Talk:Districts of Germany

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I've moved this here from List of German districts after realising it's no longer a list, but only links to the two sublists. Those sublists would be too long to go on one page. There are however lots of links from other pages to List of German districts so I am leaving that page as a redirect. Hope that is OK. Saintswithin 11:03, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] District Parliament // Kreistag and District administration // Landrat

According to the article text: "The district parliament, the Kreistag, is a representative organ of the district and is responsible for local self-administration. It has only executive, but no legislative powers." [emphasis added] and "The district administration is chaired by an officer known as Landrat or Landrätin." It would seem to me that the latter is actually the executive, while the parliament (as deliberative assemblies tend to be) is the legislative. Is this a typographical error (Kreistag actually is legislative) or am I just mistaken and the Germans do things a little differently? Thnx hellenica 14:50, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

No, you are right. The "Kreistag" (the parliament (-tag) of the Land(kreis)) is the legislative, whereas the administration and the executive is with the Landrat/Landrätin. -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 18:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] country vs district

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:German-speaking_Wikipedians'_notice_board#County_vs._district trying to reach a broad consensus as to use the term county (as used by the German foreign ministry) or the term district as currently used in a lot of articles of the German area term Landkreis. Agathoclea 11:04, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. A district is a county. Gerhard51 22:25, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:German-speaking Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 2#EU "official" translation of Kreis, where I got the terms now used from in the first place, in particular the link to the PDF from the EU, where they explicitly recommend translating this term as "district". The page should be moved back to its previous name. —Angr 08:59, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Angr. "District" is standard form across all German district-related articles. I see no reason to move this page to a different name, and all previous discussions we had favored "district" over "county" as the better term. We use "county" only as "territory ruled by a count". The page should be moved back. Kusma (talk) 19:22, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
I've placed a note on Gerhard's user page asking if he'd make a comment, as I feel it would be a bit rude to change it back without asking, after he has gone to such trouble to change it. On the other hand, I also went to a lot of trouble to find a good translation :-) so I hope Gerhard will please look at the discussion, and perhaps also the definition of county, and note that "district" is the term used in all the other Wikipedia articles on the topic. Thanks, Saint|swithin 12:23, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
BTW, Gerhard, just as an illustration, you put a link to the Federal Ministry of the Interior which uses the word "county" once; if you look on their webpage you will find other examples where they use the word "district" - their use is not consistent, whereas the EU at least has an official document saying what to use by preference.
Fed. Ministry of Interior: "... whereas under the previous Federal law instructions the districts or cities outside districts had to take responsibility for this." [1] "während nach den bisherigen bundesrechtlichen Vorgaben hierfür zwingend die Kreise oder kreisfreien Städte zuständig waren." [2] Saint|swithin 12:46, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
By all rights the page should be moved back to its original state and if there is still a call for the move a RM should be filed. But most likely waiting for the authors reply will be better, as it will also involve a lot of reverting of other of his edits which I would only use rollback/undo with his consent - and using full editsummaries is a bit too much work for me right at this moment. Agathoclea 13:07, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I did a real double-take at the current lead sentence: "German counties, unusually named Districts...". That's bordering on the sense-free. If it's so unusual (which does not seem to be the case), why would one want to mention it as an alternative so prominently (and either way, it's an extremely awkward substitution). Pending some coordinated decision to which over to a consistent use of "county" over "district" across WP, I'd strongly favour a move-and-revert back. Alai 10:46, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Gerhard's English is excellent, of course, but here he must mean "rarely" or "in rare cases", although his opinion actually seems to be "not" :-). (NB: "unusually named" means "having an unusual name", which is why this sounds strange to native ears.) Saint|swithin 12:02, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
My native language is indeed a southern German dialect :-) Gerhard51 21:30, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
From Gerhard's talk page, please excuse me for taking the liberty ...
I already made no further changes after I noticed the mass of information behind the links, I only went at the peak. And I didn't find the discussion about the naming of the EU, sorry Saintswithin, no offends were intented. Anyway it is nice to find out that the EU developed naming conventions differing from those of the German government and outside of any practical use. I'll read the whole thing with some time about the weekend. Kind regards, Gerhard51 20:22, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Not sure what you mean by "outside of any practical use" Gerhard, but here are some more points to note:
  • de:Grafschaft is the translation for the British county, and has a specific historical meaning in Europe, including Germany. (historical meaning at Deutsches Wörterbuch) This meaning may have been lost in the USA, but Wikipedia claims not to prefer American usage over British, and Germany has no special link to the USA, as it does (obviously) to Europe.
  • The German government also uses "district", see above and | this Google search
  • Dictionary translations:
- (= Stadtkreis, Landkreis) district; (= Gemeindewahlkreis) ward; (= Landeswahlkreis) constituency; Kreis Leipzig Leipzig District, the District of Leipzig Collins e-Großwörterbuch DE-EN
- (Bezirk) district Langenscheidt Muret-Sanders Großwörterbuch DE-EN
Saint|swithin 12:22, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
OK, with the benefit of that gloss I can see what was meant -- apologies to Gerhard if my initial comments on his choice of words were somewhat harsh. But it seems to be far from rare for them to be called districts, and the above seems to confirm it being in fact the most common. I'll move it back later tonight if there are no urgent objections. (While it's admirable that a revert-fest didn't break up, it's swinging somewhat to the other extreme if we have to wait around for a week before editing it at all...) Alai 17:10, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
As I said earlier it should be done. It also involves reverting a few other edits, but gladly not too many as Gerhard kindly refrained to make more changes across all related articles and templates. Personally I'd like to point out that in the discussion about 1 1/2 years ago this section alludes to I initially favoured county, but the arguments were too compelling. Any change from that thoroughly discussed naming should go through WP:RM if Gerhard or someone else still feels county is the way to go (plus please consider the effort of changing an estimated 20000 articles and templates). Agathoclea 19:21, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

On a related note, I have begun a CFD on Category:Counties of Prussia at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 October 27#Category:Counties of Prussia. Olessi 17:28, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

No objections to move it back, it's anyway already done. Sorry for any inconvenience caused. I'm still stunned about the district. I discussed it this weekend and everybody was suprised too. The use of district in the future instead of county will cause changes in a heavy lot of online-documents and paper documents I know.Gerhard51 20:20, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Factual accuracy

The article suggests that the competencies and responsibilities of the Kreise (sing. Kreis), whether you would like to call them districts or counties, are the same allover Germany. Since the laws on the responsibilities of the municipalities, including the Kreise, differ from Land to Land, the list cannot be correct. Needless to say that the state laws on municipalities vary very much, since different states apply completely different concepts, and they are subject to a lot of change, too. Just to mention the example of North Rhine-Westphalia, that state had exactly copied the British administrative system into its own laws, but later on developed something completely different. Thus, someone who is competent on this subject should revise the article. Is there any German local politician who can write in proper English and would do this job? --DanSchultz (talk) 12:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)