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With an area of 47,618 km² and nearly eight million inhabitants, Lower Saxony (German Niedersachsen) lies in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the country's sixteen Bundesländer (federal states). In rural areas Low Saxon is still spoken, but declining so.

1 Geography

Lower Saxony borders on (from north and clockwise) the North Sea, the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg, Saxony-AnhaltFlag Statistics Capital: Magdeburg Area:20,447 km² Inhabitants:2,580,626 2001 pop. density:126 inh. km² Homepage: ISO 3166-2:DE-ST Politics Minister-President: Wolfgang Bohmer ( CDU) Ruling party: CDU/ FDP coalition Map With an area of 20,447 km² and a po, ThuringiaState Service Flag Civil Flag Statistics Capital: Erfurt Area:16,171 km² Inhabitants:2 392 000 2003 pop. density:148 people/km² Homepage: ISO 3166-2:DE-TH Politics Minister-President: Dieter Althaus ( CDU) Ruling party: CDU Map The Free State of Thuringia, HesseHesse is also the name of the German writer Hermann Hesse, as well as the German mathematician Otto Hesse. With an area of 21,110 km² and just over six million inhabitants, Hesse (German Hessen is one of Germany's sixteen federal states ( Bundeslander . and North Rhine-WestphaliaFlag Statistics Capital: Dusseldorf Area:34,080 km² Inhabitants:18,060,211 2002 pop. density:530 inh. km² Homepage:http://www. de/ ISO 3166-2:DE-NW Politics Minister-President: Peer Steinbruck ( SPD) Ruling party: SPD/ Green coalition Map With eighteen mi, and the kingdom of the NetherlandsDutch redirects here. For other uses, see Dutch (disambiguation). The Netherlands ( Dutch: Nederland is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a constitutional monarchy. It is located in northwestern Europe and borders the North Sea, Belgium. The state of BremenFlag Statistics Capital: Bremen Area: 404 km² Inhabitants:662,000 2001 pop. density:1,549 people/km² Homepage: Politics Mayor: Henning Scherf ( SPD) Ruling party: SPD/ CDU coalition Map Bremen is one of Germany's 16 Bundeslander the federal states of the forms two enclaveAlternate meanings: Enclave (game) is a video game. In human geography, an enclave is a piece of land which is totally enclosed within a foreign territory. If another country has sovereignty over it, it may also be called an exclave if: exclave. it is ans within Lower Saxony. The state's principal cities include Hanover, Braunschweig (Brunswick), Osnabrück, Oldenburg and Göttingen.

The northwestern portion of Lower Saxony is a part of Frisia; it is called Ostfriesland (Eastern Frisia) and lies on the coast of the North Sea. It includes seven islands, known as the East Frisian Islands. In the southwest of Lower Saxony is the Emsland, a sparsely populated area, once full of inaccessible swamps. The northern half of Lower Saxony is absolutely flat, but there are two mountain chains in the south: the Weserbergland ("Weser Hilly Region") and the Harz. The middle of the state houses the largest cities and the economic centres: Hanover, Hildesheim, Wolfsburg, Salzgitter and Braunschweig (Brunswick). The region in the northeast is called Lüneburger Heide ( Lüneburg Heath), the largest heath of Germany and in medieval times wealthy due to the salt trade. To the north the Elbe river separates Lower Saxony from Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg. The lands on the southern banks are called Altes Land (literally "Old Land"), and they are characterised by thousands of fruit-trees.

See also List of places in Lower Saxony.

Lower Saxony is divided into 38 districts (Landkreise or simply Kreise):

Furthermore there are eight independent towns, which don't belong to any district:

1. Braunschweig (Brunswick)
2. Delmenhorst
3. Emden
4. Oldenburg
5. Osnabrück
6. Salzgitter
7. Wilhelmshaven
8. Wolfsburg

The districts and idependent towns are grouped into four administrative regions ( Regierungsbezirke):

• Braunschweig (Brunswick)
• Hanover (Hannover)
• Lüneburg
• Weser-Ems