Bremen

Sister cities

• Haifa
• Yokohama
• İzmir
• Samarkand
• Durban
• Windhoek
• Rostock
• Gdańsk
• Bratislava
• Riga
• Pune
• Groningen

History

For most of its 1,200 year history, Bremen was an independent city within the confederal jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Empire. Its governing merchants and guilds were at the centre of the Hanseatic League that sought to monopolise the North Sea and Baltic Sea trade. To enlarge and confirm its independence, the city had, until the Reformation, to contend with the temporal power of the Church, and after the Thirty Years' War with Sweden, the masters of the surrounding Duchy of Bremen-Verden. George I Louis, the Elector of Hannover (and from 1714, King of Great Britain and Ireland) who in 1715 acquired Bremen-Verden, recognised Bremen as a free city in 1720. In the late nineteenth century, Bremen was drawn by Prussia into the German Empire. With its new sea anchorage and wharves at Bremerhaven, it was the principal port of embarkation for German and central European emigrants to the Americas, and an entrepôt for Germany's late developing colonial trade. The Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL), founded in Bremen in 1857, became one of the world's leading shipping companies. After the First World War, Bremen, a broadly liberal and social-democratic city, and briefly a Soviet republic, lost its autonomy under the Hitler regime. After World War II, in which almost two thirds of the city's fabric was destroyed, the autonomy was restored. Bremen became one of the founding states () of the Federal Republic (West Germany).

Geography

Bremen lies on both sides of the River Weser, about upstream of its estuary on the North Sea and its transition to the Outer Weser by Bremerhaven. Opposite Bremen's Altstadt is the point where the "Middle Weser" becomes the "Lower Weser" and, from the area of Bremen's port, the river has been made navigable to ocean-going vessels. The region on the left bank of the Lower Weser, through which the Ochtum flows, is the Weser Marshes, the landscape on its right bank is part of the Elbe-Weser Triangle. The Lesum, and its tributaries, the Wümme and Hamme, the Schönebecker Aue and Blumenthaler Aue, are the downstream tributaries of the Weser. The city's municipal area is about long and wide. In terms of area, Bremen is the eleventh largest city in Germany; and in terms of population the second largest city in northwest Germany after Hamburg and the eleventh largest in the whole of Germany (see: List of cities in Germany by population). Bremen lies about east of the city of Oldenburg, southwest of Hamburg, northwest of Hanover, north of Minden and northeast of Osnabrück. Part of Bremerhaven's port territory forms an exclave of the City of Bremen. The inner city lies on a Weser dune, which reaches a natural height of 10.5 metres (34 feet, 6 inches) above sea level at Bremen Cathedral; its highest point, though, is 14.4 metres (47 feet, 3 inches) above sea level and lies to the east at the , Am Wall 196. The highest natural feature in the city of Bremen is 32.5 metres (107 feet) above sea level and lies in Friedehorst Park in the northwestern borough of Burglesum. As a result, Bremen has the lowest high point of all the German states. Bremen has a moderate oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb) due to its proximity to the North Sea coast and temperate…

Most-observed species

• Common Wood-Pigeon

  Columba palumbus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,971
• Great Tit

  Parus major Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,814
• Carrion Crow

  Corvus corone Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,793
• Eurasian Blue Tit

  Cyanistes caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  4,396
• Eurasian Blackbird

  Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,027
• European Robin

  Erithacus rubecula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  3,748
• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  3,348
• Common Chaffinch

  Fringilla coelebs Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  3,319

Most recent

• M 2.9 — 2021-09-13
  0 km WNW of Ottersberg, Germany
• M 2.8 — 2008-04-03
  3 km SSW of Ottersberg, Germany
• M 3 — 2006-07-02
  3 km NW of Lastrup, Germany
• M 4 — 2005-07-15
  1 km W of Dünsen, Germany
• M 4.5 — 2004-10-20
  3 km W of Wittorf, Germany