County seat
In Germany, a district town is a city in which the administration of a district or district has its seat. As a rule, the organs of the district are located here , namely the district council and the district administrator . The details in Germany are determined by the district regulations or municipal constitutions of the federal states and the districts in their main statutes . The designation is therefore not uniformly regulated nationwide.
Examples:
- In North Rhine-Westphalia , the municipal code stipulates that the city in which the district administration has its seat is referred to as a district town .
- In Rhineland-Palatinate , a district town is designated as the seat of the district administration in accordance with Section 3, Paragraph 2 of the District Code .
- In Schleswig-Holstein , the districts determine the district town in their main statutes .
The term “district town” should not be confused with the term “ city district ”. The latter is now an independent city in Baden-Württemberg.
District main town
The administrative seat of a (rural) district does not necessarily have to be in a city. It can also be in a municipality (including a market town ) without city rights. In this case, the name is not district town, but district capital . Until the 1970s, there were district administrations in Kreishauptorten, especially in Bavaria and Lower Saxony, for example Wegscheid and Mallersdorf and Wittlage in Lower Saxony. With the dissolution of districts as part of district area reforms (e.g. dissolution of the Mallersdorf and Wittlage districts ) and the award of the title city , e.g. B. to Westerstede on May 28, 1977, these special cases have largely been eliminated. The Garmisch-Partenkirchen market remains as the only main district in Germany .
External district administration
The seat of the district administration of some districts is outside the area of the district (often in the city of the same name, surrounded by the district, but itself independent ; an example of this is the district of Munich ).
Great county seat
A distinction must be made between the specific legal term “district town” and that of the “large district town” in the states of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Saxony. A large district town is responsible for additional administrative tasks that are otherwise only reserved for the districts or urban districts (cf., for example, Section 15 (1) No. 1 LVG Baden-Württemberg). The major district town does not necessarily have to be a district town. An example of this is the large district town of Backnang in the Rems-Murr district (Baden-Württemberg), whose district town is Waiblingen .
Largest and smallest district town
The largest district town in Germany is Neuss with around 154,000 inhabitants (apart from the special municipal associations of Hanover , Aachen and Saarbrücken ), the smallest with around 5300 inhabitants is Cochem .
See also
- District capital
- County Seat
- List of district towns with special status in Germany (e.g. large district towns)
- List of district towns in the Federal Republic of Germany
- List of districts in Germany
Individual evidence
- ↑ Duden: district town
- ↑ Main statutes of the Unna district, § 1, para. 2
- ↑ see Section 13, Paragraph 2 of the NW municipal code
- ↑ Landkreisordnung (LKO) in the version of January 31, 1994. Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate , accessed on April 8, 2015 .
- ↑ Main statutes of the district of North Friesland, Section 1, Paragraph 1