Drill the map, not flashcards. Free, no account.
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Can you locate all 16 voivodeships of Poland?
Can you locate all 12 provinces of the Netherlands?
Can you place all 400 German Landkreise and kreisfreie Städte?
Can you locate all 83 federal subjects of Russia?
Germany is a federation, and the states are the parts it is a federation of: each one runs its own schools, its own police and its own broadcaster, which is why a German talking about home names a state rather than a region. The shapes are the awkward part, because half of them were drawn by occupation administrators in 1946 and owe nothing to anything older. This page is the whole set, and the game asks you to put each name where it belongs, in English or the way it is written in German.
The word is Land, plural Länder, and Bundesland when it needs distinguishing from a country. Each has a parliament, a constitution and a capital of its own, and the powers they keep are the ones you notice: policing, schooling, broadcasting and the roads below motorway level. Three of them are cities rather than territories, which is a category worth knowing before you look for them on the map, because two are small enough to miss and the third is inside another state.
The map is younger than the country. The British, American and French administrations drew most of these borders in 1946 and 1947 out of what was left of Prussia and the old kingdoms, which is why several states are visibly a couple of historical pieces stapled together and say so in their names. Baden-Württemberg was voted into existence out of three of them in 1952. Saarland was a French protectorate and only joined in 1957. The five eastern states were abolished in 1952, replaced by districts, and re-established in 1990 on the borders they had lost, which is why the eastern quarter of this map looks older than it is.
Germany signs itself almost identically from end to end, so the state is rarely written on anything at the roadside. What gives it away instead is a number plate, whose first letters name a town and therefore a state, the coat of arms on the round seal beside them, a boundary sign with a crest on it, and the guardrail, which really does change at some of these borders.
The traps here are names rather than shapes. Three states are called some kind of Saxony and no two of them touch in the way you would expect: the one simply called Saxony is in the far southeast, Saxony-Anhalt is north of it, and Lower Saxony is not near either, being the big one in the northwest. The pair on the Baltic get swapped in the other direction, since Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is the coastal one and Brandenburg the landlocked one below it, and the long name tempts people into making it the bigger of the two.
The city states are free points once you have looked for them once. Berlin is a hole in Brandenburg, Hamburg is a small patch straddling the Elbe, and Bremen is the one people never find because they are scanning for something the size of a state.
The name in brackets is the German one, which is what the boundary sign, the weather forecast and the plate registry all use, and what the game shows if you turn on the local name in the start dialog. Roughly half the set is the same word either way. Each quarter can be played on its own, and the south is a two question drill while the east is a real one.
The second largest state, filling the northwest from the Dutch border to the Elbe, and the reason the Saxony names are a mess. The Saxon homeland was here; the ducal title travelled southeast in the Middle Ages and took the name with it, leaving the original in the corner it started in and two younger Saxonies four hundred kilometres away.
A state of two cities and nothing in between: the port sixty kilometres up the Weser and its outport at the river mouth, both enclaves inside Lower Saxony. It is the smallest state by area and by population, the only one in two pieces, and the click most often missed on this map.
The state that surrounds the capital completely without including it. Berlin was a separate case throughout the division and stayed one afterwards, so what looks like one metropolitan region on the ground is two states, and a vote to merge them failed in 1996.
The smallest of the territorial states, in the southwestern corner against France, and the last to join: it was a French protectorate until a referendum sent it back, and it entered the federation in 1957. Small, but a full state with a parliament of its own, which is a fact worth having when you are counting.
16. Thirteen are territorial states and three are cities that are states in their own right: Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen. All 16 sit at the same level, with their own parliament, their own constitution and their own police force.
A member state of the German federation, called a Land in official use. The federal government handles defence, foreign affairs and most taxation; the states handle education, policing, broadcasting and much of the road network, and they are represented in national lawmaking through the Bundesrat.
Because the name moved and the land did not. The old Saxon duchy was in the northwest, where Lower Saxony is today. When the duchy was broken up in 1180 the ducal title went to a family holding land on the middle Elbe, and over the following centuries the name Saxony settled there instead. The modern Free State of Saxony is that eastern territory, Saxony-Anhalt is the ground between it and the old homeland, and Lower Saxony keeps the original meaning of the word.
Bavaria by a wide margin in area, covering roughly a fifth of the country, with Lower Saxony second. North Rhine-Westphalia is the largest by population, with about a fifth of all Germans in a much smaller space. Bremen is the smallest on both counts.
The number plate is the fastest way, because its first letters are a town or district code and each one belongs to exactly one state, and the round seal beside them carries that state's coat of arms. Failing that, a boundary sign with a crest, the guardrail profile, which changes at some state borders, and the architecture, which shifts from brick along the Baltic to timber framing through the middle and stone in the Alps.
Most of them in 1946 and 1947, by the western occupation administrations, out of Prussian provinces and the older kingdoms. Baden-Württemberg was merged from three states in 1952 and Saarland joined in 1957. The five eastern states were dissolved into districts in 1952 and re-established in 1990 at reunification, which is why the current map is only as old as the country in its present form.
The tier below this one, and the one that hands out the letters on a number plate, is Germany Districts. More European maps in the same shape: Poland Voivodeships, Poland Dialing Codes, France Dialing Codes and Spain Dialing Codes. The clue that changes at some of these very borders has a game of its own: Germany Guardrails.
