The population of Germany rose from about 41 million in 1871 to almost 65 million in 1910. Together with rapid urbanization, this increase transformed Germany into a densely populated country by the eve of the First World War. The extent and impact of demographic change, however, varied markedly from region to region. Whereas the rise in population density was modest in northeastern Germany—in provinces such as East Prussia and Pomerania—it was much more dramatic in the industrial regions of the west (e.g., Westphalia and the Rhineland) and in the Kingdom of Saxony. Excluding Berlin and the city-states of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck, by 1910, Saxony had the highest population density in Germany and one of the highest in all of Europe, with 321 inhabitants per square kilometer—a population density far greater than that of relatively rural Mecklenburg-Schwerin (49/sq km) and Bavaria (91/sq km), and more than 2.5 times the German national average (120/sq km).