Kingdom of Hanover

Kingdom of Hanover
Federal state of the
German Confederation

coat of arms flag   State capital Hanover Form of government monarchy Last chief George V. dynasty House Hanover ( Welfen ) Consist 1814-1866 Arose from Electorate of Braunschweig-Lüneburg Incorporated into Hanover Province ( Prussia ) map

The Kingdom of Hanover was established in 1814 at the Congress of Vienna as the successor state to the Electorate of Braunschweig-Lüneburg . Until the death of Wilhelm IV in 1837, the end of the personal union between Great Britain and Hanover , the King of Hanover was also ruler of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . When the new King Ernst August abolished the liberal constitution of 1833 that year , this led to the protest of the Göttinger Sieben , one of the great politicizing events of Vormärz .

Hanover lost the war of 1866 on Austria's side . As part of the Prussian annexations annexed Prussia the Kingdom of Hanover as a province of Hannover its territory one.

In 1946 the state of Hanover was re-established. It soon merged with the smaller neighboring states of Braunschweig , Oldenburg and Schaumburg-Lippe to form the new state of Lower Saxony , which took over both the capital and essential parts of the state symbolism from the state of Hanover.

history

The Leineschloss in Hanover was the residence of the Kings of Hanover from 1837 to 1866.

founding

At the Congress of Vienna , the electorate of Braunschweig-Lüneburg ("Kurhannover"), dissolved by Napoleon I , declared itself to be the Kingdom of Hanover on October 12, 1814. Thanks to the negotiating skills of the Hanoverian cabinet minister at the English court, Count Ernst zu Münster , the Vienna Congress also succeeded in rounding off the territory. The Lower Counties of Lingen , the Duchy of Arenberg-Meppen , the County of Bentheim , the Hochstift Hildesheim , the city of Goslar , areas of the Untereichsfeld and the Principality of East Frisia were assigned to the Kingdom of Hanover .

Personal union with Great Britain

The personal union between " Kurhannover " and Great Britain , which had existed since 1714 , continued until 1837. The interests of the House of Hanover were represented by the Minister, Count zu Munster, who was particularly familiar to the royal family and who in this context successfully managed to enforce Hanover's independent negotiating position alongside that of the United Kingdom against Prussia.

Adolph Friedrich , Duke of Cambridge, a younger son of King George III. , was sent to Hanover on October 24, 1816 to act as governor general . A constitution in which only an advisory vote of parliament, the assembly of estates of the Kingdom of Hanover , was provided for in legislation, was introduced in 1819. The Assembly of Estates of the Kingdom of Hanover, consisting of two equal chambers, was brought into being as a parliament. The estates included representatives of the nobility, the clergy, the cities and some free farmers from the individual regions . In 1821, the new King George IV was the first monarch to visit Hanover and its German homeland again in 66 years. He was enthusiastically celebrated there.

Riots of 1830, reforms and the end of the personal union

Triggered by the French July Revolution , there were also unrest and protests in the German Confederation. In the Kingdom of Hanover, however, these riots were mainly limited to Osterode and the university town of Göttingen. Beyond these two cities, there were no actors who could have initiated or led a major opposition. However, numerous petitions were made across the country. In the long term, these persuaded the government to at least grant the kingdom a constitutional constitution . The petitions of the population were passed on to London, where King William IV resided. He was king of both Great Britain and Hanover in personal union. The petitions contained demands for a representative constitution, the introduction of freedom of the press, the abolition of feudal rights and the abolition of denominational discrimination. In addition, Count Münster was to be dismissed, who was in charge of the affairs of the Kingdom of Hanover on behalf of the king. The population blamed the count for the backlog of reforms in their country. To contain possible unrest, the government moved troops to the border with the Electorate of Hesse in October 1830, which was already massively affected by protests. Small unrest against excessive taxes, tariffs and food prices could not be completely suppressed from the outset in the kingdom. In Göttingen the news of the fall of the French king spread through foreign newspapers.

The situation came to a head in the city of Göttingen when, in December, professors also publicly acknowledged the French July Revolution. Encouraged by this, students released one of their fellow students from prison on December 2, 1830. This had distributed "rebellious" writings in the Hessian capital Kassel. The fact that the university management did not impose any punishment on the responsible students caused a sensation. There was growing sympathy for the student’s action in the city’s public. Shortly afterwards, the mood turned against the city police superintendent: On December 25, 1830, he had a crenellated caster who had been apprehended by a night watchman for disturbing the peace, publicly removed. There was a protest against this treatment, which was perceived as humiliating by the citizens, which led to the so-called Göttingen Revolution at the turn of the year 1830/1831 . It was only when 4,500 foot soldiers and 600 cavalry riders marched in in mid-January 1831 that the uprising ended without a fight.

After the riots in Göttingen, Adolph Friedrich was also installed as viceroy . In a state reform of 1833, parliament and the people were granted further rights to a limited extent. After a liberal constitution came into force under the government of Wilhelm IV in 1833 , reform movements were facilitated. The agricultural reform laws of 1831/1833 and 1842 replaced the basic burdens of the farmers. The elimination of trade-hindering tariffs had a positive effect on the slowly emerging industrialization.

After the death of Adolph Friedrich's brother Wilhelm IV, the personal union with Great Britain came to an end. The Guelph personal union with England ended in 1837, as there was no male heir to the throne in England, and thus Victoria was the eldest child and therefore entitled to inheritance , while in Hanover, as a woman, she was not entitled to inheritance and Ernst August ascended the throne here .

Riots and Revolution of 1848

King Ernst August, advised by Justus Christoph Leist , abolished the liberal constitution of 1833 when he took office in 1837. After the old constitution of 1819, Hanover was again ruled in an absolutist way. The protest of seven professors from the University of Göttingen , the Göttingen Seven , including the Brothers Grimm , in the constitutional conflict caused a sensation in Germany and contributed to the promotion of the liberal movement in Germany. On behalf of the city of Osnabrück, the member of the state parliament and later Minister of the Interior of the Hanoverian March government under Count Bennigsen , Johann Carl Bertram Stüve , filed a complaint with the German Confederation against the constitutional breach.

The revolution of 1848 led to temporary liberalization. However, these were reversed by King George V (1851–1866) under the influence of the Prussian Bundestag envoy Otto von Bismarck . The reign of George V was marked by a high wear and tear on ministers .

Political alliances

Banknote of the Hannoversche Bank for 100 Taler from 1857

1 (silver) thaler of the Kingdom of Hanover from 1865 with the portrait of King George V , the artist's signature " BREHMER F. " on the neck section and the letter B for Theodor Wilhelm B.

The Kingdom of Hanover has been a member of the German Confederation since it was founded in 1815. Hanover did not initially join the German Customs Union , but formed the tax association together with the Duchy of Braunschweig in 1834 and only became a member of the Zollverein in 1854.

From 1855 until the end of the postal sovereignty of Hanover in 1866, the kingdom issued its own postage stamps . With the Hannoversche Bank , the Kingdom of Hanover had its own central bank from 1856 .

Annexation by the Kingdom of Prussia

See also : Prussian annexations 1866

As a result of the German War between Prussia and Austria , the Kingdom of Hanover lost its independence in 1866. The Hanoverian army had after initial successes in the battle of Langensalza against the Prussian troops surrender on 29 June. 1866 Prussia dethroned the Guelphs, annexed the Kingdom of Hanover and made it the Province of Hanover . The Hanoverian military was absorbed into the Prussian X. Army Corps .

The Welfs' private assets were used by Bismarck as a so-called reptile fund to influence press reports and the Bavarian King Ludwig II , who was always in need of money , without reporting to the Reichstag . According to Sebastian Haffner , Ludwig II received 4,720,000 gold marks from the Welfenfonds for his private box for the approval of the Kingdom of Bavaria to establish the German Empire in 1871.

Afterlife of the Kingdom of Hanover

The Hanoverian and Welf convictions did not go under in the country despite the annexation to Prussia, reinforced by the widespread view that the annexation was an illegal act. The German-Hannoversche Party (DHP) was formed as a political party and advocated the reorganization of the state of Hanover and the rehabilitation of the Welfenhaus. It was represented in the Reichstag several times beyond the Empire and into the Weimar Republic .

With the marriage of the Guelph Prince Ernst August of Braunschweig-Lüneburg and the Hohenzollern Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia on May 24, 1913 and the subsequent appointment of Ernst August as the ruling Duke of Braunschweig in November of the same year, a reconciliation between the two dynastic houses seemed to be within reach, although Hanover remained a Prussian province. However, it was overtaken by the upheavals in Europe at the end of the First World War that soon followed , which led to the abolition of the monarchy in Germany .

After the Second World War , the State of Hanover was established in 1946 with the dissolution of the Prussian Province of Hanover , which saw itself as the successor to the Kingdom of Hanover. His Prime Minister Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf was the driving force behind the establishment of the State of Lower Saxony , which took place that same year.

The coat of arms of Lower Saxony , the Sachsenross , is derived from both the coat of arms of the former Kingdom of Hanover and that of the Duchy of Braunschweig. Even today, the old royal capital and residence city of Hanover is again the capital of the country. The administrative structures from the Hanoverian era are reflected in many municipal administrative boundaries, even if these boundaries were often blurred or abolished by administrative reforms. In addition to many streets (e.g. Georgstrasse in Hanover) and places ( Georgsmarienhütte ), institutions such as the Georg-August University in Göttingen are named after Hanoverian monarchs. The borders of the former Kingdom of Hanover are partly recognizable both in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover and in the Roman Catholic diocese borders to this day. The VGH insurance is supported by the old Hanoverian landscapes , which still exist today. In Great Britain and the Commonwealth of Nations, too, several places, squares and streets are named after the former royal seat of Hanover.

Politics and administration

Coat of arms and symbols

The coat of arms of the Kingdom of Hanover has a main and a middle shield with a heart shield . The squared coat of arms (main shield) shows in the first and fourth fields in red three golden, blue-armored leopards with knocked-out blue tongues (coat of arms of England); in the second field, in gold, a red, blue-armored lion with a knocked-out blue tongue, surrounded by a double square border (coat of arms of Scotland) formed by narrow red strips on the outside and underlaid with red lilies ; in the third field in blue a golden harp of David with silver strings (coat of arms of Ireland). In the split central shield in front two red-armored golden leopards with knocked-out blue tongues (Braunschweig), and behind the golden field sprinkled with red hearts with a blue, red-armored lion with a knocked-out red tongue (Lüneburg); a red grafted tip with a silver riding horse (Lower Saxony); in the center shield a red heart shield with the German imperial crown on top (former office of the Imperial Hereditary Treasurer). The royal crown on the main shield. A red ribbon with the motto in gold for the Order of St. George " Nunquam retrorsum " shield holder ; on a red flying ribbon standing on the right a golden crowned looking lion and on the left a silver unicorn . The motto in golden letters in a white ribbon, "Suscipere et finire" (Eng: Beginning and Ending), is accompanied by a branch of laurel on the right and an oak branch on the left. In the middle is a green clover leaf . The Order of St. George and the Order of Guelph hang under the shield. The national colors are white and gold.

• 

  Royal coat of arms from 1837

• 

  Standard of the monarch (1837)

• 

  Flag of the Kingdom of Hanover in the national colors gold and white.

Kings of Hanover

King of Hanover and King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
George III (George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland since 1760)	1814-1820	Grandson of George II
George IV (George IV)	1820-1830	Son of George III.
William IV (William IV)	1830-1837	Son of George III.
King of Hanover
Ernst August I.	1837-1851	Son of George III.
George V.	1851-1866	Son of Ernst August I.
In 1866 the Kingdom of Hanover was annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia. Until the founding of the state of Hanover in 1946, it formed the Prussian province of Hanover.

• Kings of Hanover
• 

  George III

• 

  George IV

• 

  William IV

• 

  Ernst August I.

• 

  George V.

Judiciary

Captain (captain) and gendarme of the Royal Hanoverian Landgendarmerie around 1840. Uniform in the style of the Hanoverian artillery.

The reforms of the judicial structures in the Kingdom of Hanover, which Otto Albrecht von Düring in particular had promoted, were exemplary and well-known . With the various features of the jurisdictions, court names and instances, they were adopted for all of Prussia after the Prussian annexation of Hanover and later implemented throughout the German Empire at its instigation . The highest court of justice of the Kingdom of Hanover was still the Higher Appeal Court in Celle, which was established in 1711 .

Administrative division

For the administration of the Kingdom of Hanover, six intermediate authorities were formed on July 14, 1816, which were initially called the Royal Provincial Government and, from 1823, Landdrostei .

• Provincial government of Hanover (principalities of Calenberg, Göttingen, Grubenhagen, Lüneburg and Hildesheim as well as the part of the Duchy of Lauenburg that remained near Hanover and the counties of Hoya and Diepholz)
• Provincial government of Stade (Duchies of Bremen and Verden, Land Hadeln)
• Osnabrück Provincial Government (Principality of Osnabrück, Meppen District, Emsbüren District and Lingen Lower County)
• Aurich Provincial Government (Principality of East Friesland and Harlinger Land)
• Provincial government of Bentheim (Counties Bentheim and Hohnstein)
• Mining Authority on the Upper Harz

The historical territories of the kingdom, also called provinces , were assigned to the territorial territories as follows:

• Landdrostei Hanover
  • Principality of Calenberg , County of Hoya and County of Diepholz

• Landdrostei Hildesheim
  • Principality of Göttingen , Principality of Grubenhagen (excluding the Upper Harz ), Principality of Hildesheim and County of Hohnstein

• Landdrostei Lueneburg
  • Principality of Lüneburg

• Landdrostei Stade
  • Duchy of Bremen , Duchy of Verden and Land Hadeln

• Landdrostei Osnabrück
  • Principality of Osnabrück , Grafschaft Bentheim , Niedergrafschaft Lingen , Duchy Arenberg-Meppen and the district of Emsbüren

• Landdrostei Aurich
  • Principality of East Frisia and Harlingerland

In addition, the "Berghauptmannschaft am Oberharz" (Berghauptmannschaft am Oberharz) was set up as a further middle authority of the kingdom in 1816. From 1823 it was called Berghauptmannschaft Clausthal and comprised the Hanoverian portion of the Upper Harz Mountains.

The lower administrative level consisted of a large number of cities, offices, district bailiffs, monastery offices , collegiate courts and patrimonial courts . It was not until the judicial reform at the beginning of the 1850s that the judiciary and administration were separated. In 1852 there were 45 independent cities and 175 offices in the Kingdom of Hanover. With another administrative reform in 1859, the number of offices was reduced to 102.

After the Kingdom of Hanover became the Prussian Province of Hanover in 1867 , the Landdrosteien initially remained, only the Clausthal Mining Authority was dissolved in 1868. In 1885 the Landdrosteien were renamed administrative districts .

Economic and social history

religion

Constitutional reforms of the religious communities

With the Napoleonic conquest in 1803 and the annexation of the Electorate of Hanover (1807), first by Jérôme Bonaparte's Kingdom of Westphalia and then as part of Napoléon Bonaparte 's first French Empire in the years 1810 to 1814, all men, including the Jewish, achieved equal citizenship. With the defeat of the Bonapartes, the previous situation was restored .

1842 creation of land rabbinates

New laws in 1842 put Hanoverian Jews on an equal footing with other citizens and at the same time obliged Jews to form Jewish communities where this had not already happened. These communities then had to fulfill the state requirements for Jewish religious education in private or public schools and to guarantee all other religious tasks (maintenance of cemeteries and synagogues, holding church services, holding weddings and bar mitzvahs ).

Four land rabbis were appointed for the whole kingdom, each of which had to take care of its own district. These were the Landrabbinat Emden ( comprising Landdrosteien Aurich and Osnabrück ), the Landrabbinat Hannover ( Landdrosteien Hannover and Lüneburg ), the Landrabbinat Hildesheim ( Landdrostei Hildesheim and Mining Authority Clausthal ), and the Landrabbinat Stade ( Landdrostei Stade ).

The land rabbis fulfilled both religious and state tasks. Hanover was one of the few states in the German Confederation where Judaism, like the Christian denominations, had a state-recognized and monitored organization. The land rabbis had a similar semi-state, authoritarian relationship to the Jewish communities and their members and employees as Lutheran pastors did to their communities in Hanover at that time. The organization of the land rabbinates remained intact even after the Prussian annexation in 1866, although the Prussian authorities in the old Prussian areas did everything they could to prevent central Jewish associations and denied them any state recognition.

With the separation of state and religion according to the imperial constitution of 1919, the semi-state tasks of the land rabbis (school supervision) were abolished and their function was limited to purely religious matters. The constitution of the land rabbinate was repealed by an arbitrary act in the course of the November pogroms in 1938.

See also : Land Rabbinate Hanover

1848 Creation of elected Protestant church councils and synods (1864/1869)

The Lutheran Church was the state church of Hanover with the king as summus episcopus . From 1848 onwards, a law stipulated that in every Lutheran and Reformed congregation, which in large parts of the country were subordinate to Lutheran consistories , the male members of the age of 18 had to elect a church council , which would then lead the congregation and its affairs together with the pastor. This act arose from the liberal legislation of the time and was quite revolutionary for the Lutheran state church of Hanover, which had been run by the authorities until then. In the so-called catechism dispute in 1862, Karl Gustav Wilhelm Baurschmidt , who was celebrated as "Luther of the Wendland", successfully prevailed against the church authorities. As a result, the Hanoverian minister of education Carl Lichtenberg (1862-1865) won a majority in the assembly of estates (Hanoverian parliament ) in 1864 for his law to build a Lutheran regional church with self-governing organs of its members (Hanoverian regional synod ). The law did not provide for the separation of church and state, but the establishment of a church administration, which did not function as an arm of the regular state administration, but in which church members co-determined. The regional synod did not meet for the first time until 1869 after the Prussian annexation of Hanover.

On September 19, 1866, King George V of Hanover was already in exile, the six consistories in the state, each with regional responsibility, decided to found a Hanover state consistory and fill it with representatives from the regional consistories. The regional consistories were a Lutheran-Reformed simultaneous consistory in Aurich (for East Frisia) and the Lutheran consistories in Hanover (for the Kurhannöversche core area), in Ilfeld im Harz (for the former Grafschaft Hohenstein ), in Osnabrück (for the former Hochstift Osnabrück ), in Otterndorf (for the land of Hadeln , existed 1535–1885) and in Stade (existed 1650–1903, until 1885 for the Landdrostei Stade without Hadeln, then including Hadelns). The next day Prussia annexed Hanover. The Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Hanover was able to expand institutionally in such a way that it was not integrated into the former Evangelical Regional Church in Prussia .

literature

• Literature from and about the Kingdom of Hanover in the catalog of the German National Library
• Mijndert Bertram: The Kingdom of Hanover - A Brief History of a Past German State . Hahn, Hannover 2003, ISBN 3-7752-6121-4 .
• Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz : A kingdom becomes a province - About Hanover's fateful year 1866 . MatrixMedia Verlag, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-932313-46-2 .
• Johannes-Paul Kögler: The end of the Kingdom of Hanover as reflected in its medals and decorations . In: Orders and Medals. The magazine for friends of phaleristics. Ed .: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ordenskunde , Issue 100, Volume 17, Gäufelden 2015, ISSN 1438-3772.

Web links

Commons : Kingdom of Hanover  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Text of the constitution of 1819 .
2. ↑ Marius lame and Ecem Temurtürkan: Conference Report. Revolutions, turning points and social upheavals in the 19th and 20th centuries in Northwest Germany , June 1st, 2018 - June 2nd, 2018 Wolfenbüttel, in: H-Soz-Kult, September 18th, 2018.
3. ↑ Christine van den Heuvel : Georg IV. And Wilhelm IV. The Kingdom of Hanover and the end of the personal union. In: Katja Lembke (ed.), When the Royals came from Hanover. Hanover's ruler on England's throne 1714–1837. Exhibition catalog, Sandstein, Dresden 2014, p. 180–201, here p. 197.
4. ↑ Jörg H. Lampe: Political developments in Göttingen from the beginning of the 19th century to March . In: Ernst Böhme / Rudolf Virushaus (eds.), Göttingen. History of a University City , Vol. 2: From the Thirty Years War to the Anschluss with Prussia. The resurgence as a university town 1648–1866 , Göttingen 2002, pp. 45–102, here p. 59.
5. ↑ Jörg H. Lampe: Political developments in Göttingen from the beginning of the 19th century to March . In: Ernst Böhme / Rudolf Virushaus (eds.), Göttingen. History of a university town. Vol. 2, From the Thirty Years War to the Anschluss with Prussia. The rise as a university town 1648–1866 . Göttingen 2002, pp. 45-102, here pp. 62-63.
6. ↑ Jörg H. Lampe: Political developments in Göttingen from the beginning of the 19th century to March . In: Ernst Böhme / Rudolf Virushaus (eds.), Göttingen. History of a University Town , Vol. 2, From the Thirty Years War to the Anschluss with Prussia. The resurgence as a university town 1648–1866 , Göttingen 2002, pp. 45–102, here p. 73.
7. ^ Text of the constitution of 1833 .
8. ↑ In 1837 Ernst August I inherited the Hanoverian throne after the death of Wilhelm IV. This ended the 123-year personal union of the kings of Great Britain / Ireland and Hanover, because in England, where, contrary to the Guelph law of succession, female succession is possible, Wilhelm's niece Victoria ascended the throne.
9. ↑ Multimedia descriptions on Hanover from HGIS Germany (Historisches GIS Germany 1820-1914). In: hgisg.i3mainz.hs-mainz.de. Retrieved July 27, 2016 . 
10. ↑ ^{a b} Curt Heinrich Conrad Friedrich Jansen: Statistical Manual of the Kingdom of Hanover , 1824, p. 3 .
11. ↑ Clausthal Mining Authority. (PDF; 21 kB) HGIS Germany, 2007, accessed on August 8, 2011 . 
12. ↑ Jörn Koch: Encircling independent cities. (PDF; 1.7 MB) 2006, p. 11 , accessed on September 7, 2011 : "Chapter II.2" 
13. ↑ In detail: Matthias Blazek: From the Landdrostey to the district government - The history of the district government of Hanover as reflected in the administrative reforms. Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-89821-357-9 .
14. ↑ Jörg Schneider: The Jewish community in Hildesheim: 1871–1942 , Hildesheim: Stadtarchiv, 2003 (= series of publications of the city archive and the Hildesheim city library / city archive and city library Hildesheim , vol. 31), p. 3; zugl .: Göttingen, Univ., Diss., 1999, ISBN 3-931987-11-6 .
15. ↑ Wolfgang Jürries (Ed.): Wendland-Lexikon . Volume 1: LK , Köhring Verlag, Lüchow 2000, p. 55.