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Hanover

 
Dictionary: Han·o·ver2 or Han·no·ver (hăn'ō'vər, hä-nō'-) pronunciation

A former kingdom and province of northwest Germany. It was an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire from 1692 to 1805. The kingdom lasted from 1815 to 1866, when Hanover became a province of Prussia (later Germany).

 

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Hanover (hăn'ōvər), Ger. Hannover, former independent kingdom and former province of Germany; Lower Saxony, NW Germany. Very irregular in outline, Hanover stretched from the Dutch border and the North Sea in the northwest to the Harz Mts. in the southeast. The name Hanover originally applied only to the city, becoming the name of a state in 1815. Most of the territory was included in the duchy of Brunswick, which the house of the Guelphs retained after 1180. In the repeated subdivisions of Brunswick among the various branches of the family, the branch of Brunswick-Lüneburg (and its offshoots, the duchies of Lüneburg, Celle, and Lüneburg-Calenberg) emerged as the most powerful. The dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg played an important part in the Thirty Years War (1618-48) on the Protestant side, and in 1692 Duke Ernest Augustus of Calenberg was raised to the rank of elector. His lands became known as the electorate of Hanover. The marriage of Ernest Augustus to Sophia, granddaughter of James I of England, brought (1714) the English throne to his son, Elector George Louis (George I of England). Personal union of Great Britain and Hanover continued under the house of Hanover (see separate article). Napoleon I gave the electorate to Prussia in 1805, but in 1807 he assigned part of Hanover to the kingdom of Westphalia under his brother Jérôme Bonaparte, the remainder being divided in 1810 between France and Westphalia. In 1813, Great Britain regained possession, and in 1815 the Congress of Vienna raised Hanover to a kingdom, with membership in the German Confederation. At the accession (1837) of Queen Victoria in England, Hanover was separated from the British crown because of the Salic law of succession. Ernest Augustus, son of George III, became king of Hanover and began his reign by rescinding the liberal Hanoverian constitution of 1833, thus evoking the well-known protest of the seven professors at Göttingen; the Revolution of 1848 forced him to grant a liberal constitution. His son, George V, succeeded him in 1851. George V refused to support Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and, as a consequence, lost his kingdom, which was made a Prussian (from 1871 a German) province. After World War II the province was incorporated into Lower Saxony.


Wikipedia: Hanover (district)
Top
Hanover
Lower saxony h.png
Map of Lower Saxony highlighting the district of Hanover
State Lower Saxony
District seat Hanover
Area 2290 km²
Population 1,125,900 (2002)
Pop. density 492 /km²
Licence plate code H
Web page http://www.region-hannover.de

Hanover (officially in German: Region Hannover) is a district (county) in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is bounded by (from the north and clockwise) the districts of Soltau-Fallingbostel, Celle, Gifhorn, Peine, Hildesheim, Hamelin-Pyrmont, Schaumburg and Nienburg.

The District of Hanover has a unique legal status among the districts of Lower Saxony. It includes the City of Hanover, the state capital, which has the same privileges as a city that is not part of a district. As a consequence, the District is much larger in population than any other district of the state. Its administrative body is the Regionsparlament (engl.: "regional parliament"), headed by the Regionspräsident or "region president" (Hauke Jagau (SPD) since 2006). Both the members of the Regionsparlament and the Regionspräsident are elected once every five years in local elections.

Contents

History

The City of Hanover was not part of the district until 2001, when the old Hanover District and the city (then known officially as Kreisfreie Stadt Hannover, which means "District Free city of Hanover") were merged in order to form the new Region Hannover district (not to be confused with the former Regierungsbezirk Hannover).

During World War II, Hanover was the Headquarters (Hauptquartier) of the Military District (Wehrkreis) XI, which was responsible for Braunschweig, Anhalt, and part of Hanover. It was also the Garrison Town for the 71st Infanterie Division.

Geography

The district surrounds the City of Hanover and includes the outskirts of its metropolitan area. The Leine river enters the district in the south, runs through Hanover and leaves to the north. In the northwest is the Steinhuder Meer, a lake with an area of 32 km², within the region known as the Hanoverian Moor Geest.

Coat of arms

Coat of arms

The coat of arms was granted on May 1, 2003. The cloverleaf is from the arms of the City of Hanover. The lion was the heraldic animal of the Welfen family, which ruled the region from the Middle Ages until 1866.

Towns and municipalities

Towns Municipalities
  1. Barsinghausen
  2. Burgdorf
  3. Burgwedel
  4. Garbsen
  5. Gehrden
  6. Hanover (Hannover)
  7. Hemmingen
  8. Laatzen
  9. Langenhagen
  1. Lehrte
  2. Neustadt am Rübenberge
  3. Pattensen
  4. Ronnenberg
  5. Seelze
  6. Sehnde
  7. Springe
  8. Wunstorf
  1. Isernhagen
  2. Uetze
  3. Wedemark
  4. Wennigsen

See also

External links


 
 

 

Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hanover (district)" Read more