Tim Olson, Robb Olson, Jordan Lemke, Danae Schafers, Kyle Pirron
[Thoughts are at the very bottom of this post]
- Saarland [You're here]
- Lower Saxony
- Bremen
Saarland
Paraphrased from Wikipedia-
1. Saarland is located on the western border of Germany, and also shared a border with France and Luxembourg. It officially became a state in west Germany in 1957, but it was formed as the Territory of the Saar Basin by the league of nations following World War 1. Prior to this formation it did not exist as a unified country.
2. The last tabulated population for Saarland is 1,012,000 people. When the city states of Germany are disregarded, Saarland is the smallest of all the other states, having a total area of only 2570 square kilometers.
3. For the majority of the time since 1955, the governing party in Saarland has been the CDU, known as the Christian Democratic Union. From the time period between 1985-1999 the SDP, Social Democratic Party of Germany, held the majority of the seats in the Landtag. Saarland employs a Parlimentary style government, with a Minster-president, a Vice Minister-president, 5 other Ministers, and a Head of the State Chancellery. All of the ministers besides the Minster-president are responsible for another office. For example, Stephan Toscani is the Minister for Finance and European Affairs.
Paraphrased from the UNESCO website
4. The most famous World Heritage site that is located in Saarland Is the Völklingen Ironworks. This is the only remaining iron manufacturing facility that dates as far back as the 1800’s that is still intact today. They no longer produce iron, but all the buildings are kept intact to show how the iron industry used to operate. This facility mainly produced girder iron and railway sleepers from iron ore mined in Luxembourg. Currently all six blast furnaces are intact and can be seen by visitors. The last construction that was done on the site was when the coking plant was rebuilt and enlarged in 1935. Two other notable items that are still standing today are is the coal tower that was built in 1898 and the conveyer system that was built in 1911.
Paraphrased from the Saarland State Website.
5. Arguably the largest industries in Saarland today are the automotive industry and the steel industry. Saarland is even referred to as “Auto Land”. There are over 40,000 people employed in the automotive industry in Saarland alone. As far as volume goes, the popular American Automaker, Ford, has a factory in Saarlouis which is produces almost 2000 vehicles every day. Also, over half of the components for the BMW X3 are produced in Saarland. This shows that both high end sports cars and economical cars are produced in factories in Saarland. The steel industry is also booming in Saarland. The biggest company that is talked about for their steel industry is Dillinger Hütte. If it weren’t for Dillinger Hütte supplying all the steel, the bridge of Millau in the South of France couldn’t have been constructed.
From IMDb and Wikipedia
6. One famous german was Max Ophüls, who was born in 1902 and started his career as an actor. He eventually became a director and had a part in 27 movies. Also Erich Honecker is from Saarland, his is the former leader of the GDR (German Democratic Republic). He was the leader of East Germany from 1971 until just before the Berlin Wall was torn down. He was also the prime organizer of building the Berlin Wall in 1961.
Paraphrased from germanFoods.org -
7. One famous saying that is known in Saarland is “Hauptsach’ gudd gess!” which translates to “the most important thing is to eat well!” Saarland is known as a potato lovers paradise.
This group project provided an interesting view
point on places states in Germany, resulting in an understanding of German subculture
to name a few such things. We were able to learn about the western region
specifically Lower Saxony, Bremen the landlocked city state, and Germany’s
smallest state Saarland. It was interesting how culturally our there is a
divide between Saarland and Lower Saxony, but their industry is remarkably
similar. For example they both have a natural resource focused industry, both
Lower Saxony and Saarland feature Mining and Ore refineries. Saarland however,
boasts itself as Germany’s Autoland featuring many of Germany’s manufacturing plants
for vehicles, featuring BMW, Ford, VW, Michelin and so forth.
My only concerns and criticism of this group
project is the size of task. German states, though small compared to US states,
still have a lot of information to be said about them. Making a short
presentation while covering all the appropriate criteria is very hard to do. It
may be important to learn about all the German states but I feel that to give
each one enough attention takes more time. That being said the class shouldn’t
be focuses only on German states, which it isn’t. Overall a divide and conquer
strategy is the best method to learn about the German states.
