Talk:States of Germany
From Academic Kids
How should we translate Ministerpräsident? Minister-President, as in the tables at each state article? Prime Minister, as in the list in the Thuringia article? Premier, as in List of Premiers of Bavaria? Google indicates that all three are commonly used...
- Well, if no one cares, I'll just settle with Minister-President. Sandman 13:10, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- Historically a "Ministerpräsident" can be regarded as both a member of cabinet with certain privileges (so he's the first among them: "le premier ministre") or as a head of state (= president) in the absence of a Chancellor or Prime Minister. Since "Minister-President" sounds kind of odd I’d favour the term "Prime Minister". This also gets closer to the fact that a German "Ministerpräsident" is head of the executive power only whereas a president quite frequently has some influence of the country’s supreme court, the national bank (he’s most likely to appoint the new judges or national bankers), the military forces and in some nations the parliament (he sometimes "opens the parliament" at the beginning of a electoral period). The German Ministerpräsident lacks these privileges. Whether you call it "Premier" or "Prime Minister" makes in my opinion just as much a difference as naming the federal states "Freistaat (Bayern)", "Republik (Saarland)", "Bundesland (Hessen)", "Staat (Niedersachsen)" ... it’s always the same thing.
Maybe there should be an article about the historic states of Germany? 203.166.57.12 07:03, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- I Agree!
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"Bundesländer" != "Provinces"
The article claims that there's a risc to confuse "Bundesländer" fith U.S.-like states and suggests to think of them as provinces. This is wrong. Germany is (due to its Constitution a "Bundesstaat", that in fact is more like a confederation (= weaker central power) than it is a federal State. All power resides with a Länder except those especially granted to the federal government in the constitution. For example:
- Germany has 17 representations (embassies) to the EU in Bruxelles: one for the federal republic and 16 for the German Bundesländer.
- Each Bundesland can maintain foreign relations of it's own (... as long as it will not undermine the "official" foreign policy)
- Each Bundesland has it's own constitution laying out the principles of state its organisation, civil rights. These constitutions cannot limit the rights granted to the people by the federal constitution, but it can extend them. Provinces don't have this. They are normally founded by a top-to-bottom action.
In essence: Please refer to "Bundesländer" as "states", because it expresses their role a lot better than any other English term.
- I've changed this a bit in the article, as none of the reference works I use suggest "province", they all use "state" or "federal state", as do the EU and Germany's own government sites. IMHO it would be much more confusing if people used "province" now that everyone knows them as states. I have merely toned down the idea that "province" is better, perhaps the writer might want to reconsider him/herself whether it is worth a mention at all. Are there any dictionaries or official documents, or any other sources, which suggest "province" is better? Or is it just someone's nice idea about how things should be in an ideal world? Saintswithin 10:08, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have removed this section about translating "Bundersländer" as "state" or "province". As Saintswithin noted, it is practically universally translated as 'state'. Also, I don't think it's worth mentioning the fact that using the term 'state' to refer to a semi-sovereign region of a federation can cause confusion, because this potential confusion about the word 'state' is not at all unique or noteworthy about German states. And besides, I doubt any native speaker of English is confused by the word 'state' referring to both some subnational entities and also to independent, sovereign governments/nations. Also, the sentence about different transliterations of the word 'Länder' as 'Lander' or 'Laender' is confusing and poorly written - I guess by a non-native English speaker. If someone feels that this point is worth making, please rewrite it. Maybe something like: "The word 'Länder' is sometimes written in English as 'Lander' or 'Laender'."
Even though I think that we should refer to 'Bundersländer' as 'states' for consistency, I do disagree with the user who said that the reason we should call them 'states' and not 'provinces' is because Germany is a federation where the 'Bundersländer' have a good degree of autonomy and the powers of the federal vs state governments are delimited and limited by the constitution, and thus the 'Bundersländer' are not merely provinces. However, in reality, the degree of autonomy of the regions of a country, their powers, and whether or not the country is a true federation is not really related to whether the regions are called 'provinces' or 'states'. For example, Canada is a true federation and its provinces have a good deal of autonomy and the powers of the federl government are limited. From the wikipedia article on Canada: "The provinces have a large degree of autonomy from the federal government" and "the provinces ... together collect more revenue than the federal government, an almost unique structure among federations in the world." --thirty-seven 09:27, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)
203.166.57.12
Just a short notice: 203.166.57.12 was me. Regards -- Guido Bockamp 07:51, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Capitalisation of Länder
I've recapitalised Länder, following the EU's use, Muret-Sanders 2004 Großwörterbuch and the German embassy and German govenment websites.Saintswithin 10:10, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Subdivisions of Berlin?
The article states:
The city-states of Berlin and Hamburg are not subdivided.
Out of curiosity, why aren't the boroughs (Bezirke) of Berlin considered subdivisions? Perhaps they aren't precisely analogous to subdivisions in other states, but they do have elected governments and are well known facets of life in Berlin.
--Jfruh 18:05, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Senate vs. cabinet?
Is there any real distinction between the Senates of the city-states and the cabinets of other states, other than the name? Similarly, are the Mayors of Berlin and Hamburg and the Senate President of Bremen different from the Minister-Presidents of the other states in any way other than in name? --Jfruh 22:35, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
