ISO 3166-2:DE is the entry for Germany in ISO 3166-2, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which defines codes for the names of the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1.

The current version of the standard defines codes for all 16 German states, referring to them using the German words Land (singular) and Länder (plural). Each code consists of two parts, separated by a hyphen. The first part is DE, the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code for Germany; the second part is two letters derived from the name of the Land.

Current codes

Subdivision names are listed as shown in the ISO 3166-2 standard, published by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency.

Map of Germany with each Land labelled with the second part of its ISO 3166-2 code.
Code Subdivision Name (de) Subdivision Name (en)
[note 1]
DE-BW  Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg
DE-BY  Bayern Bavaria
DE-BE  Berlin Berlin
DE-BB  Brandenburg Brandenburg
DE-HB  Bremen Bremen
DE-HH  Hamburg Hamburg
DE-HE  Hessen Hesse
DE-MV  Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
DE-NI  Niedersachsen Lower Saxony
DE-NW  Nordrhein-Westfalen North Rhine-Westphalia
DE-RP  Rheinland-Pfalz Rhineland-Palatinate
DE-SL  Saarland Saarland
DE-SN  Sachsen Saxony
DE-ST  Sachsen-Anhalt Saxony-Anhalt
DE-SH  Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein
DE-TH  Thüringen Thuringia
Notes
  1. ↑ For reference only; translations into languages other than German are not included in the ISO 3166-2:DE standard.

The codes for Bremen (DE-HB) and Hamburg (DE-HH) are derived from the formal names of the cities—Freie Hansestadt Bremen and Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, respectively—which reference their history in the Hanseatic League.

The codes for Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen, DE-NI), Saxony (Sachsen, DE-SN), and Saxony-Anhalt (Sachsen-Anhalt, DE-ST) were deliberately chosen (second or last letter of German state name as second letter in the code) because they avoid the connotations of Nazism associated with codes like NS ("Nationalsozialismus"), SA ("Sturmabteilung"), and SS ("Schutzstaffel"). The code for Hamburg could also be avoided on these grounds – it can be associated with the phrase Heil Hitler – but it is accepted as it was already in use for the city's vehicle registration plates long before Hitler's time in power.

See also

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