Thuringia
federated state in the center of Germany

Thuringia (English: ; German: Thüringen [ˈtyːʁɪŋən] officially the Free State of Thuringia, Freistaat Thüringen [ˈfʁaɪʃtaːt ˈtyːʁɪŋən]) is a landlocked state in central Germany. With 2.1 million people, it is 12th-largest by population, and with 16,171 square kilometers, it is 11th-largest in area. It is the country's centermost state.
Erfurt is the capital and largest city. Other cities include Jena, Gera and Weimar. Thuringia is bordered by Bavaria, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Saxony, and Saxony-Anhalt. It has been known as "the green heart of Germany" (das grüne Herz Deutschlands) from the late 19th century due to its broad, dense forest. Most of Thuringia is in the Saale drainage basin, a left-bank tributary of the Elbe.
The Frankish Duchy of Thuringia was established around 631 AD by King Dagobert I. The modern state was established in 1920 by the Weimar Republic through a merger of the Ernestine duchies, save for Saxe-Coburg. After World War II, Thuringia came under the Soviet occupation zone in Allied-occupied Germany, and its borders were reformed, to become contiguous.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Thuringia” as federated state in the center of Germany. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as federated state in the center of Germany. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1205. VIAF identifies the subject as 138407449. The Library of Congress control number is n82255658. Authority coordinates are 51.000, 11.000. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thuringia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.