Postal Codes in Germany - a postal indexing system in modern Germany ( German Postleitzahl , abbreviated PLZ ), which provides for dividing the country's territory into ten main postal zones and using five-digit digital codes.
History
For the first time, a postal code system was introduced in Germany in 1941 in order to unify and speed up mail processing. This system was based on two-digit codes.
In 1962 in West Germany and a little later, in 1965, in East, this system was replaced by two different four-digit code systems.
The modern single five-digit postal system of Germany was introduced on July 1, 1993, after the reunification of Germany, replacing the previous two different four-digit systems.
During the unification period, which lasted from 1989 to 1993, old postal codes were used with the addition of the letter W ( West - West) for West Germany and West Berlin and the letter O ( Ost - East) for East Germany.
Structure
The modern PLZ index consists of five digits .
The first (leftmost) digit in the PLZ code indicates the zone ( Zone ) and, accordingly, the airport through which mail is exchanged with this zone. It should be understood that the zonal division of PLZ codes does not correspond to the administrative division of Germany into lands .
The second digit in the PLZ code indicates the region of the zone and, together with the zone number, forms a two-digit region number, which determines the further routing of mail within the zone.
Regions within a zone are usually numbered sequentially bypassing the zone counterclockwise , starting from the south of the zone. Sometimes there are omissions in numbering, and not all zones contain all 10 regions.
Zone Division
The following information about the German postal zones is as of December 31, 2007.
| Zone | Area ( km² ) | Population | Covered Area | Big cities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 37 187.8 | 6 819 607 | Saxony , southern Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg , east of Thuringia | Dresden , Leipzig , Halle , Chemnitz , Cottbus , Jena |
| one | 47 642.4 | 7 034 541 | Berlin , most of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern , small parts of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt | Berlin , Potsdam , Frankfurt an der Oder , Rostock , Schwerin |
| 2 | 44 207.4 | 8 691 409 | Hamburg , Schleswig-Holstein , northern Lower Saxony , Bremen , small plots of land Mecklenburg-Vorpommern | Hamburg , Lubeck , Kiel , Bremen , Bremerhaven , Oldenburg |
| 3 | 45,488.1 | 9 012 212 | southern Lower Saxony , eastern Westphalia , northern Hesse , Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt | Hannover , Bielefeld , Kassel , Fulda , Giessen , Göttingen , Braunschweig , Magdeburg |
| four | 20,212.3 | 10 331 535 | northwestern part of the North Rhine-Westphalia , southwestern part of Lower Saxony | Dusseldorf , Dortmund , Essen , Duisburg , Munster , Osnabruck |
| five | 28 834.5 | 9,233,815 | southwestern part of the North Rhine-Westphalia , most of the Rhineland-Palatinate , a small part of Hesse | Cologne , Bonn , Aachen , Mainz , Koblenz , Trier |
| 6 | 17,247.9 | 7 540 503 | southern parts of Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate , Saarland , small parts of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg | Frankfurt am Main , Wiesbaden , Darmstadt , Saarbrücken , Heidelberg , Mannheim , Aschaffenburg |
| 7 | 27,864.2 | 8 715 898 | most of Baden-Württemberg , a small part of Rhineland-Palatinate | Stuttgart , Tuebingen , Freiburg , Konstanz , Baden-Baden |
| eight | 36,427.2 | 7 675 001 | southern Bavaria , southeast of Baden-Württemberg | Munich , Rosenheim , Augsburg , Ulm , Ingolstadt |
| 9 | 47 803.7 | 7 163 416 | northern Bavaria ( Franconia ), most of Thuringia , a small part of Baden-Württemberg | Nuremberg , Regensburg , Würzburg , Erfurt , Weimar , Eisenach , Bamberg , Bayreuth |
See also
- Administrative division of Germany
- Postcode
- Deutsche Post AG
- ISO 3166-2: DE
Links
- Germany . Zip codes of the countries of the world. Search by zip codes . Obtaining statistics codes; LLC "Prografik". Date of treatment January 10, 2011. Archived April 10, 2012.
- Postleitzahlensuche bei der Post (German) (Retrieved February 23, 2010)
- Geschichte der Postleitzahlen (German) (Retrieved February 23, 2010)
- Postleitzahlkarten von Juli 1894 bis 1918 (German) (Retrieved February 23, 2010)
- Karte mit den Postleitgebieten Ende der 40er-Jahre (German) (Retrieved February 23, 2010)
- PLZ-Datenbank der Uni Paderborn (German) (Retrieved February 23, 2010)
- Auskunft über alte PLZ vor 1993 von der Uni Stuttgart (German) (Retrieved February 23, 2010)