1.
Bordeaux
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Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France. The municipality of Bordeaux proper has a population of 243,626, together with its suburbs and satellite towns, Bordeaux is the centre of the Bordeaux Métropole. With 749,595 inhabitants and 1,178,335 in the area, it is the fifth largest in France, after Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Lille. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture of the Gironde department and its inhabitants are called Bordelais or Bordelaises. The term Bordelais may also refer to the city and its surrounding region, Bordeaux is the worlds major wine industry capital. It is home to the main wine fair, Vinexpo. Bordeaux wine has been produced in the region since the 8th century, the historic part of the city is on the UNESCO World Heritage List as an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble of the 18th century. After Paris, Bordeaux has the highest number of preserved buildings of any city in France. In historical times, around 300 BC it was the settlement of a Celtic tribe, the Bituriges Vivisci, the name Bourde is still the name of a river south of the city. In 107 BC, the Battle of Burdigala was fought by the Romans who were defending the Allobroges, a Gallic tribe allied to Rome, the Romans were defeated and their commander, the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus, was killed in the action. The city fell under Roman rule around 60 BC, its importance lying in the commerce of tin, later it became capital of Roman Aquitaine, flourishing especially during the Severan dynasty. In 276 it was sacked by the Vandals, further ravage was brought by the same Vandals in 409, the Visigoths in 414 and the Franks in 498, beginning a period of obscurity for the city. In the late 6th century, the city re-emerged as the seat of a county and an archdiocese within the Merovingian kingdom of the Franks, the city started to play a regional role as a major urban center on the fringes of the newly founded Frankish Duchy of Vasconia. Around 585, a certain Gallactorius is cited as count of Bordeaux, the city was plundered by the troops of Abd er Rahman in 732 after storming the fortified city and overwhelming the Aquitanian garrison. After Duke Eudess defeat, the Aquitanian duke could still save part of its troops, the following year, the Frankish commander descended again over Aquitaine, but clashed in battle with the Aquitanians and left to take on hostile Burgundian authorities and magnates. In 745, Aquitaine faced yet another expedition by Charles sons Pepin and Carloman against Hunald, Hunald was defeated, and his son Waifer replaced him, who in turn confirmed Bordeaux as the capital city. During the last stage of the war against Aquitaine, it was one of Waifers last important strongholds to fall to King Pepin the Shorts troops. Next to Bordeaux, Charlemagne built the fortress of Fronsac on a hill across the border with the Basques, in 778, Seguin was appointed count of Bordeaux, probably undermining the power of the Duke Lupo, and possibly leading to the Battle of Roncevaux Pass that very year
2.
French Third Republic
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It came to an end on 10 July 1940. Harsh reparations exacted by the Prussians after the war resulted in the loss of the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine, social upheaval, and the establishment of the Paris Commune. The early governments of the Third Republic considered re-establishing the monarchy, but confusion as to the nature of that monarchy, thus, the Third Republic, which was originally intended as a provisional government, instead became the permanent government of France. The French Constitutional Laws of 1875 defined the composition of the Third Republic and it consisted of a Chamber of Deputies and a Senate to form the legislative branch of government and a president to serve as head of state. The period from the start of World War I to the late 1930s featured sharply polarized politics, Adolphe Thiers called republicanism in the 1870s the form of government that divides France least, however, politics under the Third Republic were sharply polarized. On the left stood Reformist France, heir to the French Revolution, on the right stood conservative France, rooted in the peasantry, the Roman Catholic Church and the army. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 resulted in the defeat of France, after Napoleons capture by the Prussians at the Battle of Sedan, Parisian deputies led by Léon Gambetta established the Government of National Defence as a provisional government on 4 September 1870. The deputies then selected General Louis-Jules Trochu to serve as its president and this first government of the Third Republic ruled during the Siege of Paris. After the French surrender in January 1871, the provisional Government of National Defence disbanded, French territories occupied by Prussia at this time did not participate. The resulting conservative National Assembly elected Adolphe Thiers as head of a provisional government, due to the revolutionary and left-wing political climate that prevailed in the Parisian population, the right-wing government chose the royal palace of Versailles as its headquarters. The new government negotiated a settlement with the newly proclaimed German Empire. To prompt the Prussians to leave France, the government passed a variety of laws, such as the controversial Law of Maturities. The following repression of the communards would have consequences for the labor movement. The Orléanists supported a descendant of King Louis Philippe I, the cousin of Charles X who replaced him as the French monarch in 1830, his grandson Louis-Philippe, Comte de Paris. The Bonapartists were marginalized due to the defeat of Napoléon III and were unable to advance the candidacy of any member of his family, the Bonaparte family. Legitimists and Orléanists came to a compromise, eventually, whereby the childless Comte de Chambord would be recognised as king, consequently, in 1871 the throne was offered to the Comte de Chambord. Chambord believed the monarchy had to eliminate all traces of the Revolution in order to restore the unity between the monarchy and the nation, which the revolution had sundered apart. Compromise on this was if the nation were to be made whole again
3.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
4.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
5.
Intellectual
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Socially, intellectuals constitute the intelligentsia, a status class organised either by ideology, or by nationality. Man of Letters The English term Man of Letters derives from the French term belletrist, the term Man of Letters distinguished the literate man from the illiterate man, in a time when literacy was a rare form of cultural capital. In late 19th century, the term became common usage to denote the defenders of the falsely accused artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus. Likewise, in Tsarist Russia, there arose the intelligentsia, who were the class of white-collar workers. As such, politically radical thinkers already had participated in the French Revolution, Robert Darnton said that they were not societal outsiders, but respectable, domesticated, moreover, some intellectuals were anti-academic, despite universities being synonymous with intellectualism. Habermas Structural Transformation of Public Sphere made significant contribution to the notion of public intellectual by historically and conceptually delineating the idea of private, such civil servants earned academic degrees by means of imperial examination, and also were skilled calligraphers, and knew Confucian philosophy. Historian Wing-Tsit Chan concludes that, Generally speaking, the record of these scholar-gentlemen has been a worthy one and it was good enough to be praised and imitated in 18th century Europe. Nevertheless, it has given China a tremendous handicap in their transition from government by men to government by law, and personal considerations in Chinese government have been a curse. In Joseon Korea, the intellectuals were the literati, who knew how to read and write, socially, they constituted the petite bourgeoisie, composed of scholar-bureaucrats who administered the dynastic rule of the Joseon dynasty. The Italian Communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci developed Karl Marx’s conception of the intelligentsia to include political leadership in the public sphere and that, because all knowledge is existentially-based, the intellectuals, who create and preserve knowledge, are spokesmen for different social groups, and articulate particular social interests. That intellectuals occur in social class and throughout the right wing, the centre. That, as a class, the intellectuals view themselves as autonomous from the ruling class of their society. Therefore, the leadership of intellectuals is required for effecting and realizing social change, because, in the formal codification of Leninism, the Hungarian Marxist philosopher, György Lukács identified the intelligentsia as the privileged social class who provide revolutionary leadership. By means of intelligible and accessible interpretation, the intellectuals explain to the workers, the How. and the Why. of the social, economic, and political status quo—the ideological totality of society—and its practical, revolutionary application to the transformation of their society. The term public intellectual describes the intellectual participating in the discourse of society. In Representations of the Intellectual, Edward Saïd said that the … true intellectual is, therefore, always an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on the margins of society. An intellectual usually is associated with an ideology or with a philosophy and that intellectuals be mindful of the social and cultural ties created with their words, insights, and ideas, and should be heard as social critics of politics and power. In journalism, the term usually connotes a university academic of the humanities—especially a philosopher—who addresses important social and political matters of the day
6.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
7.
Marcel Proust
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He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. Proust was born in Auteuil at the home of his great-uncle on 10 July 1871 and he was born during the violence that surrounded the suppression of the Paris Commune, and his childhood corresponded with the consolidation of the French Third Republic. Prousts father, Adrien Proust, was a prominent pathologist and epidemiologist, studying cholera in Europe and he wrote numerous articles and books on medicine and hygiene. Prousts mother, Jeanne Clémence Weil, was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family from Alsace, literate and well-read, she demonstrated a well-developed sense of humour in her letters, and her command of English was sufficient to help with her sons translations of John Ruskin. Proust was raised in his fathers Catholic faith and he was baptized and later confirmed as a Catholic, but he never formally practiced that faith. He later became an atheist and was somewhat of a mystic, by the age of nine, Proust had had his first serious asthma attack, and thereafter he was considered a sickly child. Proust spent long holidays in the village of Illiers, in 1882, at the age of eleven, Proust became a pupil at the Lycée Condorcet, but his education was disrupted by his illness. Despite this he excelled in literature, receiving an award in his final year, thanks to his classmates, he was able to gain access to some of the salons of the upper bourgeoisie, providing him with copious material for In Search of Lost Time. As a young man, Proust was a dilettante and a social climber whose aspirations as a writer were hampered by his lack of self-discipline. His reputation from this period, as a snob and an amateur, contributed to his troubles with getting Swanns Way. It is through Mme Arman de Caillavet that he made the acquaintance of Anatole France, Proust had a close relationship with his mother. To appease his father, who insisted that he pursue a career, after exerting considerable effort, he obtained a sick leave that extended for several years until he was considered to have resigned. He never worked at his job, and he did not move from his parents apartment until after both were dead and his life and family circle changed markedly between 1900 and 1905. In February 1903, Prousts brother, Robert Proust, married and his father died in November of the same year. Finally, and most crushingly, Prousts beloved mother died in September 1905 and she left him a considerable inheritance. His health throughout this period continued to deteriorate, Proust spent the last three years of his life mostly confined to his bedroom, sleeping during the day and working at night to complete his novel. He died of pneumonia and an abscess in 1922. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, Proust was involved in writing and publishing from an early age
8.
Sorbonne
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The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which was the historical house of the former University of Paris. The name is derived from the Collège de Sorbonne, initiated during 1257 by the eponymous Robert de Sorbon as one of the first significant colleges of the medieval University of Paris. The university predates the college by about a century, and minor colleges had been founded already during the late 12th century, during the 16th century, the Sorbonne became involved with the intellectual struggle between Catholics and Protestants. The Collège de Sorbonne was suppressed during the French Revolution, reopened by Napoleon during 1808 and this was only one of the many colleges of the University of Paris that existed until the French revolution. After months of conflicts between students and authorities at the University of Paris at Nanterre, the administration closed that university on May 2,1968. Students at the Sorbonne campus in Paris met on May 3 to protest against the closure and the threatened expulsion of several students at Nanterre. More than 20,000 students, teachers and other endorsers marched towards the Sorbonne, still sealed off by the police, who charged, wielding their batons, as soon as the marchers approached. While the crowd dispersed, some began to make out of whatever was at hand, while others threw paving stones. The police then responded with tear gas and charged the crowd again, may 10 marked the Night of Barricades, where students used cars, wood, and cobblestones to barricade the streets of the Latin Quarter. Brutal street fighting ensued between students and riot police, most notably on Rue Gay-Lussac, early the next morning, as the fighting disbanded, Daniel Cohn-Bendit sent out a radio broadcast calling for a general strike. On Monday,13 May, more than one million workers went on strike, negotiations ended, and students returned to their campuses after a false report that the government had agreed to reopen them, only to discover police still occupying the schools. When the Sorbonne reopened, students occupied it and declared it an autonomous Peoples University, during 1970, the University of Paris was divided into thirteen universities, managed by a common rectorate, the Chancellerie des Universités de Paris, with offices in the Sorbonne. The building also houses the École Nationale des Chartes, the École pratique des hautes études, the Cours de Civilisation Française de la Sorbonne, nowadays, the use of the name refers more often to Panthéon-Sorbonne University for French public especially students in France. But, all Parisian universities like to refer as their ancestor, some alliances of universities use that name, like Sorbonne University. Listing of the works of Alexandre Falguière List of works by Henri Chapu La Sorbonne
9.
Paul Claudel
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Paul Claudel was a French poet, dramatist and diplomat, and the younger brother of the sculptress Camille Claudel. He was most famous for his dramas, which often convey his devout Catholicism. Claudel was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in six different years and he was born in Villeneuve-sur-Fère, into a family of farmers and government officials. His father, Louis-Prosper, dealt in mortgages and bank transactions and his mother, the former Louise Cerveaux, came from a Champagne family of Catholic farmers and priests. Having spent his first years in Champagne, he studied at the lycée of Bar-le-Duc and at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in 1881 and he would remain a strong Catholic for the rest of his life. He studied at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, the young Claudel seriously considered entering a Benedictine monastery, but in the end began a career in the French diplomatic corps, in which he would serve from 1893 to 1936. He was first vice-consul in New York, and later in Boston. C. while he served in Brazil during the First World War he supervised the continued provision of food supplies from South America to France. In 1936 he retired to his château in Brangues, after a long affair with Rosalie Vetch, a married woman with four children and pregnant with Claudels child, ended in February 1905, Claudel married Reine Sainte-Marie-Perrin on 15 March 1906. In his youth Claudel was heavily influenced by the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, like them, he was horrified by modern materialist views of life. Unlike most of them, his response was to embrace Catholicism, all his writings are passionate rejections of the idea of a mechanical or random universe, instead proclaiming the deep spiritual meaning of human life founded on Gods all-governing grace and love. Claudel wrote in a unique verse style and he rejected traditional metrics in favour of long, luxuriant, unrhymed lines of free verse, the so-called verset claudelien, influenced by the Latin psalms of the Vulgate. He used scenes of passionate, obsessive human love to convey with great power Gods infinite love for humanity and his plays were often extraordinarily long, sometimes stretching to eleven hours, and pressed the realities of material staging to their limits. Yet they were staged, at least in part, to rapturous acclaim. In later years he wrote texts to be set to music, most notably Jeanne dArc au Bûcher, as well as his verse dramas, Claudel also wrote much lyric poetry, for example the Cinq Grandes Odes. Claudel was always a controversial figure during his lifetime, and remains so today and his devout Catholicism and his right-wing political views, both slightly unusual stances among his intellectual peers, made him, and continue to make him, unpopular in many circles. As a Catholic, he could not avoid a sense of bitter satisfaction at the fall of the anti-clerical French Third Republic. Claudels diaries make clear his consistent contempt for Nazism, and his attitude to the Vichy regime quickly hardened into opposition. He also committed his sister Camille Claudel to a hospital in March 1913
10.
Saxony
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Its capital is Dresden, and its largest city is Leipzig. Saxony is the tenth largest of Germanys sixteen states, with an area of 18,413 square kilometres, located in the middle of a large, formerly all German-speaking part of Europe, the history of the state of Saxony spans more than a millennium. It has been a medieval duchy, an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire, a kingdom, the area of the modern state of Saxony should not be confused with Old Saxony, the area inhabited by Saxons. Old Saxony corresponds approximately to the modern German states of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony is divided into 10 districts,1. After a reform in 2008, these regions - with some alterations of their respective areas - were called Direktionsbezirke, in 2012, the authorities of these regions were merged into one central authority, the Landesdirektion Sachsen. The Erzgebirgskreis district includes the Ore Mountains, and the Schweiz-Osterzgebirge district includes Saxon Switzerland, the largest cities in Saxony according to the 31 December 2015 estimate. To this can be added that Leipzig forms a metropolitan region with Halle. The latter city is located just across the border to Saxony-Anhalt, Leipzig shares for instance an S-train system and an airport with Halle. Saxony has, after Saxony Anhalt, the most vibrant economy of the states of the former East Germany and its economy grew by 1. 9% in 2010. Nonetheless, unemployment remains above the German average, the eastern part of Germany, excluding Berlin, qualifies as an Objective 1 development-region within the European Union, and is eligible to receive investment subsidies of up to 30% until 2013. FutureSAX, a business competition and entrepreneurial support organisation, has been in operation since 2002. Microchip makers near Dresden have given the region the nickname Silicon Saxony, the publishing and porcelain industries of the region are well known, although their contributions to the regional economy are no longer significant. Today the automobile industry, machinery production and services contribute to the development of the region. Saxony is also one of the most renowned tourist destinations in Germany - especially the cities of Leipzig and Dresden, new tourist destinations are developing, notably in the lake district of Lausitz. Saxony reported an unemployment of 8. 8% in 2014. By comparison the average in the former GDR was 9. 8% and 6. 7% for Germany overall, the unemployment rate reached 8. 2% in May 2015. The Leipzig area, which recently was among the regions with the highest unemployment rate, could benefit greatly from investments by Porsche. With the VW Phaeton factory in Dresden, and many part suppliers, zwickau is another major Volkswagen location
French