Template:Großgermania/Selected article/5

Nordhausen is the capital city of Großgermania. Located at the southern edge of the Harz Mountains on the River Zorge, the city is also capital of the Province of Thuringia. With a population of over fourty thousand, Nordhausen also has Stadtrecht (city rights), and is designated Unter-Zorge-Tal (Lower Zorge Valley) by the Committee for the Oversight of Imperial Cities.

A relatively small city by German standards, Nordhausen was chosen as the capital largely due to concerns that maintaining the capital at Berlin or another larger German city would unfairly marginalize minority interests in the new Empire. Margrethe II, Queen of Denmark, said, at a meeting of the heads of state of the Association of Germanic States (the supranational precursor to Großgermania), that ' [ Berlin ] is the capital of hedonism, prostitution, and lederhosen.'

The city is the center of imperial politics. Both the Reichstag and the Witenagemot meet in the city, and the Imperial Palace, the Emperor's summer residence and office, is located on the river a short ways outside city limits.

Originally founded in 785 by the Carolingians, Nordhausen became a Free Imperial City of the in 1220. Embracing the Protestant Reformation during the Thirty Years War, and was part of the under Napoleonic domination. Serving as a concentration camp under the, it was captured by Soviet forces on 2 July 1945. Becoming part of the following, it became part of the historic state of Thuringia in 1990 upon German reunification.

More about Nordhausen...