By establishing an administrative community, independent municipalities can form a corporation under public law , which carries out the tasks of the assigned sphere of activity for the member municipalities. The individual member communities remain independent. The administrative community usually has a landscape-related name or that of its most populous municipality. In other federal states there are comparable institutions with partly different names and tasks.
Fulfilling Church
It is also possible in accordance with Section 51 of the Thuringian municipality and district regulations for a municipality (the commissioning municipality ) to transfer the tasks of the assigned sphere of activity to a larger neighboring municipality with at least 3,000 inhabitants. The larger community in this case is called the fulfilling community . This municipality takes over the position of the seat of an administrative community for the smaller municipality. The regulations on administrative communities apply here accordingly. However, this association of municipalities is not a separate corporation under public law and therefore does not have the full powers of an administrative association, for example no joint debts can be taken on, while administrative associations (independent of the budgets of the member municipalities) can become indebted themselves.
A city as a commissioning municipality is rather rare and has only occurred three times so far (until 2002: Magdala and from 2014: Hohenleuben and from 2019: Neumark ).
Differences between administrative communities and fulfilling communities
In addition to the quality of the administrative community as an independent body under public law (while the delegation of tasks to a fulfilling municipality is only an administrative agreement), there are also practical differences in when the respective model was applied. A more formalized administrative community is an instrument for an association of many municipalities (in practice up to 20), none of which is clearly overweight (e.g. two thirds of the total population), while the fulfilling municipality is used as a less institutionalized association comes when only a few municipalities (usually only two or three) are involved and one of these has the clear predominance of the population. In practice, however, there are also fulfilling communities whose structure is more reminiscent of an administrative community (e.g. Bad Klosterlausnitz ) and administrative communities with few members that are clearly dominated by one community in terms of size (e.g. administrative community Hermsdorf ). Last but not least, it depended on the decision-makers on site which model was preferred for their region. However, the state made size specifications (at least 5,000 inhabitants for administrative communities and at least 3,000 inhabitants for all other municipalities with their own administration, i.e. also for the fulfilling municipalities).
Overview of the administrative communities in Thuringia
389 municipalities have come together to handle their administrative business in 43 administrative communities (as of December 31, 2019). These are sorted alphabetically here by district.
The three administrative communities with the highest population in 2019 were Hermsdorf (11,039 inhabitants), Südliches Saaletal (10,739 inhabitants) and Kölleda (10,372 inhabitants). The three largest areas in 2019 were Heldburger Unterland (215.63 km²), Southern Saale Valley (180.57 km²) and Kölleda (163.85 km²). Those with the most member communities were Hügelland / Täler (22 communities), Südliches Saaletal (20 communities) and Mellingen (17 communities).
Overview of the fulfilling communities in Thuringia
39 municipalities that do not belong to an administrative community are fulfilling municipalities for 96 other municipalities (as of December 31, 2019). These are sorted alphabetically here by district.
The fulfilling municipality with the highest population (fulfilling municipality plus commissioning municipalities) was Meiningen (27,771 inhabitants) in 2019 . The lowest population fulfilling municipality in 2019 was Auengrund (3,262 inhabitants).
