The federal state of Brandenburg is situated in the northeast of the Federal Republic of Germany. It represents with the city-state and the federal capital Berlin a national and international very important metropolis and conurbation.
Brandenburg can be counted among the biggest federal states of Germany with a total area of 29.476 km 2 and with a maximum distance from north to south of 244 km and from west to east of 291 km. At the same time, it is the biggest state of former East Germany. One special feature about Brandenburg is its border to Poland, which is the longest external border with a total length of approximately 250 km.
Geologically
Brandenburg stretches from the Uckermark in the north to the Elbe-Elster lowland in the south of the state. The north German lowland has a maximum height of 201 m above the sea level (Kutschenberg/Oberspreewald-Lausitz). It presents a big diversity of Ice Age landscapes, which determine until today the natural landscape and variety of the appearance of Brandenburg.
Determining factors for today’s landscape of Brandenburg, especially for the river and lake scenery, are the lowlands and valleys, which developed because of glacial action in the Ice Age. The permanent change of 33.000 km courses of rivers, for example of the Spree, Havel, Rhin, Nuthe and Dahme, a large number of canals and about 3000 lakes makes Brandenburg to the federal state with the most stretches of water.
Another characteristic of Brandenburg is the large number of lowlands and swamps (like the Oderbruch and the Spreewald), which also determine today’s scenery and which are partly dried up. Internationally important marshlands, according to the Ramsar–guideline, are especially the Lower Odertal (Polder Schwedt) with an area of 54 km 2, the pond-area Peitz with 10,6 km 2 as well as the lowland of the lower Havel, including the lake Gülper and a total area of 57,9 km 2.
Apart from the settlement and urbanization, many state parts of Brandenburg still have an exclusive, original and worthy amount of protection areas, in the form of nature and landscape reserves. At the end of 1998, the state wide nature and landscape reserves covered an area of about 1,2 million hectare.
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