There you go thinking in English when translating German. I'm sure you meant to say "free-county" not county-free". also, I doubt you'd hear the second "t" in stadt by a native speaker. More likely it'd be a very hard "d". Of course, some native speaker will correct me, if I'm wrong. It's been a long time since I've heard my grandmother's speech. But then technically she was French. But she'd tell you she was neither French (Hmmph) nor German. She was an Alsatian! Hmphh! On Wed, February 25, 2009 11:08 am, Don Watson wrote: > ... Darmstadt, a major city with the status of a county (Kreisfreie Stadt, > pronounced Cryes-frya Stahdt). Kreisfreie means county-free. A Landkreis > (lahnd-cryes) in Germany is roughly the same as a county in the United > States, since it exists inside the larger federal administrative district, > which in turn exists inside the State, and the State inside the Nation. > There are 16 German states. Today anyway. Once upon a time there were many, many, more. Maybe even hundreds. ;) Odd to see such precise data in a US census. My German immigrant ancestors' place of birth changed back forth all over the German map over time. Brian

Actually county-free was indeed correct. Some cities, such as Frankfurt or Darmstadt, do not belong to a Landkreis as they are large enough on their own to be worth an own administration. In these cases the city-parliament in the town-hall is at the same time what in other counties is called Kreistag. So it has two functions and this city therefore does not belong to any county, therefore it is county-free. If you say free county it sounds as if it actually is a county and that this county does not belong to anything else, but that would be wrong. County-free cities do belong to a "Regierungsbezirk", which again belongs to a "Land", which again belongs to the Federal Republik of Germany. Hope this helps a bit. Of course word-by-word translations do sometimes create words which do not exist in the target-language. Regards, Thierry   Dr. Thierry P. Dietrich D-61250 Usingen ________________________________ Von: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> An: [email protected] Gesendet: Donnerstag, den 26. Februar 2009, 16:59:26 Uhr Betreff: Re: [HESSE] Lorsch, near Eberstadt, Bensheim, et al There you go thinking in English when translating German. I'm sure you meant to say "free-county" not county-free". also, I doubt you'd hear the second "t" in stadt by a native speaker. More likely it'd be a very hard "d". Of course, some native speaker will correct me, if I'm wrong. It's been a long time since I've heard my grandmother's speech. But then technically she was French. But she'd tell you she was neither French (Hmmph) nor German. She was an Alsatian! Hmphh! On Wed, February 25, 2009 11:08 am, Don Watson wrote: > ... Darmstadt, a major city with the status of a county (Kreisfreie Stadt, > pronounced Cryes-frya Stahdt). Kreisfreie means county-free. A Landkreis > (lahnd-cryes) in Germany is roughly the same as a county in the United > States, since it exists inside the larger federal administrative district, > which in turn exists inside the State, and the State inside the Nation. > There are 16 German states. Today anyway. Once upon a time there were many, many, more. Maybe even hundreds. ;) Odd to see such precise data in a US census. My German immigrant ancestors' place of birth changed back forth all over the German map over time. Brian ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message