Treaty of Tsarskoye Selo
The Treaty of Tsarskoe Selo (today: Pushkin ) - signed on August 27, 1773 - regulated succession in Schleswig-Holstein and prevented the territory from being further split up. The treaty established the entire Danish state and is considered to be the largest territorial barter in Europe in the 18th century .
prehistory
Schleswig-Holstein
Since Christian III. Who in personal union Danish king and Duke of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein , was in 1544 the Treaty of Ribe with his half-brothers broke and the duchies of Johann and Adolf had shared, Schleswig-Holstein consisted of several territorial scattered part duchies. The so-called compartmentalized gentlemen , who emerged from a further division of the royal share a generation later and were denied recognition as sovereigns by the estates, remained insignificant. However, competition arose from the descendants of Adolf in Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf , who not only ruled the ducal portion of Schleswig-Holstein but also provided the prince-bishops of Lübeck .
The Gottorf question endangered the stability of the empire from the middle of the 17th century. When the Minister Georg Heinrich von Görtz, who was entrusted with government affairs for the underage Duke Karl Friedrich, supported Sweden in the Great Northern War , the Danish king annexed the ducal shares in Schleswig. Karl Friedrich, now only from Holstein-Gottorf, sought support from Russia and in 1725 married Anna , the daughter of Tsar Peter I. Her son Karl Peter Ulrich, after the early death of his parents from 1739, was Duke of Holstein-Gottorf November 1742 appointed her successor by the childless Tsarina Elisabeth . After her death in 1762 a Holstein duke ascended as Peter III. the Tsar's throne.
Oldenburg and Delmenhorst
The left of the Weser nearby counties of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst belonged to the House of Oldenburg , of which the Danish kings came. Since 1667, whose ruling Count Anton Günther died childless, they were linked to Denmark in a personal union.
negotiations
During the so-called grand ducal era , Holstein-Gottorf was ruled from Russia. Peter III appointed Caspar von Saldern as authorized representative to negotiate with Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff , the Danish Minister for Schleswig-Holstein and former Foreign Minister, about the recovery of the ducal shares in Schleswig. War with Denmark was already looming. But before it came to that, Peter III. dethroned on July 9, 1762 by his wife Sophia von Anhalt-Zerbst, who took over the rule of Russia as Tsarina Katharina II .
Catherine II sought a balance with Denmark . She transferred the Duchy of Holstein to her underage son Paul . In 1767 Caspar von Saldern negotiated a provisional contract on her behalf with the negotiator Andreas Peter von Bernstorff , a nephew of the minister, appointed by King Christian VII of Denmark . With this contract, the Russian heir to the throne for the House of Romanow-Holstein-Gottorp renounced his territorial claims as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf, ceded the prince's share in the Duchy of Holstein to Denmark and received the counties of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst in return. He was able to build on the negotiations that Rochus Friedrich zu Lynar had between 1749 and 1751 in the name of the then Danish King Friedrich V with the later Tsar Peter III. had started.
Result
The Treaty of Tsarskoye Selo came into force when the Grand Duke came of age in 1773. The entire Danish state was thus constituted. The duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were now subject to only one sovereign, the Danish king. The areas of the separated lords had also been incorporated through the extinction of the respective subsidiary lines.
The administrative center for the Duchy of Schleswig has been in Gottorf since the contract was signed. The Glückstadt chancellery was given the name Holstein State Government for the Duchy of Holstein . The Danish king was represented by a governor residing at Gottorf Castle .
Four days after the conclusion of the contract, Grand Duke Paul I, at the insistence of his mother, Katharina II. , Transferred the counties of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst , which belonged to the Holy Roman Empire , to his great uncle Friedrich August from the younger line of the House of Holstein-Gottorf, the Prince-Bishop of Lübeck who were raised to the Duchy of Oldenburg by Emperor Joseph II in 1774 .
literature
- Robert Bohn : History of Schleswig-Holstein . Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-50891-2 .
- Dieter Lohmeier : Small country, big. Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf . Boyens, Heide 1997, ISBN 3-8042-0793-6 .
- Eckardt Opitz: Schleswig-Holstein - The state and its history in pictures, texts and documents. 3rd revised edition. Ellert & Richter, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-8319-0084-1 . P. 124 ff.