ISO 3166-2:DE is the entry for Germany in ISO 3166-2, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which defines codes for the names of the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1.
Currently for Germany, ISO 3166-2 codes are defined for all 16 states.
Each code consists of two parts, separated by a hyphen. The first part is DE, the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code of Germany. The second part is two letters. The codes for Bremen (DE-HB) and Hamburg (DE-HH) are based on their official names, Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg respectively.
Subdivision names are listed as in the ISO 3166-2 standard published by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA).
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The more intuitive abbreviations "DE-NS" for Lower Saxony and "DE-SA" (or "DE-SS") for Saxony or Saxony-Anhalt were avoided on purpose, because of nazi connotations ("Nationalsozialismus", "Sturmabteilung", "Schutzstaffel"), but "HH", which is also associated with "Heil Hitler", had already long been used for car license plates in Hamburg.