Große Kreisstadt

It is not a main goal of these reforms to make the rules more similar; on the contrary, the district towns are thought to be important in order to preserve the existing regional diversity.

Further conferments require a quorum of 30,000, however, in 1998 the historic imperial cities of Dinkelsbühl and Donauwörth were elevated by Bavarian state law, though they did not reach the necessary number of inhabitants.

In some German states other terms are used, for example Große selbständige Stadt in Lower Saxony, conclusively assigned by law to the towns of Celle, Cuxhaven, Goslar, Hameln, Hildesheim, Lingen and Lüneburg in the course of the 1970s administrative reform.

District-affiliated municipalities with a population of more than 30,000 hold the status of a Selbständige Gemeinde, territorial authorities with more than 20,000 inhabitants could apply for conferment by the Lower Saxon state government.

In Hesse, seven towns with a population of more than 50,000 obtained the status of a Sonderstatusstadt: Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Fulda, Giessen, Hanau, Marburg, Rüsselsheim and Wetzlar.