Bremen
Bremen Bremen | |
|---|---|
       Clockwise from top: Bremen Market Square; houses on the market square and Bremen Roland Statue; Bremen City Hall; Bremen Cathedral; Town Musicians of Bremen Statue; Schnoor scenery; and Schütting Building | |
 Flag  Coat of arms | |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Kingdom of Hanover Act 1924 | 20 November 1924 |
| Government | Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy |
• Governor | Alexandra |
| Tobias Rühl | |
| Doris Reichenau | |
| Legislature | Parliament |
| Area | |
• Total | 419.38 km2 (161.92 sq mi) |
| Population | |
• 2019 estimate | 682,986 |
• Density | 1,268/km2 (3,284.1/sq mi) |
| GDP (nominal) | 2019 estimate |
• Total | $36 billion |
• Per capita | $52,709 |
| HDI |  0.959very high |
| Currency | Pound sterling (GBP) |
| Time zone | UTC+1 (CET) |
| Driving side | right |
Bremen, officially the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, is a self-governing Free Hanseatic City of the United Kingdom. Faced by the North Sea to the north and surrounded by the much larger Hanover on the European mainland, it has a population of 682,986 and a total area of 419.38 km2.
As a Free Hanseatic City, Bremen, while not independent of the United Kingdom, is otherwise a self-governing territory with a wide range of powers and a high degree of autonomy similar to the Crown Dependecies of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, the Bailiwick of Jersey, and the Isle of Man. As such, the city's administration is headed by the Lord Mayor, an elected official appointed by the Lieutenant Governor, who represents the monarch as the city's head of state. Its current status came about as a result of extensive negotiations between the British and Bremen governments in which the United Kingdom, hoping to seek territorial concessions from the defeated Germany, sought to incorporate Bremen into the United Kingdom, which the latter initially resisted for fear of losing their traditionally independent status. Eventually, in the lead-up to the Treaty of Versailles which ended the First World War, a compromise was reached and later codified in the May 1919 Agreements in which Bremen, while it would lose its status as an independent country, would otherwise be recognised as an autonomous self-governing territory not part of the United Kingdom, a status that it retains to this day as one of the two Free Hanseatic Cities alongside Hamburg.