Bezirk Lothringen (today's , at the time translated into i.e. Department of Lorraine), also called German Lorraine (''Deutsch Lothringen''), was a government region ("Bezirk") in the western part of Alsace-Lorraine when it was part of the

German Empire The German Empire (),; ; World Book, Inc. ''The World Book dictionary, Volume 1''. World Book, Inc., 2003. p. 572. States that Deutsches Reich translates as "German Realm" and was a former official name of Germany. also referred to as Imperia ...

from 1871 to 1918.

History

The Department or District of Lorraine differed from other

Prussia Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...

n government regions, as it was not a simple governorate. As a corporation of self-rule of the pertaining rural and urban districts and cantons, it was similar to regions in the then neighbouring Bavaria ( Palatinate), which had been formed after the French model départements into which that region had been divided under French annexation. Thus the district parliaments delegated deputies to the General Council (parliament), the ''Bezirkstag von Lothringen'' (). The capital of the ''Department of Lorraine'' was

Metz Metz ( , , , then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle (river), Moselle and the Seille (Moselle), Seille rivers. Metz is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Moselle (department), Moselle Departments ...

Territorial composition

The department comprised the

districts A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions ...

("Kreise") of : #

, independent city ( Stadtkreis) # "Kreis Bolchen", seated in Bolchen (Boulay) # "Kreis Château-Salins", seated in

Château-Salins Château-Salins (; , from 1941 to 1944 ''Salzburgen'') is a Communes of France, commune in the Moselle (department), Moselle Departments of France, department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. Until 2015, Château-Salins was a Subprefectures ...

# "Kreis Diedenhofen-Ost", seated in Diedenhofen (Thionville) # "Kreis Diedenhofen-West", seated in Diedenhofen (Thionville) # "Kreis Forbach", seated in

Forbach Forbach ( , , ; ) is a commune in the French department of Moselle, northeastern French region of Grand Est. It is located on the German border approximately 15 minutes from the center of Saarbrücken, Germany, with which it constitutes a ...

# "Kreis Metz-Land", seated in Metz # "Kreis Saarburg", seated in Saarburg (Sarrebourg) # "Kreis Saargemünd", seated in Saargemünd (Sarreguemines) The department of Lorraine corresponds exactly to the current ''

département In the administrative divisions of France, the department (, ) is one of the three levels of government under the national level (" territorial collectivities"), between the administrative regions and the communes. There are a total of 101 ...

'' of

Moselle The Moselle ( , ; ; ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it joins at Koblenz. A sm ...

. After the outbreak of the Second World War and the defeat of France in 1940, the ''département'' of Moselle, renamed CdZ-Gebiet Lothringen, was added to the Gau Westmark on 30 November 1940.Jacques Lorraine (Edmond Huntzbuchler): ''Les Allemands en France. Origines, Bretagne, Zone interdite Est, Bourgogne, Alsace et Lorraine'', Alger-Oran: editions du Désert, 1945, pp. 121–124.

Department presidents

(/today's ) * 1871-1872 : Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck, as préfet/Präfekt * 1872-1873 : Botho zu Eulenburg, as department president * 1873-1874 : Adolf von Arnim-Boitzenburg * 1875-1876 : Robert von Puttkamer * 1877-1880 : Friedrich Albrecht Karl Johann von Reitzenstein * 1881-1882 : Adalbert von Flottwell * 1883-1900 : Hans von Hammerstein-Loxten * 1901-1912 : Johann Friedrich Alexander von Zeppelin-Aschhausen * 1913-1918 : Karl von Gemmingen-Hornberg

Bibliography

* ''Amtsblatt für den Bezirk Lothringen / Recueil officiel des actes administratifs du Département de la Lorraine'' (departmental legal gazette; appeared December 1870 to 1918) * Ernst Bruck, ''Das Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsrecht von Elsaß-Lothringen'': 3 vols., Straßburg im Elsass: Trübner, 1908–1910. * Stefan Fisch, „Das Elsaß im deutschen Kaiserreich (1870/71–1918)“, in: ''Das Elsass: Historische Landschaft im Wandel der Zeit'', Michael Erbe (ed.), Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 2003, pp. 123–146. . * Georg Lang, ''Der Regierungs-Bezirk Lothringen: statistisch-topographisches Handbuch, Verwaltung-Schematismus und Adressbuch'', Metz: Lang, 1874 * ''Verhandlungen des Bezirkstages von Lothringen / Procès-verbaux des délibérations du Conseil Général de la Lorraine'', Metz (proceedings of the departmental parliament sessions, appeared from 1874 to 1918)

External links

* "Bezirk Lothringen" o
territorial.de

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lothringen

Bezirk The German language, German term (; Grammatical number#Overview, pl. ; derived from , "circle") translated as "district" can refer to the following types of administrative divisions: * , a subdivision of a city in the sense of a borough (e ...

Former government regions of Germany