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Bavaria (German: 
Freistaat Bayern (help·info); IPA: [fraɪ.ʃtaːt ˈbaɪ.ɐn]), with an area of 70,548 square kilometres (27,200 sq mi) and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest federal state (Bundesland) of Germany by area. Its capital is Munich in Upper Bavaria.
Bavaria shares international borders with Austria and the Czech Republic as well as with Switzerland (across Lake Constance). Neighbouring states within Germany are Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Thuringia and Saxony. Two major rivers flow through the state, the Danube (Donau) and the Main, and the upper Rhine forms part of the southwest border of the state. The Bavarian Alps define the border with Austria, and within the range is the highest peak in Germany, the Zugspitze.
The major cities in Bavaria are Munich (München), Nuremberg (Nürnberg), Augsburg, Würzburg, Regensburg, Ingolstadt, Fürth and Erlangen.
The Kingdom of Bavaria (German: Königreich Bayern) was a German state that existed from 1806–1918. Elector Maximilian I Joseph of the House of Wittelsbach became the first King of Bavaria in 1806. The monarchy would remain held by the Wittelsbachs until the kingdom's dissolution in 1918. Most of Bavaria's modern-day borders were established after 1814 with the Treaty of Paris, in which Bavaria ceded Tyrol and Vorarlberg to the Austrian Empire while receiving Aschaffenburg and parts of Hesse-Darmstadt. As a state within the German Empire, the kingdom was second in size only to the Kingdom of Prussia. Since the unification of Germany in 1871, Bavaria has remained part of Germany to the present day.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982) was a (West) German film director, screenwriter, dramatist and actor. A premier representative of the New German Cinema, Fassbinder distilled elements of his sources — Brechtian theatrics, Artaud, the Hollywood melodramas, classical narrative, and a gay sensibility.
He maintained a frenetic pace in film-making. In a professional career that lasted less than fifteen years, Fassbinder completed 35 feature length films; two television film series; three short films; four video productions; twenty-four stage plays and four radio plays; and 36 acting roles in his own and others’ films. He also worked as an actor (film and theater), author, cameraman, composer, designer, editor, producer and theater manager.
Underlying Fassbinder's work was a strong provocative current. His phenomenal creative energy when working were in violent contrast with a wild, self-destructive libertinism that earned him a reputation as the enfant terrible of the New German Cinema, as well as being its central figure. He had tortured personal relationships with the actors and technicians around him who formed a surrogate family. However, his pictures demonstrate his deep sensitivity to social outsiders and his hatred of institutionalized violence. He ruthlessly attacked both German bourgeois society and the larger limitations of humanity.
- Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (Bavaria) is named Germany's Federal Minister of Defence. (IHT) 2009-02-10
More Bavarian-related news in English can be found at Deutsche Welle, Tagesschau and Der Spiegel.
- Home is not where you live, but where they understand you.
Christian Morgenstern (poet)
- So certainly, if we can tell evil stories to make people sick, we can also tell good myths that make them well.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (film director)
- Hopefully it won't be that bad than it is already.
The maypole is a tall wooden pole (traditionally of maple (Acer), hawthorn or birch) erected to celebrate May Day or Midsummer. It may be a semi-permanent feature, standing in position year-round until it has to be repainted or replaced, or it may be a shorter, temporary structure.
- ...that there is a Bavarian citizenship (as opposed to a German citizenship)? Actually, the Bavarian constitution (Bavaria has a separate constitution that exists alongside the German constitution) explicitly provides for it in articles 6 and 7. Specifically, you become a Bavarian citizen by birth, by marriage or by being naturalized.