Schaumburg-Lippe
One of the smallest of member states of the German Reich prior to the end of World War II. It lay east of the middle bend of the Weser River and was bounded on all sides by Prussian territory from 1866 to 1946. Bückeburg was its capital.
Schaumburg, or Schauenburg, northeast of Rinteln, was the ancestral seat of a line of counts recorded from the early 12th century. Lutheran from 1559, this line died out in 1640, and the lands were partitioned. One of the survivors, Schaumburg-Lippe, was admitted to the Confederation of the Rhine as a sovereign principality in 1807. It joined the German Confederation in 1815, the North German Confederation in 1866, and the German Empire in 1871. The revolution of 1918 made it a “free state? with a republican and democratic constitution from 1922. In 1946 it was merged in the Land (state) of Lower Saxony.
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Sources
- Encylopedia Britannica 2002, Expanded Edition DVD
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