Germany Population Density

Germany covers 357,022 square kilometers (137,847 square miles), the seventh largest country in Europe by area. Only Russia, Ukraine, France, Spain, Sweden, and Norway take up more room. Inside that space live more than 83 million people, the largest population of any country in the European Union. Divide one number by the other and the national average lands at roughly 234 people per square kilometer, or 606 per square mile. That average hides a lot of local differences. The Rhine-Ruhr corridor around Cologne and Düsseldorf, plus Berlin and Hamburg, pack in thousands of residents per square kilometer. Large stretches of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the northeast hold fewer than 70 people per square kilometer, under 200 per square mile.

Rank	City	State	Population
1	Berlin	Berlin	3,700,577
2	Hamburg	Hamburg	1,869,473
3	Munich (München)	Bavaria	1,505,036
4	Cologne (Köln)	North Rhine-Westphalia	1,025,523
5	Frankfurt am Main	Hesse	760,656
6	Düsseldorf	North Rhine-Westphalia	619,444
7	Leipzig	Saxony	615,932
8	Stuttgart	Baden-Württemberg	609,365
9	Dortmund	North Rhine-Westphalia	600,880
10	Bremen	Bremen	588,413

Split by state, the unevenness becomes easier to see. North Rhine-Westphalia alone holds close to 18 million residents, over a fifth of the country, inside a state smaller than Bavaria. Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg add two more populous states in the south, both spread across far more territory per resident. Berlin and Hamburg break the pattern entirely. Both are city-states, so their density numbers belong to a different category than their neighbors.

State	Population	Density (people/km²)	Density (people/sq mi)
North Rhine-Westphalia	17,986,214	527	1,366
Bavaria	13,245,503	188	486
Baden-Württemberg	11,238,761	314	814
Lower Saxony	8,000,826	168	435
Hesse	6,278,594	297	770
Rhineland-Palatinate	4,123,022	208	538
Saxony	4,026,599	219	566
Berlin	3,700,577	4,149	10,745
Schleswig-Holstein	2,958,519	187	485
Brandenburg	2,551,889	87	224
Saxony-Anhalt	2,120,252	104	269
Thuringia	2,078,946	129	333
Hamburg	1,869,473	2,476	6,413
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern	1,573,685	68	176
Saarland	1,007,342	392	1,015
Bremen	706,915	1,687	4,370

The cartogram below, created by Reddit user KaleyTheKing, clearly shows the population of these Germans states. Each block on this map equals 0.1 percent of the national population.

Population in Germany clusters around old industrial corridors and a handful of major cities, then thins out fast toward the northeast and the more rural south.