OsnabrückOsnabrück (ɔsnaˈbʁʏk; Ossenbrügge; archaic Osnaburg) is a city in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is situated on the river Hase in a valley penned between the Wiehen Hills and the northern tip of the Teutoburg Forest. With a population of 168,145 Osnabrück is one of the four largest cities in Lower Saxony. The city is the centrepoint of the Osnabrück Land region as well as the District of Osnabrück. The founding of Osnabrück was linked to its positioning on important European trading routes.
EssenEssen (ˈɛsn̩; Latin: Assindia) is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, as well as the ninth-largest city of Germany. Essen lies in the larger Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region and is part of the cultural area of Rhineland. Because of its central location in the Ruhr, Essen is often regarded as the Ruhr's "secret capital".
RostockRostock (ˈʁɔstɔk), officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock (Hanse- und Universitätsstadt Rostock), is the largest city in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the Mecklenburgian part of the state, close to the border with Pomerania. With around 208,000 inhabitants, it is the third-largest city on the German Baltic coast after Kiel and Lübeck, the eighth-largest city in the area of former East Germany, as well as the 39th-largest city of Germany.
Hanseatic LeagueThe Hanseatic League was a medieval commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Central and Northern Europe. Growing from a few North German towns in the late 12th century, the League expanded between the 13th and 15th centuries and ultimately encompassed nearly 200 settlements across seven modern-day countries, ranging from Estonia in the north and east, to the Netherlands in the west, and Kraków, Poland, in the south.
Public transportPublic transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typically managed on a schedule, operated on established routes, and that charge a posted fee for each trip. There is no rigid definition of which kinds of transport are included, and air travel is often not thought of when discussing public transport—dictionaries use wording like "buses, trains, etc.
Prince-bishopA prince-bishop is a bishop who is also the civil ruler of some secular principality and sovereignty, as opposed to Prince of the Church itself, a title associated with cardinals. Since 1951, the sole extant prince-bishop has been the Bishop of Urgell, Catalonia, who has remained ex officio one of two co-princes of Andorra, along with the French president. In the West, with the decline of imperial power from the 4th century onwards in the face of the barbarian invasions, sometimes Christian bishops of cities took the place of the Roman commander, made secular decisions for the city and led their own troops when necessary.
BizoneThe Bizone (ˈbiːˌt͡soːnə) or Bizonia was the combination of the American and the British occupation zones on 1 January 1947 during the occupation of Germany after World War II. With the addition of the French occupation zone on 1 August 1948 the entity became the Trizone (ˈtʁiːˌt͡soːnə; sometimes jokingly called Trizonesia (Trizonesien, tʁit͡soˈneːzi̯ən)). Later, on 23 May 1949, the Trizone became the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly known as West Germany.
Brick ExpressionismThe term Brick Expressionism (Backsteinexpressionismus) describes a specific variant of Expressionist architecture that uses bricks, tiles or clinker bricks as the main visible building material. Buildings in the style were erected mostly in the 1920s, primarily in Germany and the Netherlands, where the style was created. The style's regional centres were the larger cities of Northern Germany and the Ruhr area, but the Amsterdam School belongs to the same movement, which can be found in many of the larger Dutch cities like Amsterdam, Utrecht and Groningen.
Weser RenaissanceWeser Renaissance is a form of Northern Renaissance architectural style that is found in the area around the River Weser in central Germany and which has been well preserved in the towns and cities of the region. Between the start of the Reformation and the Thirty Years War the Weser region experienced a construction boom, in which the Weser, playing a significant role in the communication of both trade and ideas, merely defined the north–south extent of a cultural region that stretched westwards to the city of Osnabrück and eastwards as far as Wolfsburg.
DenazificationDenazification (Entnazifizierung) was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War. It was carried out by removing those who had been Nazi Party or SS members from positions of power and influence, by disbanding or rendering impotent the organizations associated with Nazism, and by trying prominent Nazis for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials of 1946.
