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The City Municipality of Bremen is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. It is a two-city-state that consists of the cities of Bremerhaven and Bremen. The city of Bremen in the 11th largest city in Germany and the second largest city in Northern Germany.

The area of Bremen was settled in as early as 12,000 BC. There are burial places and settlements in Bremen-Mahndorf and Bremen-Osterholz that date back to the 7th century AD. By the end of the 3rd century, they had merged with the Saxons. In 787, Willehad of Bremen became the first Bishop of Bremen. In 1032, the city’s first stone wall was built. During that time, trade with England, Norway, and the northern Netherlands began to grow, which increased the importance of the city of Bremen as a trade location. In 1186, the city was recognized as its own entity with its own laws by Prince-Archbishop Hartwig of Uthlede. Bremen joined the Hanseatic League in 1260. During the 1440s, Bremen and the Dutch states were in conflict. The city of Bremen offered contracts to pirates to attack its enemies and it became a popular hub for piracy. Pirates attacked and captured foreign ships around the North Sea.

In 1648, the Prince-Archbishopric was transformed into the Duchy of Bremen. When the Thirty Years’ War broke out in 1618, Bremen quickly stated its neutrality. Bremen further enforced its neutrality when the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands asked Bremen to ally with them in the Eighty Years War and they refused. In 1648, the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III granted confirmation to the Free Imperial City. However, Sweden did not accept the imperial immediacy of the city of Bremen and tried to convince Bremen to switch its allegiance to Sweden. In February 1654, the city of Bremen managed to get Ferdinand III to grant it a seat and the vote in the Holy Roman Empire's Diet, thus accepting the city's status as Free Imperial City of Bremen. The first German steamboat was manufactured in 1817. Bremen purchased land from the Kingdom of Hanover in 1827 to establish the city of Bremerhaven as an outpost of Bremen. In 1867, Bremen joined the North German Confederation and four years later, in 1871, it became an autonomous component state of the German Empire. In the years following World War I, Bremen became the Soviet Republic of Bremen for a brief amount of time from January to February 1919, until the Gerstenberg Freikorps overthrew it. Bremen lost its state sovereign rights by the Act on the Reconstruction of the Empire of January 30, 1934. In 1939, the villages of Grohn, Schönebeck, Aumund, Hammersbeck, Fähr, Lobbendorf, Blumenthal, Farge and Rekum became part of the city of Bremen. During World War II, Bremen-Vegesack hosted a concentration camp. Allied bombing during the Second World War destroyed the majority of the historical Hanseatic city. In April 1945, the British captured Bremen. Bremen’s mayor, Wilhlem Kaisen, travelled to the United States in 1946 in an attempt to reestablish Bremen's Statehood. In 1947, the city became an enclave and was part of the American occupation zone.