States of Germany, matched to countries
Natural Earth’s file divides Germany into 16 states. Below, each is drawn at true scale and matched to the country closest to it in area and in population.
Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen are states in their own right and are counted among the 16. Natural Earth draws Bremen as two pieces, the city of Bremen and Bremerhaven.
Population: the 2022 figures Wikidata holds, for 16 of the 16 states. Every population on these pages carries its year; they are not one count taken on one day.
At a glance
- Bavaria, the largest, is 182× the size of Bremen, the smallest.
- The five largest, Bavaria, Lower Saxony, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg, cover 61% of Germany.
- None of the 16 is larger than the United Kingdom (244,000 km²).
- None of the 16 is larger than France (548,000 km²).
- Berlin, the most crowded, has 4,223 people per km²: 62.4× Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the least crowded (68).
- Half of the people counted live in the 3 most populous (North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg), which cover 39% of the area.
- 4 of the 16 have more people than the median of the 38 European countries listed here (6.6 million).
- 10 of the 16 are within 10% in area of a European country, among them Bavaria and Ireland (1.01×), Rhineland-Palatinate and Slovenia (1.01×), Saxony-Anhalt and Slovenia (1.02×).
Every state matched to a country
Largest first. The matches are the countries closest in area and in population from Natural Earth’s country list; contested places and dependencies are never used as matches. Population is the newest figure Wikidata holds, with its year.
- Bavaria70,000 km² · 13.0 million (2022)Size ofGeorgia1.01× · 69,600 km²People ofSouth Sudan1.04× · 12.6 million
- Lower Saxony47,600 km² · 7.9 million (2022)Size ofDominican Republic0.98× · 48,400 km²People ofTogo1.02× · 7.8 million
- Baden-Württemberg36,100 km² · 11.1 million (2022)Size ofNetherlands0.97× · 37,100 km²People ofSomalia1.01× · 11.0 million
- North Rhine-Westphalia34,500 km² · 17.9 million (2022)Size ofMoldova1.04× · 33,200 km²People ofNetherlands1.00× · 17.9 million
- Brandenburg30,000 km² · 2.5 million (2022)Size ofLesotho1.00× · 30,100 km²People ofNamibia1.00× · 2.5 million
- Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania23,200 km² · 1.6 million (2022)Size ofBelize1.04× · 22,300 km²People ofEast Timor1.12× · 1.4 million
- Hesse21,000 km² · 6.2 million (2022)Size ofEl Salvador1.02× · 20,500 km²People ofRepublic of the Congo1.01× · 6.1 million
- Saxony-Anhalt20,700 km² · 2.1 million (2022)Size ofEl Salvador1.01× · 20,500 km²People ofSlovenia1.04× · 2.1 million
- Rhineland-Palatinate20,100 km² · 4.1 million (2022)Size ofSlovenia0.99× · 20,300 km²People ofGeorgia1.04× · 3.9 million
- Saxony18,200 km² · 4.1 million (2022)Size ofKuwait1.04× · 17,500 km²People ofGeorgia1.04× · 3.9 million
- Thuringia16,100 km² · 2.1 million (2022)Size ofEswatini0.94× · 17,100 km²People ofSlovenia1.02× · 2.1 million
- Schleswig-Holstein15,400 km² · 3.0 million (2022)Size ofEast Timor1.02× · 15,100 km²People ofArmenia1.01× · 2.9 million
- Saarland2,650 km² · 1.0 million (2022)Size ofLuxembourg1.02× · 2,610 km²People ofFiji1.09× · 926,000
- Berlin889 km² · 3.8 million (2022)Size ofSão Tomé and Príncipe86% · 1,040 km²People ofBosnia and Herzegovina0.98× · 3.8 million
- Hamburg774 km² · 1.9 million (2022)Size ofDominica1.06× · 730 km²People ofGuinea-Bissau1.02× · 1.9 million
- Bremen386 km² · 693,000 (2022)Size ofSaint Vincent and the Grenadines1.05× · 368 km²People ofLuxembourg1.00× · 691,000
Too small to see on the map
At the scale of the map these units are a few pixels wide or less, so they are ringed on the map and drawn here as discs of true relative area. Each is matched to the small countries and island nations, not to the countries of 1,000 km² and more.
- Berlin889 km² · official 89186% São Tomé and Príncipe1,040 km²
- Hamburg774 km² · official 7551.06× Dominica730 km²
- Bremen386 km² · official 4191.05× Saint Vincent and the Grenadines368 km²
The closest matches in size
How crowded they are
Beside the regions of other countries
Every state also has a closest match, by area and by people, among the 379 regions of the other 12 countries. All the matches, in both directions, are on one page.
Sources and method
- Outlines
- Natural Earth, 1:10m Admin 1 - States, Provinces, public domain. The 16 listed are all of the features Natural Earth has for Germany.
- Boundary
- De facto, as drawn by Natural Earth.
- Area
- Measured on the WGS84 ellipsoid from the full-detail outlines, shown rounded. The 16 areas add up to 358,000 km², within 0.1% of the country’s measured area.
- Official figures
- Area, population and capital from Wikidata (CC0), fetched 2026-11-12. Population is the 2022 figure where Wikidata has it, otherwise its newest; the year is shown.
- Data built
- 2026-11-12