Dresden Basin between 2004 and 2009 by UNESCO due to their cultural and natural significance. During the East German era, the Basin was jokingly referred to by its inhabitants as the Valley of the Clueless, because they were not able to receive West German television until the late 1980s, and then only patchily. The most important towns and cities are (in downstream order): Dresden Basin The Dresden Basin ( or "Dresdner Elbtalweitung") is a roughly 45 km long and 10 km wide area of the Elbe Valley between the towns of Pirna and Meißen. The city of Dresden lies in the Dresden
Accession of Hamburg to the German Customs Union (Zollverein) Accession of Hamburg to the German Customs Union (Zollverein) The accession of the city state of Hamburg to the Customs Union in 1888 (along with Bremen) was the culmination of a project for the economic and monetary union of Germany, stretching back to 1819. In that year Schwarzburg-Sondershausen joined Prussia’s internal customs union, the first other state to do so and the first of many to follow. When the German Customs Union (Deutscher Zollverein) was initially formed, in the 1830s and 1840s, the motives of the states in joining did not include any particular desire to unite with others to