1.
Nazi Germany
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Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Under Hitlers rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over all aspects of life. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943, the period is also known under the names the Third Reich and the National Socialist Period. The Nazi regime came to an end after the Allied Powers defeated Germany in May 1945, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the powers and offices of the Chancellery, a national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitlers person, and his word became above all laws, the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitlers favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending, extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen. The return to economic stability boosted the regimes popularity, racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitlers rule was ruthlessly suppressed, members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned, education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed, recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Beginning in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands and it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide gradually turned against the Nazis, who suffered major military defeats in 1943
2.
Gauleiter
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A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau. The word can be singular or plural, depending on the context, Gauleiter was the second highest Nazi Party paramilitary rank, subordinate only to the higher rank Reichsleiter and to the position of Führer. During World War II, the rank of Gauleiter was obtained only by appointment from Adolf Hitler. The first use of the term Gauleiter by the Nazi Party was in 1925 after Adolf Hitler refounded the Nazi party following the failed Beer Hall Putsch, the name derives from the German word Gau and Leiter. The word Gau is an old term for a region of the German Reich, the Frankish Realm and the Holy Roman Empire were subdivided in Gaue, which corresponds roughly with the english word shire. It is still in use today for some regions in Belgium and Switzerland, in the earliest days of the terms existence, Gauleiter were heads of election districts during a time period when the Nazis were attempting to gain political representation in the Weimar Republic. Gauleiter oversaw several politische Leiter who assisted the Nazis with election campaigns, in 1928, a mid-level official known as a Kreisleiter was introduced as an intermediary between the Gauleiter and the Political Leaders. It was also at this time that a political uniform was created for the Gauleiter, consisting of a brown Nazi Party shirt. In 1933, when the NSDAP took power and established the state of Nazi Germany, Gauleiter became the second-highest Nazi paramilitary rank, the Gauleiter now became the heads of the Gauleitung — the system of Nazi political regions set up to mirror the German states. Also at that time Gauleiter adopted the two-leaf collar insignia most often associated with the rank. In theory, a Gauleiter merely functioned as a representative of the Nazi Party who served to coordinate regional Nazi Party events, in practice, each Gauleiter had unquestioned authority in his particular area of responsibility. The legal governmental establishment merely existed as a stamp for the Gauleiter. Party control over the administration became institutionalized, as in many cases the Gauleiter also held the supreme civil administrative post in his areas. Within each Gau were a number of Kreise, followed by the Ort level, there were also two additional lower local levels, describing Party Cells and local Neighborhood Blocks. By this point, all political leaders wore official uniforms, with piping, the original insignia for a Gauleiter consisted of Army styled collar tabs, accompanied by a braided shoulder cord worn on a brown Nazi Party shirt. After 1933, the Gauleiter adopted a two oak leaf insignia worn on a colored collar patch. The Stellvertreter-Gauleiter wore a single oak leaf, the Gauleiter insignia, however, was considered too well entrenched to change and thus was not incorporated into the new insignia system. Both Gauleiter and Reichsleiter insignia was modified slightly to display a pronounced national eagle crest
3.
Federal Ministry of the Interior (Germany)
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The Federal Ministry of the Interior, abbreviated BMI, is cabinet-level ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany. Its main office is in Berlin, with a seat in Bonn. The current minister of the interior is Thomas de Maizière, the Reichsamt des Innern was the Ministry of the Interior of the German Empire. On the proposal of the Reichskanzler Otto von Bismarck it was created on 24 December 1879 by an Imperial decree from the Reich Chancellery, like the other Imperial Offices it was directly under the control of the Reichskanzler. The seat of the office was in Berlin and it was managed by a Secretary of State, the gazette for the publication of official notices was run by the Office from 1880. Entitled the Zentralblatt für das Deutsche Reich, it had published by the Reich Chancellery from 1873 until 1879. From 1923 until 1945, the published the government gazette. On 1 November 1934 it was united with the Prussian Ministry of the Interior as the Reichs- und Preußischen Ministerium des Innern, in 1945, the Imperial Ministry of the Interior was succeeded by the present Federal Ministry. It is host to the Standing Committee of Interior Ministers and also drafts all passport, identity card, firearms, the minister is supported by two parliamentary state secretaries and two state secretaries who manage the ministrys various departments. One of the latter manages P, B, IS and M departments plus the crisis management cell and the working group on counter-intelligence development. The other supervises Z, G, D, O, SP and V departments plus the information technology director, data protection and freedom of information office, P Department is the ministry’s police department and has two branches, law enforcement and counter-terrorism. It analyses crime control issues and develops concepts and drafts laws to improve law enforcement and it also manages the Federal Criminal Police Office, coordinates police support group deployments and represents federal interests in the sport and security arena. Due to Germanys federal structure, it can only promote internal security and public safety by cooperating with the police forces and with agencies within the European Union. IS Department is the security department that protects the German state against political extremism. It exercises supervisory control over the Federal Office for Constitution Protection, studies extremist groups, in addition, the department is responsible for the security of classified information and prevention of sabotage and espionage. It also manages civil defense and emergency management efforts at the level and exercises supervisory control over the Civil Protection Center. B Department supervises and manages German Federal Police operations, M Department is responsible for immigration, integration, refugees and European harmonisation. Z Department is the central office, G Department is responsible for policy, Europe and international developments D Department is responsible for the civil service
4.
Wilhelm Frick
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After the end of World War II, he was tried and convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials and executed by hanging. Frick was born in the Palatinate municipality of Alsenz, then part of the Kingdom of Bavaria, Germany and he attended the gymnasium in Kaiserslautern, passing his Abitur exams in 1896. He went on studying philology at the University of Munich, but soon turned to study law in Heidelberg and Berlin, taking the Staatsexamen in 1900. Serving as a referendary since 1900, he joined the Bavarian civil service in 1903 and he was appointed a Bezirksamtassessor in Pirmasens in 1907 and became acting district executive in 1914. Rejected as unfit, Frick did not serve in World War I and he was promoted to the official rank of a Regierungsassessor and, at his own request, re-assumed his post at the Munich Police Department by 1917. On 25 April 1910, Frick had married Elisabetha Emilie Nagel in Pirmasens and they had two sons and a daughter. The marriage ended in a divorce in 1934. A few weeks later, on 12 March, Frick remarried in Münchberg to Margarete Schultze-Naumburg, Margarete gave birth to a son and a daughter. In Munich, Frick witnessed the end of the war and the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and he sympathized with Freikorps paramilitary units fighting against the Bavarian government of Premier Kurt Eisner. Chief of Police Ernst Pöhner introduced him to Adolf Hitler, whom he helped willingly with obtaining permissions to hold political rallies and demonstrations. Elevated to the rank of an Oberamtmann and head of the Kriminalpolizei security service from 1923, he, Frick tried to suppress the State Polices operation, wherefore he was arrested and imprisoned, and tried for aiding and abetting high treason by the Peoples Court in April 1924. After several months in custody, he was given a sentence of 15 months imprisonment and was dismissed from his police job. Later during the proceedings, the dismissal was declared unfair and revoked. Frick went on to work at the Munich social insurance office from 1926 onwards, in the aftermath of the Putsch, Wilhelm Frick was elected a member of the German Reichstag parliament in the federal election of May 1924. He had been nominated by the National Socialist Freedom Movement, an electoral list of the far-right German Völkisch Freedom Party, on 1 September 1925, Frick joined the re-established Nazi Party. Frick also appointed the eugenicist Hans F. K and he was removed from office by a Social Democratic motion of no confidence in the Thuringian Landtag parliament on 1 April 1931. When Reich president Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on 30 January 1933, though Frick held a key position, especially in organizing the federal elections of March 1933, he initially had far less power than his counterparts in the rest of Europe. Notably, he had no authority over the police, in Germany law enforcement has traditionally been a state, indeed, the main reason that Hindenburg and Franz von Papen agreed to give the interior ministry to the Nazis was that it was almost powerless at the time
5.
Lebensraum
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The German concept of Lebensraum refers to policies and practices of settler colonialism which proliferated in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. The most extreme form of ideology was supported by the Nazi Party in the Third Reich until the end of World War II. First popularized around 1901, Lebensraum became a goal of Imperial Germany in World War I originally. Following Adolf Hitlers rise to power Lebensraum became a principle of Nazism. The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy was based on its tenets, the Third Reich aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum during World War II and thereafter. The entire populations were to be decimated by starvation, allowing for their own agricultural surplus to feed Germany, hitler’s strategic program for world domination was based on the belief in the power of Lebensraum, pursued by a racially superior society. People deemed to be part of inferior races, within the territory of Lebensraum expansion, were subjected to expulsion or destruction. The eugenics of Lebensraum assumed the right of the German Aryan master race to remove indigenous people considered to be of inferior racial stock in the name of their own living space. Nazi Germany also supported other Arian nations pursuing their own Lebensraum, in the 19th century, the term Lebensraum was used by the German biologist, Oscar Peschel, in his 1860 review of Darwin’s Origins of Species. In 1901, Ratzel extended his thesis in his essay titled Lebensraum. S, established with the west-ward expansion of the American frontier, which was advocated and justified by the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Yet, to resolve German overpopulation, Ratzel said that Imperial Germany required overseas colonies to which surplus Germans ought to emigrate, the politician Adolf Hitler said that the National Socialist geopolitics of inevitable expansion would reverse overpopulation, provide natural resources, and uphold German national honor. The Russian recognition of Ukraines separation, exacted at Brest–Litovsk, represented the key element in German efforts to keep Russia perpetually subservient, in addition, German troops held the Crimea, and were stationed, in smaller numbers, in Transcaucasia. Even the unoccupied rump Russia appeared — with the conclusion of the German–Soviet Supplementary Treaty, on 28 August 1918 — to be in firm, though indirect, dependency on the Reich. Thus, Hitlers long-range aim, fixed in the 1920s, of erecting a German Eastern Imperium on the ruins of the Soviet Union was not simply a vision emanating from an abstract wish. In the Eastern sphere, established in 1918, this goal had a point of departure. The German Eastern Imperium had already been — if only for a short time — a reality, in The Origins of the Second World War the British historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote. It is equally obvious that Lebensraum always appeared as one element in these blueprints and this was not an original idea of Hitlers. It was commonplace at the time, volk ohne Raum, for instance, by Hans Grimm sold much better than Mein Kampf when it was published in 1925
6.
Czechoslovakia
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From 1939 to 1945, following its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, the state did not de facto exist but its government-in-exile continued to operate. From 1948 to 1990, Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc with a command economy and its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949, and its defense status in the Warsaw Pact of May 1955. A period of liberalization in 1968, known as the Prague Spring, was forcibly ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by several other Warsaw Pact countries. In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the two states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Form of state 1918–1938, A democratic republic, 1938–1939, After annexation of Sudetenland by Nazi Germany in 1938, the region gradually turned into a state with loosened connections among the Czech, Slovak, and Ruthenian parts. A large strip of southern Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine was annexed by Hungary, 1939–1945, The region was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic. A government-in-exile continued to exist in London, supported by the United Kingdom, United States and its Allies, after the German invasion of Russia, Czechoslovakia adhered to the Declaration by United Nations and was a founding member of the United Nations. 1946–1948, The country was governed by a government with communist ministers, including the prime minister. Carpathian Ruthenia was ceded to the Soviet Union, 1948–1989, The country became a socialist state under Soviet domination with a centrally planned economy. In 1960, the country became a socialist republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It was a state of the Soviet Union. 1989–1990, The federal republic consisted of the Czech Socialist Republic, 1990–1992, Following the Velvet Revolution, the state was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, consisting of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Neighbours Austria 1918–1938, 1945–1992 Germany Hungary Poland Romania 1918–1938 Soviet Union 1945–1991 Ukraine 1991–1992 Topography The country was of irregular terrain. The western area was part of the north-central European uplands, the eastern region was composed of the northern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains and lands of the Danube River basin. Climate The weather is mild winters and mild summers, influenced by the Atlantic Ocean from the west, Baltic Sea from the north, and Mediterranean Sea from the south. The area was long a part of the Austro Hungarian Empire until the Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the new state was founded by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who served as its first president from 14 November 1918 to 14 December 1935. He was succeeded by his ally, Edvard Beneš. The roots of Czech nationalism go back to the 19th century, nationalism became a mass movement in the last half of the 19th century
7.
Free City of Danzig
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The Free City of Danzig was a semi-autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig and nearly 200 towns in the surrounding areas. It was created on 15 November 1920 in accordance with the terms of Article 100 of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles after the end of World War I. The Free City included the city of Danzig and other towns, villages. As the Treaty stated, the region was to remain separated from post-World War I Germany and from the independent nation of the Second Polish Republic. The Free City was under League of Nations protection and put into a customs union with Poland. Poland was given rights to develop and maintain transportation, communication. The Free City was created in order to give Poland access to a well-sized seaport, while the citys population was majority-German, it had a significant ethnic Polish minority as well. The German population deeply resented being separated from Germany, and persecuted the Polish minority and this was especially true after the Nazi Party gained political control in 1935–36. Since Poland still was not in control of the seaport, especially regarding military equipment. In 1933, the government was taken over by the local Nazi Party. Due to anti-Semitic persecution and oppression, many Jews fled, after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Nazis abolished the Free City and incorporated the area into the newly formed Reichsgau of Danzig-West Prussia. The Nazis classified the Poles and Jews living in the city as subhumans, subjecting them to discrimination, forced labor, many were sent to death at Nazi concentration camps, including nearby Stutthof. During the citys conquest by the Soviet Army in the months of 1945. After the war, many surviving Germans were expelled to West or East Germany as members of the pre-war Polish ethnic minority started returning, due to these events, Gdańsk suffered severe underpopulation and did not recover until the late 1950s. The city subsequently became part of Poland as a consequence of the Potsdam Agreement, Danzig had an early history of independence. It was a player in the Prussian Confederation directed against the Teutonic Monastic State of Prussia. The Confederation stipulated with the Polish king, Casimir IV Jagiellon, in contrast, Ducal Prussia remained a Polish fief. Danzig and other such as Elbing and Thorn financed most of the warfare
8.
Second Polish Republic
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The Second Polish Republic, also known as the Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland, refers to the country of Poland between the First and Second World Wars. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland and it had access to the Baltic Sea via a short strip of coastline either side of the city of Gdynia. Between March and August 1939, Poland also shared a border with the then-Hungarian governorate of Subcarpathia, the Second Republic was significantly different in territory to the current Polish state. It included substantially more territory in the east and less in the west, the Second Republics land area was 388,634 km2, making it, in October 1938, the sixth largest country in Europe. After the annexation of Zaolzie, this grew to 389,720 km2, according to the 1921 census, the number of inhabitants was 27.2 million. By 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, almost a third of population came from minority groups,13. 9% Ukrainians, 10% Jews,3. 1% Belarusians,2. 3% Germans and 3. 4% Czechs, Lithuanians and Russians. At the same time, a significant number of ethnic Poles lived outside the country borders, Poland maintained a slow but steady level of economic development. By 1939, the Republic had become one of Europes major powers, the victorious Allies of World War I confirmed the rebirth of Poland in the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919. It was one of the stories of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Poland solidified its independence in a series of wars fought by the newly formed Polish Army from 1918 to 1921. The extent of the half of the interwar territory of Poland was settled diplomatically in 1922. In the course of World War I, Germany gradually gained overall dominance on the Eastern Front as the Imperial Russian Army fell back, German and Austro-Hungarian armies seized the Russian-ruled part of what became Poland. In a failed attempt to resolve the Polish question as quickly as possible, Berlin set up a German puppet state on 5 November 1916, with a governing Provisional Council of State, the Council administered the country under German auspices, pending the election of a king. A month before Germany surrendered on 11 November 1918 and the war ended, the Regency Council had dissolved the Council of State, with the notable exception of the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, most Polish political parties supported this move. On 23 October the Regency Council appointed a new government under Józef Świeżyński, in 1918–1919, over 100 workers councils sprang up on Polish territories, on 5 November 1918, in Lublin, the first Soviet of Delegates was established. On 6 November socialists proclaimed the Republic of Tarnobrzeg at Tarnobrzeg in Austrian Galicia, the same day the Socialist, Ignacy Daszyński, set up a Provisional Peoples Government of the Republic of Poland in Lublin. On Sunday,10 November at 7 a. m, Józef Piłsudski, newly freed from 16 months in a German prison in Magdeburg, returned by train to Warsaw. Piłsudski, together with Colonel Kazimierz Sosnkowski, was greeted at Warsaws railway station by Regent Zdzisław Lubomirski, next day, due to his popularity and support from most political parties, the Regency Council appointed Piłsudski as Commander in Chief of the Polish Armed Forces
9.
Klagenfurt
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Klagenfurt am Wörthersee is the capital of the federal state of Carinthia in Austria. With a population of 99,100, it is the sixth-largest city in the country, the city is the bishops seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gurk-Klagenfurt and home to the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt. The city of Klagenfurt is in southern Austria, midway across the nation and it is in the middle, almost as far from Innsbruck, to the west, as from Vienna, to the northeast. Klagenfurt is elevated 446 metres above sea level and covers an area of 120.03 square kilometres and it is on the lake Wörthersee and on the Glan River. The city is surrounded by several forest-covered hills and mountains with heights of up to 1,000 m, for example, to the south is the Karawanken mountain range, which separates Carinthia from Slovenia and Italy. Klagenfurt is divided into 16 districts, It is further divided into 25 Katastralgemeinden, Klagenfurt has a typical continental climate, with a fair amount of fog throughout the autumn and winter. The rather cold winters are, however, broken by occasional warmer periods due to wind from the Karawanken mountains to the south. The average temperature from 1961 and 1990 is 7.1 °C, in Old Slovene, cviljovec is a place haunted by such a wailing female ghost or cvilya. Thus they assumed that Klagenfurts name was a made by the German settlers of the original Slovene name of the neighbouring wetland. However, the earliest Slovene mention of Klagenfurt in the form of v Zelouzi dating from 1615 is 400 years more recent and this story was reported by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, who later became Pope Pius II. In 2007, the city changed its name to Klagenfurt am Wörthersee. However, since there are no settlements by the name of Klagenfurt anywhere. The feat is commemorated by a grandiose 9-ton Renaissance monument in the city centre, historically, the place was founded by the Spanheim Duke Herman as a stronghold sited across the commercial routes in the area. Its first mention dates from the late 12th century in a document in which Duke Ulric II, exempted St. Pauls Abbey from the toll charge in foro Chlagenvurth. In the following centuries, Klagenfurt suffered fires, earthquakes, invasions of locusts, and attacks from Turks, never before had such a thing happened. The new owners, however, brought about an economic renaissance, in 1863, the railway connection to St. During the 19th century, the city developed into an important centre of Carinthian Slovene culture, the Slovene national poet France Prešeren also spent a short part of his professional career there. Several Slovene language newspapers were published in the city, among them the Slovenski glasnik
10.
Carinthia
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Carinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps, it is noted for its mountains and its regional dialects belong to the Southern Bavarian group. Carinthian Slovene dialects, which predominated in the part of the region up to the first half of the 20th century, are now spoken by a small minority. Carinthias main industries are tourism, electronics, engineering, forestry, the multinational corporations Philips, Infineon and Siemens have large operations there. The etymology of the name “Carinthia”, similar to Carnia or Carniola, has not been conclusively established, the Ravenna Cosmography referred to a Slavic “Carantani” tribe as the eastern neighbours of the Bavarians. In his History of the Lombards, the 8th century chronicler Paul the Deacon mentions “Slavs in Carnuntum, likewise the Slovene name *korǫtanъ may have been adopted from the Latin *carantanum. The toponym Carinthia is also claimed to be related, deriving from pre-Slavic *carantia. The state stretches about 180 km in east-west and 70 km in north-south direction, with 9,536 km2 it is the fifth largest Austrian state by area. Most of the larger Carinthian towns and lakes are situated within the Klagenfurt Basin in the southeast and these Lower Carinthian lands differ from the mountainous Upper Carinthian region in the northwest, stretching up to the Alpine crest. The Carinthian lands are confined by mountain ranges, the Carnic Alps, the High Tauern mountain range with Mt Grossglockner,3,797 m, separates it from the state of Salzburg in the northwest. To the northeast and east beyond the Pack Saddle mountain pass is the state of Styria, the main river of Carinthia is the Drava, it makes up a continuous valley with East Tyrol to the west. Tributaries are the Gurk, the Glan, the Lavant, carinthias lakes including Wörther See, Millstätter See, Ossiacher See, and Faaker See are a major tourist attraction. The capital city is Klagenfurt, which in Slovenian is called Celovec, the next important town is Villach, both strongly linked economically. While some of these Slovene place names are official designations, the majority are Slovene colloquial usage, Carinthia has a humid continental climate, with hot and moderately wet summers and long harsh winters. In recent decades, winters have been exceptionally arid, the summer precipitation maxima often takes the form of heavy rain and thunderstorms, especially in the mountainous regions. The main Alpine ridge in the north is a divide with pronounced windward and leeward sides where foehn occurs regularly. Due to the terrain, numerous distinct microclimates exist. Nevertheless, the amount of sunshine hours is the highest of all states in Austria
11.
Krems an der Donau
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Krems an der Donau is a town of 23,992 inhabitants in Austria, in the federal state of Lower Austria. It is the fifth-largest city of Lower Austria and is approximately 70 kilometres west of Vienna, Krems is a city with its own statute, and therefore it is both a municipality and a district. Krems is located at the confluence of the Krems and Danube Rivers at the end of Wachau valley. Krems was first mentioned in 995 in a certificate of Otto III, for example, a childs grave, over 27,000 years old, was found here. This is the oldest grave found in Austria, during the 11th and 12th centuries, Chremis, as it was then called, was almost as large as Vienna. Krems is the producer of Marillenschnaps, an apricot brandy. Krems is the hometown of Martin Johann Schmidt, called Kremserschmidt, innenstadt Weinzierl Mitterau Stein Egelsee Rehberg Am Steindl Gneixendorf Lerchenfeld Krems-Süd The population in the agglomeration was about 50,000 at the end of 2010. Krems is a junction of the Wieselbus bus lines, which provides connections between Sankt Pölten and the different regions of Lower Austria. A network of four bus lines operates at intervals within the city. Every summer, a tourist train connects the ancient parts of the city museums, the central railway station. Swimming is available at Kremser Strandbad and outdoor
12.
Brno
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Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic by population and area, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia. Brno is the center of the South Moravian Region in which it forms a separate district. The city is also a significant administrative centre and it is the seat of a number of state authorities, including the Ombudsman, and the Office for the Protection of Competition. Brno is also an important centre of education, with 33 faculties belonging to 13 institutes of higher learning. Brno Exhibition Centre ranks among the largest exhibition centres in Europe, the complex opened in 1928 and established the tradition of large exhibitions and trade fairs held in Brno. Brno hosts motorbike and other races on the Masaryk Circuit, an established in 1930. Another cultural tradition is a fireworks competition, Ignis Brunensis. The other large preserved castle near the city is Veveří Castle by the Brno Dam Lake and this castle is the site of a number of legends, as are many other places in Brno. Another architectural monument of Brno is the functionalist Villa Tugendhat which has been included on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites, one of the natural sights nearby is the Moravian Karst. The etymology of the name Brno is disputed and it perhaps comes from Old Czech brnie muddy, swampy. Alternative derivations are from a Slavic verb brniti or a Celtic language spoken in the area before it was overrun by Germanic peoples, throughout its history, Brnos locals also referred to the town in other languages, including Brünn in German, ברין in Yiddish and Bruna in Latin. The city was referred to as Brunn in English. The Asteroid 2889 Brno was named after the city, as well as the Bren light machine gun, one of the most famous weapons of World War II. In the early 11th century Brno was established as a castle of a prince from the House of Přemyslid. Brno was first mentioned in Cosmas Chronica Boëmorum dated to year 1091, seats of these rulers and thus capitals of these territories were castles and towns of Brno, Olomouc, and Znojmo. In the late 12th century, Moravia began to reunify, forming the Margraviate of Moravia, since then, until the mid of the 17th century, it was not clear which town should be the capital of Moravia. Political power was therefore divided between Brno and Olomouc, but Znojmo also played an important role. The Moravian Diet, the Moravian Land Tables, and the Moravian Land Court were all seated in both cities at once, however, Brno was the official seat of the Moravian Margraves, and later its geographical position closer to Vienna also became important
