Stade

Stade (German pronunciation: [ˈʃtaːdə]) is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany and part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region (Metropolregion Hamburg). It is the seat of the district named after it. The city was first mentioned in a document from 994.

It includes the urban districts of Bützfleth, Hagen, Haddorf and Wiepenkathen which have a district council ("Ortsrat") of their own with some autonomous decision making rights.

Stade is located on the lower Elbe river (Lower Elbe) and the German Timber-Frame Road.

History

The first human settlers came to the Stade area in 30,000 BC.

Since 1180 Stade belonged to the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen. In early 1208 King Valdemar II of Denmark and his troops conquered Stade. In August Valdemar II's cousin being in enmity with the king, the then Prince-Archbishop Valdemar reconquered the city only to lose it soon after again to Valdemar II. In 1209 Emperor Otto IV persuaded his ally Valdemar II to withdraw into the north of the Elbe, and the deposed Prince-Archbishop Valdemar took Stade.

Stadion (unit)

The stadion (Greek: στάδιον;Latin: stadium), formerly also anglicized as stade, was an ancient Greek unit of length, based on the length of a typical sports stadium of the time. According to Herodotus, one stadion was equal to 600 Greek feet (pous). However, the length of the foot varied in different parts of the Greek world, and the length of the stadion has been the subject of argument and hypothesis for hundreds of years. Various hypothetical equivalent lengths have been proposed, and some have been named. Among them are:

An empirical determination of the length of the stadion was made by Lev Vasilevich Firsov, who compared 81 distances given by Eratosthenes and Strabo with the straight-line distances measured by modern methods, and averaged the results. He obtained a result of about 157.7 m.

Which measure of the stadion is used can affect the interpretation of ancient texts. For example, the error in the calculation of the circumference of the Earth by Eratosthenes or Posidonius is dependent on which stade is chosen to be appropriate.

Stade (region)

The Stade Region emerged in 1823 by an administrative reorganisation of the dominions of the Kingdom of Hanover, a sovereign state, whose then territory is almost completely part of today's German federal state of Lower Saxony. Until 1837 the Kingdom of Hanover was ruled in personal union by the Kings of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

The official title of the Region was High-Bailiwick of Stade (1823–1885; German: Landdrostei Stade) and then Governorate of Stade (1885–1978; German: Regierungsbezirk Stade). The High-Bailiwick of Stade, being a mere administrative unit of the integrated Kingdom of Hanover, was named after and seated in Stade, Bremen-Verden's former capital, taking over its staff, installations and buildings. The territory of the Stade Region was combined by the territories of the Land of Hadeln, the Duchies of Bremen and Verden (German pronunciation: [ˈfɛːɐ̯dən]), all Hanoverian dominions, which were collectively administered. The territory belonging to the Stade Region covered about the triangular area between the mouths of the rivers Elbe and Weser to the North Sea and today's German federal states of Hamburg and Bremen. This area included about today's Lower Saxon counties (German: Landkreis or Kreis) of Cuxhaven (southernly), Osterholz, Rotenburg upon Wümme, Stade and Verden as well as of the Bremian exclave of the city of Bremerhaven.