States of Germany - States

States

After 1945, new states were constituted in all four zones of occupation. In 1949, the states in the three western zones formed the Federal Republic of Germany. This is in contrast to the post-war development in Austria, where the Bund (federation) was constituted first, and then the individual states were created as units of a federal state.

The use of the term Länder dates back to the Weimar constitution of 1919. Before this time, the constituent states of the German Empire were called Staaten. Today, it is very common to use the term Bundesland. However, this term is not used officially, neither by the constitution of 1919 nor by the Basic Law of 1949. Three Länder are called Freistaat (free state, republic), i.e., Bavaria (since 1919), Saxony (originally since 1919 and again since 1990), and Thuringia (since 1994). There is little continuity between the current states and their predecessors of the Weimar Republic with the exception of the three free states, and the two city-states of Hamburg and Bremen.

A new delimitation of the federal territory keeps being debated in Germany though "there are significant differences among the American states and regional governments in other federations without serious calls for territorial changes". However, "the argument the proponents of boundary reform in Germany make is that the German system of dual federalism requires strong Länder that have the administrative and fiscal capacity to implement legislation and pay for it from own source revenues. But in spite of these and other arguments for boundary reforms, action has not been taken ....