bouda. Of the numerous small streams whose waters compose the infant river, here the Elbe enters the vast vale named Polabí, and continues on southwards through Hradec Králové and then to Pardubice, where it turns sharply to the west. At Kolín some 43 kilometres further on, it bends gradually towards the north-west, at the village of Káraný, a little above Brandýs nad Labem, it picks up the Jizera. At Mělník its stream is more than doubled in volume by the Vltava, or Moldau, upstream from the confluence the Vltava is in fact much longer, and has a greater discharge and a larger drainage basin. Some distance lower down, at Litoměřice, the waters of the Elbe are tinted by the reddish Ohře, in its northern section both banks of the Elbe are characterised by flat, very fertile marshlands, former flood plains of the Elbe now diked. At Magdeburg there is a viaduct, the Magdeburg Water Bridge, from the sluice of Geesthacht on downstream the Elbe is subject to the tides, the tidal Elbe section is called the Low Elbe. Within the city-state the Unterelbe has a number of streams, such as Dove Elbe, Gose Elbe, Köhlbrand, Northern Elbe, Reiherstieg. Some of which have been disconnected for vessels from the stream by dikes. In 1390 the Gose Elbe was separated from the stream by a dike connecting the two then-islands of Kirchwerder and Neuengamme. The Dove Elbe was diked off in 1437/38 at Gammer Ort and these hydraulic engineering works were carried out to protect marshlands from inundation, and to improve the water supply of the Port of Hamburg. The Northern Elbe passes the Elbe Philharmonic Hall and is then crossed under by the old Elbe Tunnel, a bit more downstream the Low Elbes two main anabranches Northern Elbe and the Köhlbrand reunite south of Altona-Altstadt, a locality of Hamburg. Right after both anabranches reunited the Low Elbe is passed under by the New Elbe Tunnel, the last structural road link crossing the river before the North Sea. At the bay Mühlenberger Loch in Hamburg at kilometre 634, the Northern Elbe and the Southern Elbe used to reunite, leaving the city-state the Lower Elbe then passes between Holstein and the Elbe-Weser Triangle with Stade until it flows into the North Sea at Cuxhaven. Near its mouth it passes the entrance to the Kiel Canal at Brunsbüttel before it debouches into the North Sea, the Elbe has been navigable by commercial vessels since 1842, and provides important trade links as far inland as Prague
12.
Principality of Anhalt
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The Principality of Anhalt was a State of the Holy Roman Empire, located in Central Germany, in what is today part of the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt. The Anhalt territory stretched from the Harz mountain range in the west to the Elbe River, upon the 1315 loss of Anhalt-Aschersleben, the lands around Ballenstedt formed a western exclave. The area of the duchy was 906 miles². In the west, the land is undulating and in the extreme northwest, from the Harz the country gently shelves down to the Saale, the land between this river and the Elbe is particularly fertile. East of the Elbe, the land is mostly a flat plain, with extensive pine forests, interspersed with bog-land. The Elbe is the river, intersecting the eastern portion of the former duchy, from east to west. The navigable Saale takes a northerly direction through the portion of the territory and receives, on the right, the Fuhne and, on the left, the Wipper. The climate is mild, less so in the higher Harz regions to the south-west. In the 11th century, it came under the rule of Count Esico of Ballenstedt, possibly a descendant of the Saxon margrave Odo, he owned large allodial lands around Ballenstedt in the Schwabengau as well as in the adjacent Gau Serimunt in the former Saxon Eastern March. Count Esico was succeeded by his son Adalbert II of Ballenstedt, Adalbert joined the Saxon Rebellion against King Henry IV and was slain in a feud with Egeno II of Konradsburg in 1180. His son Count Otto the Rich appeared as a Count of Ballenstedt from 1106, on the eve of the 1115 Battle of Welfesholz, Otto campaigned the lands of the Polabian Slavs, gaining large estates around Zerbst up to the Hevelli lands ruled by the Hevelli princes. Until his death in 1123, Count Otto had Anhalt Castle built in the Harz mountains near Harzgerode, however, he effectively only ruled over the Eastphalian territories, while the Westphalian and Engern parts of Saxony fell under the control of the Prince-Archbishops of Cologne. The County of Anhalt finally arose upon the death of Duke Bernhard in 1212, the younger Albert I became Duke of Saxony, while the elder Henry I went on to rule the Ascanian lands, now definitely separated from Saxony, as Count of Anhalt. In 1218, Henry I assumed the title of a prince, on Henrys death in 1252, his three sons partitioned the principality and founded, respectively, the lines of Aschersleben, Bernburg and Zerbst. The last prince of the line of Anhalt-Bernburg died in 1468 and his lands were inherited by the princes of the sole remaining line. The territory belonging to this branch of the family had divided in 1396. Early in the 16th century, however, owing to the death or abdication of several princes, wolfgang of Anhalt, called the Confessor, who became prince of Anhalt-Köthen in 1508, was the second ruler in the world to introduce the Reformation to his country. He was a co-signer of the Augsburg Confession in 1530, and after the Battle of Mühlberg in 1547 was placed under Imperial ban and deprived of his lands by Emperor Charles V
13.
Holy Roman Empire
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The Holy Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806. On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne as Emperor, reviving the title in Western Europe, more than three centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The title was revived in 962 when Otto I was crowned emperor, fashioning himself as the successor of Charlemagne, some historians refer to the coronation of Charlemagne as the origin of the empire, while others prefer the coronation of Otto I as its beginning. Scholars generally concur, however, in relating an evolution of the institutions and principles constituting the empire, the office of Holy Roman Emperor was traditionally elective, although frequently controlled by dynasties. Emperor Francis II dissolved the empire on 6 August 1806, after the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon, before 1157, the realm was merely referred to as the Roman Empire. In a decree following the 1512 Diet of Cologne, the name was changed to Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, by the end of the 18th century, the term Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation had fallen out of official use. As Roman power in Gaul declined during the 5th century, local Germanic tribes assumed control, by the middle of the 8th century, however, the Merovingians had been reduced to figureheads, and the Carolingians, led by Charles Martel, had become the de facto rulers. In 751, Martel’s son Pepin became King of the Franks, the Carolingians would maintain a close alliance with the Papacy. In 768 Pepin’s son Charlemagne became King of the Franks and began an expansion of the realm. He eventually incorporated the territories of present-day France, Germany, northern Italy, on Christmas Day of 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, restoring the title in the west for the first time in over three centuries. After the death of Charles the Fat in 888, however, the Carolingian Empire broke apart, according to Regino of Prüm, the parts of the realm spewed forth kinglets, and each part elected a kinglet from its own bowels. After the death of Charles the Fat, those crowned emperor by the pope controlled only territories in Italy, the last such emperor was Berengar I of Italy, who died in 924. Around 900, autonomous stem duchies reemerged in East Francia, on his deathbed, Conrad yielded the crown to his main rival, Henry the Fowler of Saxony, who was elected king at the Diet of Fritzlar in 919. Henry reached a truce with the raiding Magyars, and in 933 he won a first victory against them in the Battle of Riade, Henry died in 936, but his descendants, the Liudolfing dynasty, would continue to rule the Eastern kingdom for roughly a century. Upon Henry the Fowlers death, Otto, his son and designated successor, was elected King in Aachen in 936 and he overcame a series of revolts from an elder brother and from several dukes. After that, the managed to control the appointment of dukes. In 951, Otto came to the aid of Adelaide, the queen of Italy, defeating her enemies, marrying her. In 955, Otto won a victory over the Magyars in the Battle of Lechfeld
14.
Anhalt-Dessau
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Anhalt-Dessau was a principality of the Holy Roman Empire and later a duchy of the German Confederation. Ruled by the House of Ascania, it was created in 1396 following the partition of the Principality of Anhalt-Zerbst, the capital of the state was Dessau in present-day Saxony-Anhalt. The Principality of Anhalt arose in 1212 under its first ruler Henry I, named after Anhalt Castle, the ancestral seat of the Ascanian dynasty near Harzgerode, the principality experienced a number of partitions throughout its centuries-long existence. Anhalt-Dessau emerged when the two surviving sons of late Prince John II of Anhalt-Zerbst divided their heritage and the elder, Prince Sigismund I, upon the death of Sigismunds son Prince George I of Anhalt-Dessau in 1474, the principality was again divided with Anhalt-Köthen. Anhalt-Dessau was partitioned for a time in 1544 with Anhalt-Zerbst. From 1561 until 1603 Anhalt-Dessau was under the rule of the Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, Anhalt-Köthen became extinct on the death of the Duke of Anhalt-Köthen,23 November 1847, and its territories were united to Anhalt-Dessau by Patent of 22 May 1853. Leopold III 1807–1817 Leopold IV 1817–1863 Renamed Duchy of Anhalt 1863, regnal chronology Hertslet, Edward, The map of Europe by treaty, showing the various political and territorial changes which have taken place since the general peace of 1814, London, Butterworths
15.
Bauhaus
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The Bauhaus was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. Nonetheless, it was founded with the idea of creating a work of art in which all arts, including architecture. The Bauhaus style later became one of the most influential currents in modern design, Modernist architecture and art, design, the Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography. Although the school was closed, the continued to spread its idealistic precepts as they left Germany. The changes of venue and leadership resulted in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, many Germans of left-wing views were influenced by the cultural experimentation that followed the Russian Revolution, such as constructivism. Such influences can be overstated, Gropius did not share these radical views, thus, the Bauhaus style, also known as the International Style, was marked by the absence of ornamentation and by harmony between the function of an object or a building and its design. In its first seven years, the Werkbund came to be regarded as the body on questions of design in Germany. The entire movement of German architectural modernism was known as Neues Bauen, beginning in June 1907, Peter Behrens pioneering industrial design work for the German electrical company AEG successfully integrated art and mass production on a large scale. Behrens was a member of the Werkbund, and both Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer worked for him in this period. The Bauhaus was founded at a time when the German zeitgeist had turned from emotional Expressionism to the matter-of-fact New Objectivity, beyond the Bauhaus, many other significant German-speaking architects in the 1920s responded to the same aesthetic issues and material possibilities as the school. They also responded to the promise of a minimal dwelling written into the new Weimar Constitution, ernst May, Bruno Taut, and Martin Wagner, among others, built large housing blocks in Frankfurt and Berlin. The acceptance of modernist design into everyday life was the subject of publicity campaigns, well-attended public exhibitions like the Weissenhof Estate, films, the Vkhutemas, the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow, has been compared to Bauhaus. Founded a year after the Bauhaus school, Vkhutemas has close parallels to the German Bauhaus in its intent, organization, the two schools were the first to train artist-designers in a modern manner. Vkhutemas was a school than the Bauhaus, but it was less publicised outside the Soviet Union. With the internationalism of modern architecture and design, there were exchanges between the Vkhutemas and the Bauhaus. In addition, El Lissitzkys book Russia, an Architecture for World Revolution published in German in 1930 featured several illustrations of Vkhutemas/Vkhutein projects there. The school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919 as a merger of the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts and the Weimar Academy of Fine Art. Its roots lay in the arts and crafts founded by the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in 1906
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Weimar, Germany
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Weimar is a city in the federal state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately 80 kilometres southwest of Leipzig,170 kilometres north of Nuremberg and 170 kilometres west of Dresden. Together with the neighbour-cities Erfurt and Jena it forms the metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants. Weimar is well known because of its cultural heritage and its importance in German history. The city was a point of the German Enlightenment and home of the leading characters of the literary genre of Weimar Classicism. Until 1948, Weimar was the capital of Thuringia, today, many places in the city centre have been designated as UNESCO World Heritage sites and tourism is one of the leading economic sectors of Weimar. Relevant institutions in Weimar are the Bauhaus University, the Liszt School of Music, in 1999, Weimar was the European Capital of Culture. Archaeological finds dating back to the Thuringii epoch show that the Weimar part of the Ilm valley was settled early, the oldest records regarding Weimar date to 899. Its name changed over the centuries from Wimares through Wimari to Wimar and finally Weimar, it is derived from Old High German wīh-, another theory derives the first element from OHG win. The place was the seat of the County of Weimar, first mentioned in 949, in 1062 it was united with the County of Orlamünde to the new County of Weimar-Orlamünde, which existed until the Thuringian Counts War in 1346 and fell to the Wettins afterwards. The Weimar settlement emerged around the wooden castle and two small churches dedicated to St Peter, and to St James. In 1240, the count founded the monastery in Oberweimar. Soon after, the counts of Weimar founded the town, which was an independent parish since 1249, from 1262 the citizens used their own seal. Nevertheless, the influence of the Weimar counts was declining as the influence of the Wettins in Thuringia increased. Hence, the new town was relatively marginal in a regional context. The settlement around St James Church developed into a suburb during the 13th century, after becoming part of the Wettins territory in 1346, urban development improved. The Wettins fostered Weimar by abolishing socage and granting privileges to the citizens, now Weimar became equal to other Wettinian cities like Weißensee and grew during the 15th century, with the establishment of a town hall and the current main church. Weimar acquired woad trade privileges in 1438, the castle and the walls were finished in the 16th century, making Weimar into a full city
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Walter Gropius
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Born in Berlin, Walter Gropius was the third child of Walter Adolph Gropius and Manon Auguste Pauline Scharnweber. In 1915 Gropius married Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav Mahler, Walter and Almas daughter, named Manon after Walters mother, was born in 1916. When Manon died of polio at age 18, in 1935, Gropius and Alma divorced in 1920. On 16 October 1923, Gropius married Ilse Frank, and they remained together until his death in 1969 and they adopted a daughter together, Beate Gropius, known as Ati. Ise Gropius died on 9 June 1983 in Lexington, Massachusetts, Walter Gropius was drafted August 1914 and served as a sergeant and then as a lieutenant in the signal corps in the First World War. He survived being buried under rubble and dead bodies, and shot out of the sky with a dead pilot. He was awarded the Iron Cross twice, Gropius then, like his father and his great-uncle Martin Gropius before him, became an architect. Gropius could not draw, and was dependent on collaborators and partner-interpreters throughout his career, in school he hired an assistant to complete his homework for him. His fellow employees at this time included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, in 1910 Gropius left the firm of Behrens and together with fellow employee Adolf Meyer established a practice in Berlin. Together they share credit for one of the seminal modernist buildings created during this period, the Faguswerk in Alfeld-an-der-Leine, Germany, the factory is now regarded as one of the crucial founding monuments of European modernism. Gropius was commissioned in 1913 to design a car for the Prussian Railroad Locomotive Works in Königsberg and this locomotive was unique and the first of its kind in Germany and perhaps in Europe. Other works of early period include the office and factory building for the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne. In 1913, Gropius published an article about The Development of Industrial Buildings, Gropiuss career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Called up immediately as a reservist, Gropius served as a sergeant major at the Western front during the war years and was wounded, Gropius was awarded an Iron Cross while fighting for four years for Germany on the Western Front. Gropiuss career advanced in the postwar period, henry van de Velde, the master of the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar was asked to step down in 1915 due to his Belgian nationality. His recommendation for Gropius to succeed him led eventually to Gropiuss appointment as master of the school in 1919, in principle, the Bauhaus represented an opportunity to extend beauty and quality to every home through well designed industrially produced objects. The Bauhaus program was experimental and the emphasis, was theoretical, one example product of the Bauhaus was the armchair F51, designed for the Bauhauss directors room in 1920 – nowadays a re-edition in the market, manufactured by the German company TECTA/Lauenfoerde. In 1919, Gropius was involved in the Glass Chain utopian expressionist correspondence under the pseudonym Mass
18.
Paul Klee
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Paul Klee was a Swiss-German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism and he and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality. First of all, the art of living, then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, as the second child of German music teacher Hans Wilhelm Klee and Swiss singer Ida Marie Klee, née Frick. His sister Mathilde was born on 28 January 1876 in Walzenhausen and their father came from Tann and studied at the Stuttgart Conservatory singing, piano, organ and violin, meeting there his future wife Ida Frick. Hans Wilhelm Klee was active as a teacher at the Bern State Seminary in Hofwil near Bern until 1931. Klee was able to develop his skills as his parents encouraged and inspired him until his death. In 1880, his family moved to Bern, where they moved 17 years later after numerous changes of residence into a house at the Kirchenfeld district. From 1886 to 1890, Klee visited primary school and received, at the age of 7 and he was so talented on violin that, aged 11, he received an invitation to play as an extraordinary member of the Bern Music Association. He stated, I didnt find the idea of going in for music creatively particularly attractive in view of the decline in the history of musical achievement. As a musician, he played and felt emotionally bound to traditional works of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, at sixteen, Klee’s landscape drawings already show considerable skill. Around 1897, Klee started his diary, which he kept until 1918, during his school years, he avidly drew in his school books, in particular drawing caricatures, and already demonstrating skill with line and volume. He barely passed his exams at the Gymnasium of Bern. With his characteristic dry wit, he wrote, After all, it’s rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks. On his own time, in addition to his interests in music and art, Klee was a great reader of literature. With his parents reluctant permission, in 1898 Klee began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and he excelled at drawing but seemed to lack any natural color sense. He later recalled, During the third winter I even realized that I probably would never learn to paint, during these times of youthful adventure, Klee spent much time in pubs and had affairs with lower class women and artists models. He had a son in 1900 who died several weeks after birth
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Wassily Kandinsky
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Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting one of the first recognised purely abstract works, born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art school. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics, successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship at the University of Dorpat—Kandinsky began painting studies at the age of 30. In 1896 Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbes private school and he returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the theories on art in Communist Moscow. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and he died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944. Kandinskys creation of work followed a long period of development. He called this devotion to beauty, fervor of spirit. Kandinsky was born in Moscow, the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, Kandinsky learned from a variety of sources while in Moscow. He studied many fields while in school, including law and economics, later in life, he would recall being fascinated and stimulated by colour as a child. His fascination with colour symbolism and psychology continued as he grew, in 1889, he was part of an ethnographic research group which travelled to the Vologda region north of Moscow. In Looks on the Past, he relates that the houses and churches were decorated with such shimmering colours that upon entering them and this experience, and his study of the regions folk art, was reflected in much of his early work. The artist is the hand plays, touching one key or another. Kandinsky was also the uncle of Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève, in 1896, at the age of 30, Kandinsky gave up a promising career teaching law and economics to enroll in the Munich Academy where his teachers would eventually include Franz von Stuck. He was not immediately granted admission, and began learning art on his own and that same year, before leaving Moscow, he saw an exhibit of paintings by Monet. He was particularly taken with the style of Haystacks, this. Later, he would write about this experience, That it was a haystack the catalogue informed me and this non-recognition was painful to me
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Nazi Party
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Its precursor, the German Workers Party, existed from 1919 to 1920. The party emerged from the German nationalist, racist, and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, the party was created as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Pseudo-scientific racism theories were central to Nazism, the Nazis propagated the idea of a peoples community. Their aim was to unite racially desirable Germans as national comrades, while excluding those deemed either to be political dissidents, to maintain the supposed purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, and the physically and mentally handicapped. They imposed exclusionary segregation on homosexuals, Africans, Jehovahs Witnesses, the partys leader since 1921, Adolf Hitler, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. Hitler rapidly established a regime known as the Third Reich. The term Nazi derives from the name given in German to a party member Nationalsozialist and was coined in response to the German term Sozi, members of the party referred to themselves as Nationalsozialisten, rarely as Nazis. The term Parteigenosse was commonly used among Nazis, with the feminine form Parteigenossin used when it was appropriate, the term was in use before the rise of the party as a colloquial and derogatory word for a backward peasant, characterising an awkward and clumsy person. It derived from Ignaz, being a version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria. Opponents seized on this and shortened the name in intentional association to the long-time existing Sozi to the dismissive Nazi. In 1933, when Adolf Hitler assumed power of the German government, usage of the designation Nazi diminished in Germany, the use of Nazi Germany, and Nazi regime, was popularised by anti-Nazis and German exiles abroad. Thereafter, the spread into other languages and eventually was brought back to Germany after the Second World War. The party grew out of political groups with a nationalist orientation that formed in the last years of World War I. In 1918, a called the Freien Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden was created in Bremen. On 7 March 1918, Anton Drexler, an avid German nationalist, Drexler saw the situation of political violence and instability in Germany as the result of the new Weimar Republic being out-of-touch with the masses, especially the lower classes. These were all well-known themes popular with various Weimar paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps, though very small, Drexlers movement did receive attention and support from some influential figures. Supporter Dietrich Eckhart brought military figure Count Felix Graf von Bothmer, later in 1918, Karl Harrer, convinced Drexler and several others to form the Politischer Arbeiterzirkel. The members met periodically for discussions with themes of nationalism and racism directed against the Jews and they became one of many völkisch movements that existed in Germany at the time
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World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
22.
East Germany
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East Germany, formally the German Democratic Republic, was an Eastern Bloc state during the Cold War period. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin, but did not include it, as a result, the German Democratic Republic was established in the Soviet Zone, while the Federal Republic was established in the three western zones. East Germany, which lies culturally in Central Germany, was a state of the Soviet Union. Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948, Soviet forces, however, remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party, though other parties participated in its alliance organisation. The economy was centrally planned, and increasingly state-owned, prices of basic goods and services were set by central government planners, rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay war reparations to the USSR. Nonetheless it did not match the growth of West Germany. Emigration to the West was a significant problem—as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people, the government fortified its western borders and, in 1961, built the Berlin Wall. Many people attempting to flee were killed by guards or booby traps. In 1989, numerous social and political forces in the GDR and abroad led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the following year open elections were held, and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR was dissolved and Germany was unified on 3 October 1990, internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin known as East Berlin which was also administered as the states de facto capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the rest of the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989, the official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik, usually abbreviated to DDR. West Germans, the media and statesmen purposely avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like Ostzone, Sowjetische Besatzungszone. The centre of power in East Berlin was referred to as Pankow. Over time, however, the abbreviation DDR was also used colloquially by West Germans. However, this use was not always consistent, for example, before World War II, Ostdeutschland was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe, as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt
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Plattenbau
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Plattenbau is a building constructed of large, prefabricated concrete slabs. The word is a compound of Platte and Bau, although Plattenbauten are often considered to be typical of East Germany, the prefabricated construction method was used extensively in West Germany and elsewhere, particularly in public housing. In English the building method is also called large-panel system building or LPS, prefabrication was pioneered in the Netherlands following World War I, based on construction methods developed in the United States. The first German use of construction is what is now known as the Splanemann-Siedlung in Berlins Lichtenberg district. These two- and three-story apartment houses were assembled of locally cast slabs, inspired by the Dutch Betondorp in Watergraafsmeer, in East Germany, Plattenbau areas have been designated as Neubaugebiet. There were several common plattenbau designs, the most common series was the P2, followed by the WBS70, the WHH GT18, and Q3A. The designs were flexible and could be built as towers or rows of apartments of various heights, there have been projects with low rise plattenbauten such as the town of Bernau just north of Berlin. This town had an almost complete historic center of wooden framed buildings within its preserved city walls. Most of these were torn down after 1975 and during the eighties to be replaced by 2–4 story buildings constructed of prefabricated concrete slabs, a similar project was the Nikolaiviertel around the historic Nikolai church in Berlins old center. In the case of the Nikolaiviertel the buildings were made to more historic. Many plattenbau apartments were built in giant settlements, often on the edge of cities and their inconvenient locations were likely also a factor in their rapid deterioration. Eastern Berlin has many Plattenbauten, reminders of Eastern Bloc planned residential areas, with shops, the building method is also associated with problems with bad fire insulation, as well as bad sound insulation between units, which is a direct result of their method of construction
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German reunification
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The end of the unification process is officially referred to as German unity, celebrated on 3 October. Following German reunification, Berlin was once designated as the capital of united Germany. The East German regime started to falter in May 1989, when the removal of Hungarys border fence with Austria opened a hole in the Iron Curtain and it caused an exodus of thousands of East Germans fleeing to West Germany and Austria via Hungary. The united Germany is the continuation of the Federal Republic. For political and diplomatic reasons, West German politicians carefully avoided the term reunification during the run-up to what Germans frequently refer to as die Wende, after 1990, the term die Wende became more common. The term generally refers to the events led up to the actual reunification, in its usual context. When referring to the events surrounding unification, however, it carries the connotation of the time. However, anti-communist activists from Eastern Germany rejected the term Wende as it was introduced by SEDs Secretary General Egon Krenz, the capital city of Berlin was divided into four occupied sectors of control, under the Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and France. Germans lived under such imposed divisions throughout the ensuing Cold War, into the 1980s, the Soviet Union experienced a period of economic and political stagnation, and they correspondingly decreased intervention in Eastern Bloc politics. In 1987, US President Ronald Reagan gave a speech at Brandenburg Gate challenging Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down this wall that had separated Berlin. The wall had stood as an icon for the political and economic division between East and West, a division that Churchill had referred to as the Iron Curtain. In early 1989, under a new era of Soviet policies of glasnost, perestroika and taken to more progressive levels by Gorbachev. Further inspired by images of brave defiance, a wave of revolutions swept throughout the Eastern Bloc that year. In May 1989, Hungary removed their border fence and thousands of East Germans escaped to the West, however, events rapidly came to a head in early 1990. First, in March, the Party of Democratic Socialism—the former Socialist Unity Party of Germany—was heavily defeated in East Germanys first free elections. A grand coalition was formed under Lothar de Maizière, leader of the East German wing of Kohls Christian Democratic Union, on a platform of speedy reunification, second, East Germanys economy and infrastructure underwent a swift and near-total collapse. While East Germany had long been reckoned as having the most robust economy in the Soviet bloc, the East German mark had been practically worthless outside East Germany for some time before the events of 1989–90 further magnified the problem. Discussions immediately began for a merger of the German economies
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Kurt Weill
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Kurt Julian Weill was a German composer, active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed such as his best-known work The Threepenny Opera. Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a useful purpose. He also wrote works for the concert hall. He became a United States citizen on August 27,1943, Weill was born on March 2,1900, the third of four children to Albert Weill and Emma Weill. He grew up in a religious Jewish family in the Sandvorstadt, the Jewish quarter in Dessau, Germany, where his father was a cantor. At the age of twelve, Weill started taking lessons and made his first attempts at writing music. In 1915, Weill started taking lessons with Albert Bing, Kapellmeister at the Herzogliches Hoftheater zu Dessau, who taught him piano, composition, music theory. Weill performed publicly on piano for the first time in 1915, koch, and also attended philosophy lectures by Max Dessoir and Ernst Cassirer. The same year, he wrote his first string quartet, from May to September 1920, Weill spent a couple of months in Leipzig, where his father had become the new director of a Jewish orphanage. Before he returned to Berlin, in September 1920, he composed Sulamith, a fantasy for soprano, female choir. Back in Berlin, Weill had an interview with Ferruccio Busoni in December 1920, after examining some of Weills compositions, Busoni accepted him as one of five master students in composition at the Preußische Akademie der Künste in Berlin. From January 1921 to December 1923, Weill studied music composition with him, during his first year he composed his first symphony, Sinfonie in einem Satz, as well as the lieder Die Bekehrte and two Rilkelieder for voice and piano. To support his family in Leipzig, he worked as a pianist in a Bierkeller tavern. In spring of 1922, Weill joined the November Groups music faction and that year he composed a psalm, a divertimento for orchestra, and Sinfonia Sacra, Fantasia, Passacaglia, and Hymnus for Orchestra. On November 18,1922, his childrens pantomime Die Zaubernacht premiered at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm, out of financial need, Weill taught music theory and composition to private students from 1923 to 1925. Among his students were Claudio Arrau, Maurice Abravanel, Heinz Jolles, in December 1923, Weill finished his studies with Busoni
26.
Moses Mendelssohn
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Moses Mendelssohn was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is indebted. He also established himself as an important figure in the Berlin textile industry, Moses Mendelssohns descendants include the composers Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn and the founders of the Mendelssohn & Co. banking house. Moses Mendelssohn was born in Dessau and his fathers name was Mendel, and it was Moses who adopted the surname Mendelssohn. Without any fear that his own father would take offense, my father assumed the name Mendelssohn, the change, though a small one, was decisive. Mendel was an impoverished scribe — a writer of Torah scrolls —, mosess early education was cared for by his father and by the local rabbi, David Fränkel, who besides teaching him the Bible and Talmud, introduced to him the philosophy of Maimonides. Fränkel received a call to Berlin in 1743, a few months later Moses followed him. A refugee Pole, Zamoscz, taught him mathematics, and a young Jewish physician taught him Latin and he learned to spell and to philosophize at the same time. With his scanty earnings he bought a Latin copy of John Lockes An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and he then made the acquaintance of Aaron Solomon Gumperz, who taught him basic French and English. In 1750, a wealthy silk-merchant, Isaac Bernhard, appointed him to teach his children, Mendelssohn soon won the confidence of Bernhard, who made the young student successively his bookkeeper and his partner. It was possibly Gumperz who introduced Mendelssohn to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1754, the story goes that the first time Mendelssohn met Lessing, they played chess, therefore, in Lessings play Nathan the Wise Nathan and the character Saladin first meet during a game of chess. Lessing had recently produced the drama Die Juden, whose moral was that a Jew can possess nobility of character and this notion was, in the contemporary Berlin of Frederick the Great, generally ridiculed as untrue. Lessing found in Mendelssohn the realization of his dream, within a few months, the two became closely intellectually allied. Lessing also brought Mendelssohn to public attention for the first time, Mendelssohn had written an essay attacking Germans neglect of their native philosophers, without consulting the author, Lessing published Mendelssohns Philosophical Conversations anonymously in 1755. In the same year appeared in Danzig an anonymous satire, Pope a Metaphysician. Mendelssohn became the spirit of Friedrich Nicolais important literary undertakings, the Bibliothek and the Literaturbriefe. In 1762 he married Fromet Guggenheim, who survived him by twenty-six years, in October 1763 the king granted Mendelssohn, but not his wife or children, the privilege of Protected Jew —which assured his right to undisturbed residence in Berlin. As a result of his correspondence with Abbt, Mendelssohn resolved to write on the immortality of the soul, materialistic views were at the time rampant and fashionable, and faith in immortality was at a low ebb. At this favourable juncture appeared Phädon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, modelled on Platos dialogue of the same name, Mendelssohns work possessed some of the charm of its Greek exemplar and impressed the German world with its beauty and lucidity of style
27.
Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau
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Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau was a German prince of the House of Ascania and ruler of the principality of Anhalt-Dessau from 1693 to 1747. He was also a Generalfeldmarschall in the Prussian army, nicknamed the Old Dessauer, he possessed good abilities as a field commander, but was mainly remembered as a talented drillmaster who modernized the Prussian infantry. Elected by Frederick I to the rank of marshal in 1712. He was later appointed the commander of the Prussian-Saxon army during the Great Northern War against Sweden, Leopold was a personal friend of Frederick William I. The last great achievement of his career was commanding the Prussian troops to victory over the Saxons at the Battle of Kesselsdorf in 1745 during the Second Silesian War. Leopold was born in Dessau as the ninth of ten children of John George II, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, by his wife Henriette Catherine, daughter of Frederick Henry, an older brother had died well before Leopold was born. From his earliest youth he devoted himself to military pursuits, for which he educated himself both physically and mentally, Leopolds first campaign was that of 1695 in the Netherlands, in which he was present at the Siege of Namur. He remained in the field to the end of the war of 1697, the affairs of the principality being managed chiefly by his mother, Leopolds career as a soldier in important commands began with the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701. In the campaign of 1704 the Prussian contingent served first under Louis William, Margrave of Baden-Baden, then Prince Eugene of Savoy, in 1705 Leopold was sent with a Prussian corps to join Prince Eugene in Italy, and on 6 August fought at the Battle of Cassano. In the Battle of Turin, he was the first to enter the hostile entrenchments and he served in one more campaign in Italy, and then served under Eugene to join Marlborough in the Netherlands, being present in 1709 at the siege of Tournai and the Battle of Malplaquet. Shortly before this he had executed a coup de main on the castle of Mors, the operation was effected with absolute precision and the castle was seized without a shot being fired. In the earlier part of the reign of Frederick William I, although Prussia was hostile to Sweden, the Prussians were reluctant to participate in the Great Northern War. Only after the Russians destroyed most of the Swedish army did Prussia enter the war in 1715, in peacetime, and especially after a court quarrel and duel with General Friedrich Wilhelm von Grumbkow in 1725, he devoted himself to the training of the Prussian army. Leopolds outstanding achievement just before time was his training of the Prussian infantry. The prince himself was not often employed in the kings own army, the king, indeed, found Leopold somewhat difficult to manage, and the prince spent most of the campaigning years up to 1745 in command of an army of observation on the Saxon frontier. Early in that year his wife died, Leopold was now over seventy, but his last campaign was destined to be the most successful of his long career. A combined effort of the Austrians and Saxons to retrieve the disasters of the summer by a campaign towards Berlin itself led to a hurried concentration of the Prussians. Frederick from Silesia checked the Austrian main army and hastened towards Dresden, but before Frederick arrived, Leopold had decided the war by means of his overwhelming victory over Saxons at Kesselsdorf on 14 December 1745
28.
Kingdom of Prussia
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It was the driving force behind the unification of Germany in 1871 and was the leading state of the German Empire until its dissolution in 1918. Although it took its name from the region called Prussia, it was based in the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the kings of Prussia were from the House of Hohenzollern. Prussia was a power from the time it became a kingdom, through its predecessor, Brandenburg-Prussia. Prussia continued its rise to power under the guidance of Frederick II, more known as Frederick the Great. After the might of Prussia was revealed it was considered as a power among the German states. Throughout the next hundred years Prussia went on to win many battles and it was because of its power that Prussia continuously tried to unify all the German states under its rule. Attempts at creation of a federation remained unsuccessful and the German Confederation collapsed in 1866 when war ensued between its two most powerful states, Prussia and Austria. The North German Confederation which lasted from 1867–1871, created a union between the Prussian-aligned states while Austria and most of Southern Germany remained independent. The North German Confederation was seen as more of an alliance of military strength in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War, the German Empire lasted from 1871–1918 with the successful unification of all the German states under Prussian hegemony. This was due to the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, in 1871, Germany unified into a single country, minus Austria and Switzerland, with Prussia the dominant power. Prussia is considered the predecessor of the unified German Reich. The Kingdom left a significant cultural legacy, today notably promoted by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, in 1415 a Hohenzollern Burgrave came from the south to the March of Brandenburg and took control of the area as elector. In 1417 the Hohenzollern was made an elector of the Holy Roman Empire, after the Polish wars, the newly established Baltic towns of the German states including Prussia, suffered many economic setbacks. Many of the Prussian towns could not even afford to attend political meetings outside of Prussia, the towns were poverty stricken, with even the largest town, Danzig, having to borrow money from elsewhere to pay for trade. Poverty in these towns was partly caused by Prussias neighbors, who had established and developed such a monopoly on trading that these new towns simply could not compete and these issues led to feuds, wars, trade competition and invasions. However, the fall of these gave rise to the nobility, separated the east and the west. It was clear in 1440 how different Brandenburg was from the other German territories, not only did it face partition from within but also the threat of its neighbors. It prevented the issue of partition by enacting the Dispositio Achillea which instilled the principle of primogeniture to both the Brandenburg and Franconian territories, the second issue was solved through expansion
29.
Sierra Leone
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Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north-east, Liberia to the south-east, Sierra Leone has a tropical climate, with a diverse environment ranging from savannah to rainforests. Sierra Leone has an area of 71,740 km2. Sierra Leone is divided into four regions, the Northern Province, Eastern Province, Southern Province and the Western Area. Freetown, located in the Western Area, is the capital, largest city and its economic, Bo is the second largest city, and is located in the Southern Province, about 160 miles from Freetown. Kenema, located in the Eastern Province, is the third largest city and is about 185 miles from Freetown, Koidu Town, located in the Eastern Province, is the fourth largest city, and is about 275 miles from Freetown. Makeni, located in the Northern Province, is the fifth largest of Sierra Leone five major cities, Sierra Leone is a constitutional republic with a directly elected president and a unicameral legislature. The current constitution of Sierra Leone was adopted in 1991 during the presidency of Joseph Saidu Momoh, since independent to present, Sierra Leone politics has been dominated by two major political parties, the Sierra Leone Peoples party and the All Peoples congress. The current president of SIerra Leone is Ernest Bai Koroma, a member of the APC party, the previous Sierra Leone president was Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a member of the SLPP party, who was elected president in 1996 and won reelection for his final term in 2002. From 1991 to 2002, the Sierra Leone civil war was fought and this proxy war left more than 50,000 people dead, much of the countrys infrastructure destroyed, and over two million people displaced as refugees in neighbouring countries. In January 2002, then Sierra Leones president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, fulfilled his promise by ending the civil war, with help by the British Government, ECOWAS. More recently, the 2014 Ebola outbreak overburdened the weak healthcare infrastructure and it created a humanitarian crisis situation and a negative spiral of weaker economic growth. The country has a low life expectancy at 57.8 years. About sixteen ethnic groups inhabit Sierra Leone, each with its own language, the two largest and most influential are the Temne and the Mende people. The Temne are predominantly found in the north of the country, the Krio language unites all the different ethnic groups in the country, especially in their trade and social interaction with each other. Sierra Leone is a predominantly Muslim country, though with an influential Christian minority, Sierra Leone is regarded as one of the most religiously tolerant nations in the world. Muslims and Christians collaborate and interact with each other peacefully, religious violence is extremely rare in the country. In politics, the majority of Sierra Leoneans vote for a candidate without regard to whether the candidate is a Muslim or a Christian
30.
Video tape
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Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either a signal or digital signal. Videotape is used in video tape recorders or, more commonly, videocassette recorders and camcorders. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the produced by an electrocardiogram. Tape is a method of storing information and thus imposes delays to access a portion of the tape that is not already under the heads. The early 2000s saw the introduction and rise to prominence of high quality video recording media such as hard disks. Since then, videotape has been relegated to archival and similar uses. The electronics division of entertainer Bing Crosbys production company, Bing Crosby Enterprises, overall the picture quality was still considered inferior to the best kinescope recordings on film. Bing Crosby Enterprises hoped to have a version available in 1954. The BBC experimented from 1952 to 1958 with a high-speed linear videotape system called VERA and it used half-inch tape traveling at 200 inches per second. RCA demonstrated the magnetic recording of both black-and-white and color television programs at its Princeton laboratories on December 1,1953. The high-speed longitudinal tape system, called Simplex, in development since 1951, could record, the color system used half-inch tape to record five tracks, one each for red, blue, green, synchronization, and audio. The black-and-white system used quarter-inch tape with two tracks, one for video and one for audio, both systems ran at 360 inches per second. RCA-owned NBC first used it on The Jonathan Winters Show on October 23,1956 when a song sequence by Dorothy Collins in color was included in the otherwise live television program. BCE demonstrated a color system in February 1955 using a longitudinal recording on half-inch tape. CBS, RCAs competitor, was about to order BCE machines when Ampex introduced the superior Quadruplex system, BCE was acquired by 3M Company in 1956. Quad employed a transverse four-head system on a tape. On January 22,1957, the NBC Television game show Truth or Consequences, produced in Hollywood, Ampex introduced a color videotape recorder in 1958 in a cross-licensing agreement with RCA, whose engineers had developed it from an Ampex black-and-white recorder
31.
Oranienbaum, Germany
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Oranienbaum is a former town and a former municipality in the district of Wittenberg, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Since 1 January 2011, it is part of the town Oranienbaum-Wörlitz and it is situated south of the Elbe, east of Dessau. From 1683 on she had the Oranienbaum Palace erected according to plans by the Dutch architect Cornelis Ryckwaert, the parks are today included into the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000
32.
Monuments
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The term monument is often applied to buildings or structures that are considered examples of important architectural and/or cultural heritage. Monuments have been created for thousands of years, and they are often the most durable, in more recent times, monumental structures such as the Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower have become iconic emblems of modern nation-states. The term monumentality relates to the status and physical presence of a monument. Monuments are frequently used to improve the appearance of a city or location, planned cities such as Washington D. C. New Delhi and Brasília are often built around monuments, for example, the Washington Monuments location was conceived by LEnfant to help organize public space in the city, before it was designed or constructed. Older cities have monuments placed at locations that are important or are sometimes redesigned to focus on one. As Shelley suggested in his famous poem Ozymandias, the purpose of monuments is often to impress or awe. Structures created for purposes that have been made notable by their age. This can happen because of age and size, as in the case of the Great Wall of China. Monuments are also designed to convey historical or political information. They can be used to reinforce the primacy of political power. The social meanings of monuments are rarely fixed and certain and are contested by different social groups. This contention of meaning is a theme of modern post processual archaeological discourse. Until recently, it was customary for archaeologists to study large monuments, New ideas about what constitutes the archaeological record have revealed that certain legislative and theoretical approaches to the subject are too focused on earlier definitions of monuments. An example has been the United Kingdoms Scheduled Ancient Monument laws, recently, more and more monuments are being preserved digitally through organisations as CyArk. Cenotaphs and other memorials to commemorate the dead, usually war casualties, e. g. India Gate and Vimy Ridge Memorial, or disaster casualties, such as the Titanic Memorial, Belfast. Church monuments to commemorate the dead, located above or near their grave, often featuring an effigy, columns, often topped with a statue, e. g. Berlin Victory Column, Nelsons Column in London, and Trajans Column in Rome. Gravestones, small monuments to the deceased, placed at their gravesites, e. g. the tombs and vaults of veterans in Les Invalides, mausoleums and tombs to honor the dead, e. g. the Great Pyramid of Giza and Taj Mahal
33.
UNESCO
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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations based in Paris. It is the heir of the League of Nations International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, UNESCO has 195 member states and nine associate members. Most of its offices are cluster offices covering three or more countries, national and regional offices also exist. UNESCO pursues its objectives through five major programs, education, natural sciences, social/human sciences, culture and it is also a member of the United Nations Development Group. UNESCO and its mandate for international cooperation can be traced back to a League of Nations resolution on 21 September 1921, on 18 December 1925, the International Bureau of Education began work as a non-governmental organization in the service of international educational development. However, the work of predecessor organizations was largely interrupted by the onset of World War II. On 30 October 1943, the necessity for an organization was expressed in the Moscow Declaration, agreed upon by China, the United Kingdom, the United States. This was followed by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference proposals of 9 October 1944, a prominent figure in the initiative for UNESCO was Rab Butler, the Minister of Education for the United Kingdom. At the ECO/CONF, the Constitution of UNESCO was introduced and signed by 37 countries, the Preparatory Commission operated between 16 November 1945, and 4 November 1946—the date when UNESCOs Constitution came into force with the deposit of the twentieth ratification by a member state. The first General Conference took place between 19 November to 10 December 1946, and elected Dr. Julian Huxley to Director-General and this change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the CICI, in how member states would work together in the organizations fields of competence. In 1956, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO claiming that some of the organizations publications amounted to interference in the racial problems. South Africa rejoined the organization in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, UNESCOs early work in the field of education included the pilot project on fundamental education in the Marbial Valley, Haiti, started in 1947. This project was followed by missions to other countries, including, for example. In 1948, UNESCO recommended that Member States should make free primary education compulsory, in 1990, the World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien, Thailand, launched a global movement to provide basic education for all children, youths and adults. Ten years later, the 2000 World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, UNESCOs early activities in culture included, for example, the Nubia Campaign, launched in 1960. The purpose of the campaign was to move the Great Temple of Abu Simbel to keep it from being swamped by the Nile after construction of the Aswan Dam, during the 20-year campaign,22 monuments and architectural complexes were relocated. This was the first and largest in a series of campaigns including Mohenjo-daro, Fes, Kathmandu, Borobudur, the organizations work on heritage led to the adoption, in 1972, of the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The World Heritage Committee was established in 1976 and the first sites inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978, since then important legal instruments on cultural heritage and diversity have been adopted by UNESCO member states in 2003 and 2005
34.
World Heritage Sites
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A World Heritage Site is a landmark which has been officially recognized by the United Nations, specifically by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Sites are selected on the basis of having cultural, historical, scientific or some form of significance. UNESCO regards these sites as being important to the interests of humanity. The programme catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common culture, under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund. The program was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the Worlds Cultural and Natural Heritage, since then,192 state parties have ratified the convention, making it one of the most adhered to international instruments. As of July 2016,1052 sites are listed,814 cultural,203 natural, in 1959, the governments of Egypt and Sudan requested UNESCO to assist their countries to protect and rescue the endangered monuments and sites. In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO launched an appeal to the Member States for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, the campaign, which ended in 1980, was considered a success. The project cost $80 million, about $40 million of which was collected from 50 countries, the projects success led to other safeguarding campaigns, saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, and the Borobodur Temple Compounds in Indonesia. UNESCO then initiated, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the United States initiated the idea of cultural conservation with nature conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968, the Convention came into force on 17 December 1975. As of June 2016, it has been ratified by 192 states, including 188 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See, Niue, a country must first list its significant cultural and natural sites, the result is called the Tentative List. A country may not nominate sites that have not been first included on the Tentative List, next, it can place sites selected from that list into a Nomination File. The Nomination File is evaluated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and these bodies then make their recommendations to the World Heritage Committee. There are ten selection criteria – a site must meet at least one of them to be included on the list, up to 2004, there were six criteria for cultural heritage and four criteria for natural heritage. In 2005, this was modified so there is now only one set of ten criteria. Nominated sites must be of outstanding value and meet at least one of the ten criteria. Thus, the Geneva Convention treaty promulgates, Article 53, PROTECTION OF CULTURAL OBJECTS AND OF PLACES OF WORSHIP. There are 1,052 World Heritage Sites located in 165 States Party, of these,814 are cultural,203 are natural and 35 are mixed properties
35.
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius
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Born in Berlin, Walter Gropius was the third child of Walter Adolph Gropius and Manon Auguste Pauline Scharnweber. In 1915 Gropius married Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav Mahler, Walter and Almas daughter, named Manon after Walters mother, was born in 1916. When Manon died of polio at age 18, in 1935, Gropius and Alma divorced in 1920. On 16 October 1923, Gropius married Ilse Frank, and they remained together until his death in 1969 and they adopted a daughter together, Beate Gropius, known as Ati. Ise Gropius died on 9 June 1983 in Lexington, Massachusetts, Walter Gropius was drafted August 1914 and served as a sergeant and then as a lieutenant in the signal corps in the First World War. He survived being buried under rubble and dead bodies, and shot out of the sky with a dead pilot. He was awarded the Iron Cross twice, Gropius then, like his father and his great-uncle Martin Gropius before him, became an architect. Gropius could not draw, and was dependent on collaborators and partner-interpreters throughout his career, in school he hired an assistant to complete his homework for him. His fellow employees at this time included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, in 1910 Gropius left the firm of Behrens and together with fellow employee Adolf Meyer established a practice in Berlin. Together they share credit for one of the seminal modernist buildings created during this period, the Faguswerk in Alfeld-an-der-Leine, Germany, the factory is now regarded as one of the crucial founding monuments of European modernism. Gropius was commissioned in 1913 to design a car for the Prussian Railroad Locomotive Works in Königsberg and this locomotive was unique and the first of its kind in Germany and perhaps in Europe. Other works of early period include the office and factory building for the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne. In 1913, Gropius published an article about The Development of Industrial Buildings, Gropiuss career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Called up immediately as a reservist, Gropius served as a sergeant major at the Western front during the war years and was wounded, Gropius was awarded an Iron Cross while fighting for four years for Germany on the Western Front. Gropiuss career advanced in the postwar period, henry van de Velde, the master of the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar was asked to step down in 1915 due to his Belgian nationality. His recommendation for Gropius to succeed him led eventually to Gropiuss appointment as master of the school in 1919, in principle, the Bauhaus represented an opportunity to extend beauty and quality to every home through well designed industrially produced objects. The Bauhaus program was experimental and the emphasis, was theoretical, one example product of the Bauhaus was the armchair F51, designed for the Bauhauss directors room in 1920 – nowadays a re-edition in the market, manufactured by the German company TECTA/Lauenfoerde. In 1919, Gropius was involved in the Glass Chain utopian expressionist correspondence under the pseudonym Mass
36.
Oskar Schlemmer
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Oskar Schlemmer was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school. In 1923 he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop and his most famous work is Triadisches Ballett, in which the actors are transfigured from the normal to geometrical shapes. Also in Slat Dance and Treppenwitz, the performers costumes make them into living sculpture, born in September 1888 in Stuttgart, Oskar Schlemmer was the youngest of six children. His parents, Carl Leonhard Schlemmer and Mina Neuhaus, both died around 1900 and the young Oskar lived with his sister and learned at an age to provide for himself. By 1903 he was independent and supporting himself as an apprentice in an inlay workshop. Oskar Schlemmer studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule as well as the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart under the tutelage of landscape painters Christian Landenberger, in 1910 Schlemmer moved to Berlin where he painted some of his first important works before returning to Stuttgart in 1912 as Adolf Hölzels master pupil. In 1919 Schlemmer turned to sculpture and had an exhibition of his work at the Gallery Der Sturm in Berlin and his complex ideas were influential, making him one of the most important teachers working at the school at that time. Schlemmer became known internationally with the première of his Triadisches Ballett in Stuttgart in 1922 and his work for the Bauhaus and his preoccupation with the theatre are an important factor in his work, which deals mainly with the problematic of the figure in space. People, typically stylised faceless female figures, continued to be the predominant subject in his painting, while at Bauhaus, he developed the multidisciplinary course Der Mensch. In the human form he saw a measure that could provide a foothold in the disunity of his time, Schlemmers characteristic forms can be seen in his sculptures as well as his paintings. Yet he also turned his attention to design, first getting involved with this in 1929, executing settings for the opera Nightingale. From 1928 to 1930, Schlemmer worked on nine murals for a room in the Folkwang Museum in Essen, after leaving the Bauhaus in 1929, Schlemmer took a post at the Akademie in Breslau, where he painted his most celebrated work, the Bauhaustreppe. The Schlemmers then moved to Eichberg near the Swiss border, the last ten years of his life were spent in a state of inner emigration. Max Bill, in his obituary of Schlemmer, wrote that it was as if a curtain of silence had descended over him during this time. During World War II Schlemmer worked at the Institut für Malstoffe in Wuppertal along with Willi Baumeister and Georg Muche, the factory offered Schlemmer the opportunity to paint without the fear of persecution. His series of eighteen small, mystical paintings entitled Fensterbilder were painted while looking out the window of his house and these were Schlemmers final works before his death in the hospital at Baden-Baden in 1943. Schlemmers ideas on art were complex and challenging even for the progressive Bauhaus movement and his work, nevertheless, was widely exhibited in both Germany and outside the country. His work was a rejection of pure abstraction, instead retaining a sense of the human, though not in the emotional sense and he represented bodies as architectural forms, reducing the figure to a rhythmic play between convex, concave and flat surfaces
37.
Klee
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Paul Klee was a Swiss-German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism and he and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality. First of all, the art of living, then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, as the second child of German music teacher Hans Wilhelm Klee and Swiss singer Ida Marie Klee, née Frick. His sister Mathilde was born on 28 January 1876 in Walzenhausen and their father came from Tann and studied at the Stuttgart Conservatory singing, piano, organ and violin, meeting there his future wife Ida Frick. Hans Wilhelm Klee was active as a teacher at the Bern State Seminary in Hofwil near Bern until 1931. Klee was able to develop his skills as his parents encouraged and inspired him until his death. In 1880, his family moved to Bern, where they moved 17 years later after numerous changes of residence into a house at the Kirchenfeld district. From 1886 to 1890, Klee visited primary school and received, at the age of 7 and he was so talented on violin that, aged 11, he received an invitation to play as an extraordinary member of the Bern Music Association. He stated, I didnt find the idea of going in for music creatively particularly attractive in view of the decline in the history of musical achievement. As a musician, he played and felt emotionally bound to traditional works of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, at sixteen, Klee’s landscape drawings already show considerable skill. Around 1897, Klee started his diary, which he kept until 1918, during his school years, he avidly drew in his school books, in particular drawing caricatures, and already demonstrating skill with line and volume. He barely passed his exams at the Gymnasium of Bern. With his characteristic dry wit, he wrote, After all, it’s rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks. On his own time, in addition to his interests in music and art, Klee was a great reader of literature. With his parents reluctant permission, in 1898 Klee began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and he excelled at drawing but seemed to lack any natural color sense. He later recalled, During the third winter I even realized that I probably would never learn to paint, during these times of youthful adventure, Klee spent much time in pubs and had affairs with lower class women and artists models. He had a son in 1900 who died several weeks after birth
38.
Hugo Junkers
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Hugo Junkers was a German engineer and aircraft designer. As such, he is credited with pioneering the design of all-metal airplanes. As founder of the Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG, he was one of the mainstays of the German aircraft industry in the years between World War I and World War II. In particular, his multi-engined all-metal passenger- and freight planes helped establish airlines in Germany, although his name is also linked to some of the most successful German warplanes of the Second World War, Hugo Junkers himself had nothing to do with their development. He was forced out of his own company by the Nazi government in 1934 and died on his 76th birthday, as well as aircraft, Junkers also built both diesel and petrol engines and held various thermodynamic and metallurgical patents. He was also one of the sponsors of the Bauhaus movement. Junkers was born in Rheydt in the Prussian Rhine Province, the son of a well-off industrialist, after taking his Abitur exams in 1878, he attended the Royal Polytechnic University in Charlottenburg and the Royal Technical University in Aachen, where he completed his engineering studies in 1883. At first, he returned to Rheydt to work in his fathers company, Slaby placed him with the Continental-Gasgesellschaft in Dessau, where he worked on the development of the first opposed-piston engine. In order to measure heating value, Junkers patented a calorimeter, Junkers personally introduced the calorimeter at the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where it was awarded a gold medal. The next year, he patented a gas-fired bath boiler, which he refined as a tankless heater, in 1895, he founded Junkers & Co. to utilize his inventions. From 1897, he was offered a professorship of engineering at Aachen. Junkers aeronautical work began in earnest only at the age of fifty, Reissner had developed an all-metal aircraft, on which work first started in 1909 at the Brand Heath, equipped with corrugated iron wings built by Junkers & Co. in Dessau. The iron wings were patented one year later, Junkers had a wind tunnel built and invented a hydraulic brake. He had far-sighted ideas of metal aeroplanes and flying wings, during World War I, the government forced him to focus on aircraft production. In 1915, he developed the worlds first practical aircraft design, the Junkers J1 Blechesel. During this time, the German governments IdFlieg military aviation inspectorate forced him to merge his firm with Anthony Fokkers to form the Junkers-Fokker Aktiengesellschaft on 20 October 1917. By 1918, his firm had created the worlds first low-winged, single-seat fighter aircraft, the Junkers D. I, however, the D. I did not enter production until 1918. He also produced a two-seat fighter, the Junkers CL. I, the Junkers F.13 of 1919 was the first of several successful civil aircraft designs produced by Junkers Flugzeugwerke, later designs include the Junkers Ju 52/3m from 1932
39.
Newspaper
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A newspaper is a serial publication containing news about current events, other informative articles about politics, sports, arts, and so on, and advertising. A newspaper is usually, but not exclusively, printed on relatively inexpensive, the journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often metonymically called newspapers. As of 2017, most newspapers are now published online as well as in print, the online versions are called online newspapers or news websites. Newspapers are typically published daily or weekly, News magazines are also weekly, but they have a magazine format. General-interest newspapers typically publish news articles and feature articles on national and international news as well as local news, typically the paper is divided into sections for each of those major groupings. Papers also include articles which have no byline, these articles are written by staff writers, a wide variety of material has been published in newspapers. As of 2017, newspapers may also provide information about new movies, most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue. Some newspapers are government-run or at least government-funded, their reliance on advertising revenue, the editorial independence of a newspaper is thus always subject to the interests of someone, whether owners, advertisers, or a government. Some newspapers with high editorial independence, high quality. This is a way to avoid duplicating the expense of reporting from around the world, circa 2005, there were approximately 6,580 daily newspaper titles in the world selling 395 million print copies a day. Worldwide annual revenue approached $100 billion in 2005-7, then plunged during the financial crisis of 2008-9. Revenue in 2016 fell to only $53 billion, hurting every major publisher as their efforts to gain online income fell far short of the goal. Besides remodeling advertising, the internet has also challenged the business models of the era by crowdsourcing both publishing in general and, more specifically, journalism. In addition, the rise of news aggregators, which bundle linked articles from online newspapers. Increasing paywalling of online newspapers may be counteracting those effects, the oldest newspaper still published is the Gazzetta di Mantova, which was established in Mantua in 1664. While online newspapers have increased access to newspapers by people with Internet access, literacy is also a factor which prevents people who cannot read from being able to benefit from reading newspapers. Periodicity, They are published at intervals, typically daily or weekly. This ensures that newspapers can provide information on newly-emerging news stories or events, currency, Its information is as up to date as its publication schedule allows
40.
Leipzig
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Leipzig is the largest city in the federal state of Saxony, Germany. With a population of 570,087 inhabitants it is Germanys tenth most populous city, Leipzig is located about 160 kilometres southwest of Berlin at the confluence of the White Elster, Pleisse, and Parthe rivers at the southern end of the North German Plain. Leipzig has been a city since at least the time of the Holy Roman Empire. The city sits at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, Leipzig was once one of the major European centers of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing. Leipzig became an urban center within the German Democratic Republic after the Second World War. Leipzig later played a significant role in instigating the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, through events which took place in, Leipzig today is an economic center and the most livable city in Germany, according to the GfK marketing research institution. Since the opening of the Leipzig City Tunnel in 2013, Leipzig forms the centerpiece of the S-Bahn Mitteldeutschland public transit system, Leipzig is currently listed as Gamma World City and Germanys Boomtown. Outside of Leipzig the Neuseenland district forms a lake area of approximately 300 square kilometres. Leipzig is derived from the Slavic word Lipsk, which means settlement where the linden trees stand, an older spelling of the name in English is Leipsic. The Latin name Lipsia was also used, the name is cognate with Lipetsk in Russia and Liepāja in Latvia. In 1937 the Nazi government officially renamed the city Reichsmessestadt Leipzig, the common usage of this nickname for Leipzig up until the present is reflected, for example, in the name of a popular blog for local arts and culture, Heldenstadt. de. Leipzig was first documented in 1015 in the chronicles of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg as urbs Libzi and endowed with city, Leipzig Trade Fair, started in the Middle Ages, became an event of international importance and is the oldest remaining trade fair in the world. During the Thirty Years War, two battles took place in Breitenfeld, about 8 kilometres outside Leipzig city walls, the first Battle of Breitenfeld took place in 1631 and the second in 1642. Both battles resulted in victories for the Swedish-led side, on 24 December 1701, an oil-fueled street lighting system was introduced. The city employed light guards who had to follow a schedule to ensure the punctual lighting of the 700 lanterns. The Leipzig region was the arena of the 1813 Battle of Leipzig between Napoleonic France and a coalition of Prussia, Russia, Austria and Sweden. It was the largest battle in Europe prior to the First World War, in 1913 the Monument to the Battle of the Nations celebrating the centenary of this event was completed. The railway station has two entrance halls, the eastern one for the Royal Saxon State Railways and the western one for the Prussian state railways
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Halle, Saxony-Anhalt
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Halle is a city in the southern part of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. Halle is an economic and educational center in central-eastern Germany, the University of Halle-Wittenberg is the largest university in Saxony-Anhalt and one of the oldest universities in Germany, and a nurturing ground for the local startup ecosystem. Together with Leipzig, Halle is at the heart of the Central German Metropolitan Region, Leipzig, one of eastern Germanys other major cities, is only 35 kilometres away. Halles early history is connected with harvesting of salt, the name Halle reflects early Celtic settlement given that halen is the Brythonic word for salt. The name of the river Saale also contains the Germanic root for salt, the Latin name Hala Saxonum was also used. The town was first mentioned in AD806, according to historic documents, the city of Halle has been a member of the Hanseatic League at least since 1281. By the 1740s, Halle had established many orphanages as well as schools for the wealthy in the sober style Pietism encouraged and this Halle education was the first time the modern education system was established. The Halle Pietists were also combated poverty, the Battle of Halle was fought between French and Prussian forces on 17 October 1806. The fighting moved from the bridges on the citys west side, through the streets and market place. In 1815, Halle became part of the Prussian Province of Saxony, in Ammendorf, a large factory owned by Orgacid produced mustard gas. Near the end of World War II, there were two bombing raids carried out against the town, the first on 31 March 1945, the second a few days later. The first attack took place between the station and the citys centre, and the second bombing was in the southern district. It killed over 1,000 inhabitants and destroyed 3,600 buildings, among them, the Market Church, St. George Church, the Old Town Hall, the City Theatre, historic buildings on Bruederstrasse and on Grosse Steinstrasse, and the city cemetery. On 17 April 1945, American soldiers occupied Halle, and the red tower was set on fire by artillery, the Market Church and the Church of St. George received more hits. However, the city was spared further damage because an aerial bombardment was canceled, in July, the Americans withdrew and the city was occupied by the Red Army. After World War II, Halle served as the capital of the administrative region of Saxony-Anhalt until 1952. As a part of East Germany, it functioned as the capital of the district of Halle. When Saxony-Anhalt was re-established as a Bundesland in 1990, Magdeburg, not Halle, Halloren Chocolate Factory and visitors centre, Germanys oldest chocolate factory still in use
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Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk
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Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk is the public broadcaster for the federal states of Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. Established in January 1991, it has its headquarters in Leipzig and regional studios in Dresden, Erfurt, MDR broadcasts its own television channel to the three states it serves and also contributes programming to the first German TV channel, and broadcasts a number of radio channels. The main television studio is in Leipzig, and the radio studio is in Halle. There are also radio and TV studios in each of the three state capitals for the territory that MDR represents, Dresden, Erfurt, and Magdeburg. In 2012 87% of MDRs total annual income of €684,529,979 was derived from the fees payable by all households at the rate of €17,50. These fees are not collected directly by MDR but by the Beitragsservice owned jointly by ARD, the television network ZDF. MDR produces programming independently and in collaboration with other broadcasters, for transmission by a number of television, formerly DT64 cultural youth channel of East German broadcasting organisation. MDR KLASSIK - classical music The MDR operates two musical organizations and a ballet corps, the MDR Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1915 as Orchester des Konzertvereins. It became the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig in 1924, principal conductors have included Herbert Kegel, Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, Daniel Nazareth and Fabio Luisi. Since September 2007, Jun Märkl is the principal conductor. The MDR Radio Choir was founded in 1946 as the Rundfunkchor Leipzig, the MDR managed MDR TV Ballet, the only TV ballet company in Europe. It was founded in 1962 as DFF-Fernsehballet, reorganized in 1992, MDR sold the Ballet in 2012. Its now known as Deutsches Fernsehballett, MDR does not own its own transmission towers. They are owned and operated by Deutsche Telekom, several podcasts produced by MDR are available through the iTunes Music Store and via RSS. They are essentially repeats of regular programmes, including, Figaro, MDR Info, Programming Highlights, Riverboat, Sputnik. From 1991 to 2011 the Managing Director was Udo Reiter, followed by Karola Wille, MDR produces several programs for the ARD, including crime drama episodes for the series Tatort and Polizeiruf 110. MDR also produces the successful hospital series In aller Freundschaft and the animal series Abenteuer Zoo, Deutschlands wilde Tiere and Europas wilder Osten
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TV
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Television or TV is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in monochrome, or in color, and in two or three dimensions and sound. The term can refer to a set, a television program. Television is a medium for entertainment, education, news, politics, gossip. Television became available in experimental forms in the late 1920s. After World War II, a form of black-and-white TV broadcasting became popular in the United States and Britain, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses. During the 1950s, television was the medium for influencing public opinion. In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the US, for many reasons, the storage of television and video programming now occurs on the cloud. At the end of the first decade of the 2000s, digital television transmissions greatly increased in popularity, another development was the move from standard-definition television to high-definition television, which provides a resolution that is substantially higher. HDTV may be transmitted in various formats, 1080p, 1080i, in 2013, 79% of the worlds households owned a television set. Most TV sets sold in the 2000s were flat-panel, mainly LEDs, major manufacturers announced the discontinuation of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-backlit LCDs by the mid-2010s. In the near future, LEDs are gradually expected to be replaced by OLEDs, also, major manufacturers have announced that they will increasingly produce smart TVs in the mid-2010s. Smart TVs with integrated Internet and Web 2.0 functions became the dominant form of television by the late 2010s, Television signals were initially distributed only as terrestrial television using high-powered radio-frequency transmitters to broadcast the signal to individual television receivers. Alternatively television signals are distributed by cable or optical fiber, satellite systems and. Until the early 2000s, these were transmitted as analog signals, a standard television set is composed of multiple internal electronic circuits, including a tuner for receiving and decoding broadcast signals. A visual display device which lacks a tuner is correctly called a video monitor rather than a television, the word television comes from Ancient Greek τῆλε, meaning far, and Latin visio, meaning sight. The Anglicised version of the term is first attested in 1907 and it was. formed in English or borrowed from French télévision. In the 19th century and early 20th century, other. proposals for the name of a technology for sending pictures over distance were telephote. The abbreviation TV is from 1948, the use of the term to mean a television set dates from 1941
Argenteuil, France, since 1959 [5]
Klagenfurt, Austria, since 1971
Ludwigshafen, Rhineland-Palatinate, since 1988
Gliwice, Poland, since 1992
Roudnice nad Labem, Czech Republic
Dessau
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Roßlau
