Duchy of Holstein

Holstein first became a coherent country within the Holy Roman Empire in 1111 under the Schaumburgians. In 1261, the County underwent the first of several partitions and recombinations that, by the mid-1400s, had resolved into two entities:

 

1. the County of Holstein-Rendsburg, which held the vast majority of Holstein lands, and which, in 1440, had entered into a personal union with the Duchy of Schleswig; and
2. the County of Holstein-Pinneberg, which was limited to the area of what is now Kreis Pinneberg and western Hamburg.

 

In 1459, the Rendsburg line died out and its territory, including Schleswig, was acquired by the King of Denmark (becoming part of Danish Germany over the objections of the rightful heir, the Count of Holstein-Pinneberg). From that point, Holstein was in personal union with both Denmark and Schleswig and thus part of Danish Germany. In 1474, Holstein was raised to a Duchy.

 

In 1544, Holstein and Schleswig were partitioned between the King of Denmark (who remained sovereign over the entire territory and who retained the title of Duke of Holstein) and his two half-brothers, who received the spin-off (and nonsovereign) Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein-Hadersleben and Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp. I start the database at that point. Although the core Duchy of Holstein was not renamed, I use the simplified country name of Holstein-Segeberg (where it was based) to clearly distinguish it from the other two Duchies. In 1648, the seat of the Duchy moved to Glückstadt, and I change the simplified country name to Holstein-Glückstadt to reflect that.

 

The territories of the three Duchies were deliberately noncontiguous to prevent any of the parties from consolidating a geographical base that threatened either of the other two. The adlige Güter and the remaining entities characterized as Klöster (convents, although they had been secularized) were excluded from the partition and were nominally “jointly-ruled”, although they were largely self-governing. For them, I just use the simplified country name of Holstein.

 

After the partition, there were numerous additions and subtractions to the territory of the core Duchy:

 

• The territory of Dithmarschen had been claimed by Holstein since the early 13th century, but numerous attempts to assert that claim militarily failed. In 1559, Dithmarschen finally fell to Holstein, and its territory was partitioned among the three Duchies.
• In 1565, the nonsovereign Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg was spun off from the core Duchy of Holstein. It underwent numerous secondary spin-offs over the years, but its Holstein territory eventually reverted to the core Duchy in 1761.
• In 1580, the Hadersleben line died out and the following year its territory (Holstein-Hadersleben) was reallocated among the other two Duchies.
• In 1640, the last Schaumburgian line died out and its territory (Holstein-Pinneberg) was partitioned between the Duchies of Holstein-Segeberg and Holstein-Gottorp, albeit not as evenly as previous partitions had been with the core Duchy receiving the larger share. Gottorp granted independence to its share as the County of Rantzau, and it reverted to the core Duchy in 1726.
• In 1773, the Duke of Gottorp agreed to trade his Holstein territories for the Duchy of Oldenburg and in doing so renounced any claim to sovereignty in Holstein (his predecessors having lost their Schleswig territories in 1713).

 

Thus, the Duchy of Holstein was completely reunited in 1773 and I drop “-Glückstadt” from the simplified country name. Holstein remained unoccupied by France during the Napoleonic Wars, so I continue the database beyond 1806, when the Holy Roman Empire ended.

 

Beginning in 1848, the interests of Holstein (which was culturally Germanic) and, to a lesser extent, Schleswig (which was split culturally, but becoming more Germanic) diverged from those of Denmark sufficiently to precipitate two wars. A revolutionary Schleswig-Holstein movement wanted to become independent of Denmark and join a German confederation. Denmark, in contrast, wanted to annex Schleswig. The first war (1848-1851) was inconclusive and the status quo held. The second war (1864) drew Prussia and Austria into the conflict on the side of Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark lost. At that point I end the database.

 

Initially, Prussia was awarded Schleswig and Austria was awarded Holstein. However, those two countries almost immediately went to war with each other over which would dominate a future German state. Prussia won that war in 1867 and incorporated Schleswig-Holstein as a province. Thus, Schleswig-Holstein became part of the German Empire when Prussia joined it in 1870.