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
Zoological Garden of Hamburg society for the purposes of creating a zoo. On July 10, 1860, at the charter meeting of the Zoological Society of Hamburg (German: "Zoologische Gesellschaft in Hamburg"), Merck was selected as president. It was the fifth zoo in Germany, following the Berlin Zoological Garden in 1844, the Frankfurt Zoological Garden in 1858, the Cologne Zoological Garden in 1860 and the Dresden Zoo in 1861. The Society was a shareholding company. In 1861 it purchased a 13-hectare (32 acre) plot of land outside the Hamburg city walls, next to a municipal cemetery. In November 1862 the zoo issued additional shares to