New states of Germany in the context of "Anhalt"

Soil erosion is the denudation or wearing away of the upper layer of soil. It is a form of soil degradation. This natural process is caused by the dynamic activity of erosive agents, that is, water, ice (glaciers), snow, air (wind), plants, and animals (including humans). In accordance with these agents, erosion is sometimes divided into water erosion, glacial erosion, snow erosion, wind (aeolian) erosion, zoogenic erosion and anthropogenic erosion such as tillage erosion. Soil erosion may be a slow process that continues relatively unnoticed, or it may occur at an alarming rate causing a serious loss of topsoil. The loss of soil from farmland may be reflected in reduced crop production potential, lower surface water quality and damaged drainage networks. Soil erosion could also cause sinkholes.

Human activities have increased by 10–50 times the rate at which erosion is occurring world-wide.Excessive (or accelerated) erosion causes both "on-site" and "off-site" problems. On-site impacts include decreases in agricultural productivity and (on natural landscapes) ecological collapse, both because of loss of the nutrient-rich upper soil layers. In some cases, the eventual result is desertification. Off-site effects include sedimentation of waterways and eutrophication of water bodies, as well as sediment-related damage to roads and houses. Water and wind erosion are the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for about 84% of the global extent of degraded land, making excessive erosion one of the most significant environmental problems worldwide.

Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distinct from weathering which involves no movement. Removal of rock or soil as clastic sediment is referred to as physical or mechanical erosion; this contrasts with chemical erosion, where soil or rock material is removed from an area by dissolution. Eroded sediment or solutes may be transported just a few millimetres, or for thousands of kilometres.

Agents of erosion include rainfall; bedrock wear in rivers; coastal erosion by the sea and waves; glacial plucking, abrasion, and scour; areal flooding; wind abrasion; groundwater processes; and mass movement processes in steep landscapes like landslides and debris flows. The rates at which such processes act control how fast a surface is eroded. Typically, physical erosion proceeds the fastest on steeply sloping surfaces, and rates may also be sensitive to some climatically controlled properties including amounts of water supplied (e.g., by rain), storminess, wind speed, wave fetch, or atmospheric temperature (especially for some ice-related processes). Feedbacks are also possible between rates of erosion and the amount of eroded material that is already carried by, for example, a river or glacier. The transport of eroded materials from their original location is followed by deposition, which is arrival and emplacement of material at a new location.

The Suebi (also spelled Suevi or Suavi) were a large group of Germanic peoples first reported by Julius Caesar in the 1st century BC. In different contexts over several centuries, peoples within this umbrella category were sometimes simply called the Suebi, although all or most Suebian peoples had their own names as well. They originated near the Elbe River in what is now Eastern Germany. From there, Suebian groups spread across Central Europe, and in the 5th and 6th centuries some took over parts of Spain, Portugal and Italy. Archaeologically, the forerunners of the Suebi before contact with Rome are associated with the Jastorf culture. During the Roman imperial period the Suebi are associated with the so-called "Elbe Germanic peoples" who brought Elbe material culture into new areas to the south and southwest. Linguistically, although contemporary evidence for Roman-era Suebian language is scarce, they spoke a Germanic language, which is believed to be the main predecessor of medieval Old High German, and the modern German language, with all its related dialects.

With the advent of Roman dominance in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, some Suebi moved into Roman controlled regions near the Neckar river, while a powerful Suebian alliance outside their control maintained a tense relationship with the Roman empire. This was led by the Marcomanni, who settled with other Suebi in remote forests and mountains north of the Roman border along the Danube river, and maintained connections with Suebian and non-Suebian peoples to their north. After their crushing defeat to the Romans in the Marcomannic Wars of the late 2nd century, many Suebi moved into the Roman Empire, or regrouped in areas near the Roman frontier. Notably, the diverse group who came to be known as the Alemanni, took control of Roman territory in what later became medieval Swabia - a cultural region in southern Germany that still bears a version of the Suebian name. During the 3rd and 4th centuries, the Romans were often raided by the Alemanni, Juthungi, Quadi and other Suebi, and attempts to subjugate them had limited success.

Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and its largest city is Leipzig. Saxony is the tenth largest of Germany's sixteen states, with an area of 18,413 square kilometres (7,109 sq mi), and the seventh most populous, with more than 4 million inhabitants.

The term Saxony has been in use for more than a millennium. It was used for the medieval Duchy of Saxony, the Electorate of Saxony of the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Saxony, and twice for a republic. The first Free State of Saxony was established in 1918 as a constituent state of the Weimar Republic. After World War II, it was under Soviet occupation before it became part of communist East Germany and was abolished by the government in 1952. Following German reunification, the Free State of Saxony was reconstituted with enlarged borders in 1990 and became one of the five new states of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The original Constitution of East Germany (the German Democratic Republic; German: Verfassung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik) was a communist state constitution promulgated on 7 October 1949. It was heavily based on the Weimar Constitution (Weimarer Reichsverfassung) and nominally established the GDR as a liberal democratic republic. In 1968, the East German government adopted a new, fully Communist constitution that was based on Marxism–Leninism, political unitarism, and collective leadership. There were further amendments to the 1968 constitution in 1974. With the political events of 1989, there were attempts to draft a new constitution for East Germany, but these efforts never materialized due to the dissolution of East Germany and the accession of its states into the neighboring Federal Republic.