BREMEN - Geography and history
The free Hanseatic City-State of Bremen, the smallest of the 16 Bundesländer in the Federal Republic of Germany, consists of the cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven, which are separated from each other by an approximately 65 km stretch of Niedersachsen. Whereas Bremerhaven, with a population of approximately 120 000 on 78 km², lies directly on the estuary of the river Weser on the North Sea, the City of Bremen, with a population of over 543 000 on 327 km², developed upriver, at the junction of old trading routes.
Even in the Middle Ages, merchants in Bremen engaged in brisk trade in the North Sea and Baltic region. From 1358, as a member of the Hanseatic League, Bremen extended its trading activities ever further, including, after the American Declaration of Independence, North America . While trade and shipping have continued to be the mainstays of Bremen's economy, in the Twentieth Century important industrial sectors such as shipbuilding were also introduced. After the Linzer Diplom conferred on Bremen the status of a Free Reich City in 1646, mayor Johann Smidt secured the independence of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen in the German Confederation following the dissolution of the Reich in 1806. In 1827 he acquired a site for a port on the mouth of the Geeste from the Kingdom of Hannover [Hanover] and thus sowed the seeds of the City of Bremerhaven, now the second largest container port in Germany.
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