Hamburg is the second-largest city in Germany and the eleventh-largest city in the European Union. The city is home to approximately 1.8 million people, while the Hamburg Metropolitan Region has more than 4.3 million inhabitants. The port of Hamburg is the second-largest port in Europe, and the ninth largest in the world. Hamburg's official name is the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg .
Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a duchy and later grand duchy in northern Germany, consisting of the eastern fifth of the historic Mecklenburg region, roughly corresponding with the present-day Mecklenburg-Strelitz district (the former Lordship of Stargard), and the western exclave of the former Bishopric of Ratzeburg in modern Schleswig-Holstein. At the time of its establishment, the duchy bordered on the territory of Swedish Pomerania in the north and of Brandenburg in the south.
Mecklenburg-Schwerin was a duchy in northern Germany since 1348, when Albert II of Mecklenburg and his younger brother John were raised to Dukes of Mecklenburg by King Charles IV. Ruled by the successors of the Nikloting House of Mecklenburg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin remained a relatively poor state of the Holy Roman Empire along the Baltic littoral between Holstein and Pomerania.
Waldeck (or later Waldeck and Pyrmont) was a sovereign principality in the German Empire and German Confederation and, until 1929, a constituent state of the Weimar Republic. It comprised territories in present-day Hesse and Lower Saxony,.