Districts of Germany in the context of "Meißen (district)"

The Rhine (/raɪn/ RYNE) is one of the major rivers of Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Swiss-Austrian border. From Lake Constance downstream, it forms part of the Swiss-German border. After that the Rhine defines much of the Franco-German border. It then flows in a mostly northerly direction through the German Rhineland. Finally, the Rhine turns to flow predominantly west to enter the Netherlands, eventually emptying into the North Sea. It drains an area of 185,000 km.

Its name derives from the Gaulish Rēnos. There are two German states named after the river, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, in addition to several districts (e.g. Rhein-Sieg). The departments of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin in Alsace (France) are also named after the river. Some adjacent towns are named after it, such as Rheinau, Stein am Rhein, Rheineck, Rheinfelden (Switzerland) and Rheinfelden (Germany).

Furtwangen im Schwarzwald (German pronunciation: [ˈfʊʁtvaŋən ʔɪm ˈʃvaʁtsvalt], lit. 'Furtwangen in the Black Forest'; Low Alemannic: Furtwange im Schwarzwald) is a small city located in the Black Forest region of southwestern Germany. Together with Villingen-Schwenningen, Furtwangen is part of the district (German: Kreis) of Schwarzwald-Baar.

Donaueschingen (German pronunciation: [ˌdoːnaʊˈʔɛʃɪŋən] ; Low Alemannic: Eschinge) is a German town in the Black Forest in the southwest of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg in the Schwarzwald-Baar Kreis. It stands near the confluence of the two sources of the river Danube (in German: Donau).

Donaueschingen stands in a basin within low mountainous terrain. It is about 13 km (8.1 mi) south of Villingen-Schwenningen, 24 km (15 mi) west of Tuttlingen, and about 30 km (19 mi) north of the Swiss town of Schaffhausen. In 2015 the population was 21,750, making it the second largest town in the district (Kreis) of Schwarzwald-Baar. It is a regional rail hub.

Recklinghausen (German pronunciation: [ʁɛklɪŋˈhaʊzən] ) is a Kreis (district) in the centre of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is surrounded by the neighbouring districts of Borken, Coesfeld, Unna, Gelsenkirchen, Bottrop, and Wesel. The district administration is located in the city of the same name.

Apart from the Region Hannover, Kreis Recklinghausen is the largest non-city district in Germany by population.

The Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis is a district in the center of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is part of the southern Ruhr urban area and has ca. 324,000 inhabitants (2012). The district's seat (capital city) is Schwelm; the largest of its nine towns is Witten.

The Frisian languages (/ˈfriːʒən/ FREE-zhən or /ˈfrɪziən/ FRIZ-ee-ən) are a closely related group of West Germanic languages, spoken by about 400,000 Frisian people, who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. The Frisian languages are the closest living language group to the Anglic languages; the two groups make up the Anglo-Frisian languages group and together with the Low German dialects these form the North Sea Germanic languages. Despite the close genetic relationship between English and Frisian, the modern languages are not mutually intelligible. Geographical and historical circumstances have caused the two languages to drift apart linguistically.

Frisian is traditionally divided into three branches often labeled distinct Frisian languages even though the dialects within each branch are not necessarily mutually intelligible. West Frisian is by far the most spoken of the three and is an official language in the Dutch province of Friesland, where it is spoken on the mainland and on two of the West Frisian Islands: Terschelling and Schiermonnikoog. It is also spoken in four villages in the Westerkwartier of the neighbouring province of Groningen. North Frisian, the second branch, is spoken in the northernmost German district of Nordfriesland in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, on the North Frisian mainland and on the North Frisian Islands of Sylt, Föhr, Amrum, and the Halligs. It is also spoken on the islands of Heligoland and Düne in the North Sea. The third Frisian branch, East Frisian, has only one remaining variant, Sater Frisian, spoken in the municipality of Saterland in the Lower Saxon district of Cloppenburg. Surrounded by bogs, the four Saterlandic villages lie just outside the borders of East Frisia, in the Oldenburg Münsterland region. In East Frisia proper, East Frisian Low Saxon is spoken today, which is not a Frisian language, but a variant of Low German/Low Saxon.

The Hamburg Metropolitan Region (German: Metropolregion Hamburg) is a metropolitan region centred around the city of Hamburg in northern Germany, consisting of eight districts (Landkreise) in the federal state of Lower Saxony, six districts (Kreise) in the state of Schleswig-Holstein and two districts in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern along with the city-state of Hamburg itself. It covers an area of roughly 26,000 square kilometres (10,000 sq mi) and is home to more than 5.1 million inhabitants.

The demography of Germany is monitored by the Statistisches Bundesamt (Federal Statistical Office of Germany). According to the most recent data, Germany's population is 83,577,140 (31 December 2024) making it the most populous country in the European Union and the nineteenth-most populous country in the world. The total fertility rate was rated at 1.38 in 2023, significantly below the replacement rate of 2.1. For a long time Germany had one of the world's lowest fertility rates of around 1.3 to 1.4. Due to the low birth rate Germany has recorded more deaths than births every year since 1972, which means 2024 was the 53rd consecutive year the German population would have decreased without immigration. However, due to immigration the population has actually increased during the last half-century. In 2023 the number of people with a foreign background was 29.7%; this category includes foreigners, naturalized citizens, ethnic German repatriates from Eastern Europe and the children of all of the above.

Until the early 20th century Germany was also a large emigrant nation; in the 19th century more than 5 million citizens of the German Empire emigrated to the US alone, and in the early 20th century Germany lost another two million to the US as well as significant numbers to Latin America, Canada and Eastern Europe. However, after World War II immigration began to outweigh emigration, as around 14 million ethnic Germans were expelled from the former eastern provinces of the Reich and other areas in Eastern Europe. Of these, roughly 12 million made their way to present-day Germany and several hundred thousand settled in Austria and other countries, while several hundred thousand died. Some additional 4.5 million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe repatriated after 1950, especially around the end of the Eastern Bloc and mostly from the former Soviet Union, Poland and Romania.