ABSTRACT
After the Second World War the victorious western powers insisted that the Parliamentary Council they had commissioned to establish the Federal Republic of Germany organize West Germany along federal lines. This led to the creation of a democratic, social federal state with a territorial division that departed significantly from the boundaries of the traditional Länder.13 One advantage of the largely arbitrary restructuring of West German territory was that most of the resulting Länder were economically viable and a reversion to “federal particularism” was avoided.
