Talk:List of cities and towns in Germany

My suggestion: Include only those towns, that either have articles or are likely to get an article in the future. That means, a link to Passau is of course okay, while I doubt this for places like Adelmannsfelden or Jagtszell. Remember that the title of the article is "List of cities in Germany". We may talk about a full list of municipalities, if you want to - if we continue to add villages and hamlets to this list, it will grow very, very large. Your opinions? -- Cordyph 11:25 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC)

I agree that muncipalities or even city parts don't belong here - but I think this list should include every entity in germany which has the city rights. However there are then very small cities (e.g. Hallenberg with just 4,744), but there are also muncipalities significantly bigger than this (e.g. Holzweckede with 17,694). Or how about a minimum population cut-off? Or another "list of big cities in Germany" with all cities with more the 100,000? andy 13:24 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

When I started this list, I thought it would be the best to include the district-free cities, the district capitals, and maybe some other towns of historical or other significance; but I don't mind to do it your way: include every town having "Stadtrecht" (is there anything like "city rights" in UK or the US?). Probably your proposal is better, since we already have a list of the large cities in List of cities. But this list will grow very big by doing so, and sooner or later we'll have to split it. We should not define a minimum population, because some smaller towns (Lauenburg) are of greater historical significance than some very large towns (Oberhausen). So, the decision is to put every town with "city right" inside, okay? -- Cordyph 17:14 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Bremerhaven
I think you may be a little confused. There are german states, and then there are free city-states (Hanserstadt Frei). To my knowledge, there have only been 3 free city-states: Hamburg, Bremen and Berlin. The cities you have listed as district free may so be, however they are subordinate to a state. Here's an example:

Osterholz-Scharmbeck is a city (stadt) it is subordinate to Kreis Osterholz (a county) which is subordinate to Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), a state (Laender).

Bremen and Hamburg although located in the state of Lower Saxony, are not subordinate to Lower Saxony because they are free city-states. Bremerhaven, which you have listed under Bremen, is a city-district and although it is not subordinate to a Kries (County) it is subordinate to the State of Lower Saxony.


 * ???? I don't see your point. You tell me nothing new. Osterholz-Scharmbeck, Bremen and Hamburg are exactly listed the way you are describing them. As for Bremerhaven, you are simply wrong. See Bremen (state) for more information - it is not subordinate to Lower Saxony. -- Cordyph 11:47, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

DE Article
I think we should transfer over the page from the de-wiki with its division and forget this attempt to divide up the page. It's not complete and nobody has edited it for years. Tfine80 06:06, 8 October 2005 (UTC)


 * We should transfer over the other list of larger cities separately. Tfine80 06:33, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

The old list of cities / Großstädte
What happened to the old list of cities in Germany, listing only cities with more than 100.000 inhabitants? I thought that was pretty useful! Markussep 14:56, 18 October 2005 (UTC)


 * We should transfer that to a new article... This one should have a list of all of the official cities as in the DE-Wiki. Tfine80 17:45, 18 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Are we now calling all towns cities? I have always thought that a city in Germany is a town with more than 100 000 inhabitants.  Different countries have different rules as to what constitutes a city. 84.143.48.87 08:32, 25 November 2005 (UTC)


 * In German, there is Stadt (a place with city rights/town privileges) and Großstadt (a place with more than 100.000 inhabitants). The current article lists all places with city rights. You could call them "town" as well, the definition is not so strict. There are many "cities" in the US with less than 1000 inhabitants (see e.g. Tolna, North Dakota). Markussep 10:38, 25 November 2005 (UTC)


 * How do you differentiate between city rights and town rights? In England, a city is a town which has been granted a charter to be known as a city.  This usually conincides with the presence of a cathedrale.  The size of the population does not affect whether a town is known as a city.  I do not know what makes a town a city in the USA, but thought that in Germany, towns and cities are differentiated only by population size.  Please correct me if I am wrong. 84.143.48.87 10:51, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * German de:Stadt links to Town and vice versa, City links to de:Großstadt. See also Town and Town privileges. If you want to be consistent, this list should be "List of towns in Germany". But it's an old and difficult discussion, with repercussions on several other countries. Markussep 15:53, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

English names
I can see that it is easier with German names, but for example München, Hannover and Köln should not be in English Wikipedia. --Audiovideo 00:22, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, here are my two cents: We wikipedians aim to help others find the information and knowledge they are looking for.  And since users will look for the information using all correct spellings they know of, the redirects that are in place and that take them to the correctly (for the English wikipedia) named pages is a good and helpful solution.  If the pages themselves were named incorrectly, I'd agree with you.  But they are correctly titled Munich, Hanover, and Cologne.  I changed it on the list.  --Mmounties 06:12, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

List of largest German cities?
How about it? By population and area. It would be most interesting. —☆ CieloEstrellado 01:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Count?
The page header claims it's a list of 2075 cities but grep counts 2074 lines with 83.46.62.208 (talk) 12:52, 16 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The count appears to be taken from the German WP article. It doesn't give specific sources for the number so it's difficult to view it as definitive.
 * The German government statistics department (Statistisches Bundesamt) has a downloadable list of towns as at the end of 2022 at:  but the total is also not identical. Germans being imprecise, whatever next?! Regards Guffydrawers (talk) 12:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I checked this list with the Destatis reference: Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Bremen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg (incl. Oberderdingen), Bavaria, Saarland, Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt correct, Thuringia also correct if you don't count Am Ettersberg, Buttstädt and Kindelbrück, that were towns but lost/gave up their Stadtrecht around 2019. I'll add this reference to the article. Markussep Talk 08:15, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

North Rhine-Westphalia
In this list, North Rhine-Westphalia has 271 cities and towns. However, Municipalities of Germany has only 236 municipalities in the state. Can it be true, because it would be the only state with more cities and towns than municipalities? That list tells also there are 23 cities in NRW, so it would mean that the other 213 municipalities would include 248 towns.

Liste der Städte und Gemeinden in Nordrhein-Westfalen has this: 396 politisch selbstständigen Städten und Gemeinden (Stand: 23. August 2012)., which probably means "396 politically self-governing cities and municipalities (as of 23 August 2012)".

And that 396 seems to include 271 cities/towns and 125 municipalities. 212.50.203.198 (talk) 04:56, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Town vs. city
Looking at this article, I would think that a town is a municipality with town privileges, and a city such a thing with more than 100.000 inhabitants. This is obviously wrong, look at Weimar. Could the lead clarify that, please, and explain why some places are called city although they have fewer than 100.000 inhabitants? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:48, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * As there is no clear definition of "city" in Germany, any arguably important town that is not a Großstadt can still be described as "city" as well, without clear reason. --androl (talk) 12:35, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Stadtrecht
Isn't Stadtrecht no longer in use? ZFT (talk) 03:34, 10 January 2016 (UTC)