Brunswick-Lüneburg

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The Coat arms of the Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg

Brunswick-Lüneburg was a historical state within the Holy Roman Empire. As the name implies, the main cities of this state were Brunswick and Lüneburg.

1 Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg
2 From Calenberg to Hanover
3 Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
- 3.1 Dukes of Brunswick and Lüneburg and Princes of Wolfenbüttel, 1267 -1807
- 3.2 Dukes of Brunswick and Lüneburg, 1813-1918
  - 3.2.1 House of Welf, Younger House of Brunswick, restored
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg

The state emerged from the inheritance of the first Saxon state of Henry the Lion in the late 12th century. Henry was deposed by the Emperor as Duke of Saxony, but retained various Lower Saxon lands which were inherited by his children as the Duchies of Brunswick and Lüneburg.

The first duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg was Otto the Child, who reigned from 1235 on. After 1267 the duchy was split into two partial states, the lines of Lüneburg and of Wolfenbüttel (which later became a multitude of partial states), but all of them were ruled by the Welf dynasty and maintained close relations. The centres of power moved in the meantime from Brunswick and Lüneburg to Celle and Wolfenbüttel.

While there is a total of about a dozen subdivisions that existed, some of them were only dynastic and were not recognised as states of the Empire. In the List of Reichstag participants (1792), the following four subdivisions of Brunswick-Lüneburg are represented:

From 1705 on, all lines except Wolfenbüttel were held by Calenberg. After the end of the Holy Roman Empire, Calenberg and its possessions continued to exist under the name of Hanover; Wolfenbüttel continued to exist under the name of Brunswick.

[edit] From Calenberg to Hanover

One of the collateral lines was the line of the dukes of Calenberg, who managed to gain all the territory of the former duchy except for that of the Wolfenbüttel line. The city of Hanover was the residence of the Calenberg line. Calenberg (sometimes also called Calenberg-Celle) was made an electorate by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1692. It was then known under many different names (Brunswick-Lüneburg, Calenberg, Hanover), but eventually became the state of Hanover.

[edit] Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel

The Wolfenbüttel line retained its independence from Hanover, except for the period from 1807 to 1813, when it was made part of the Kingdom of Westphalia. The Congress of Vienna of 1815 turned it into an independent country under the name Duchy of Brunswick. While the kingdom of Hanover was annexed by Prussia in 1866, the Duchy of Brunswick remained and joined first the North German Confederation and in 1871 the German Empire.