Ordinance No. 46 of the British Military Government constitutes the German Länder (states) of Hanover and Schleswig-Holstein.

Ordinance No. 46, effective 23 August 1946, was an ordinance issued by the British Military Government (CCG/BE) in the British Zone of Allied-occupied Germany by which, among others, the Prussian Province of Schleswig-Holstein became the State of Schleswig-Holstein, and the Province of Hanover turned into the State of Hanover.

The Federal Republic of Germany is a federation and consists of sixteen partly sovereign states. Of the sixteen states, thirteen are so-called area-states ('Flächenländer'); in these, below the level of the state government, there is a division into local authorities that have their own administration. Two states, Berlin and Hamburg, are city-states, in which there is no separation between state government and local administration. The state of Bremen is a special case: the state consists of the cities of Bremen, for which the state government also serves as the municipal administration, and Bremerhaven, which has its own local administration separate from the state government. It is therefore a mixture of a city-state and an area-state. Three states, Bavaria, Saxony, and Thuringia, use the appellation Freistaat ; this title is merely stylistic and carries no legal or political significance.

The State of Hanover was a short-lived state within the British Zone of Allied-occupied Germany. It existed for 92 days in the course of the dissolution of the Free State of Prussia after World War II until the foundation of Lower Saxony in 1946. The state saw itself in the tradition of the former Kingdom of Hanover, annexed by Prussia in 1866, reflected in the Saxon Steed state emblem. After Lower Saxony was founded by merging Hanover with several smaller states, it continued to use the Hanover emblems.

Schleswig-Holstein is the northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical Duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Schleswig. Its capital city is Kiel; other notable cities are Lübeck and Flensburg. It covers an area of 15,763 km² (6,086 sq mi), making it the 5th smallest German federal state by area. Historically, the name can also refer to a larger region, containing both present-day Schleswig-Holstein and the former South Jutland County in Denmark.