Hanover
History
The name Hanover, originally
confined to the town which became the capital of the duchy of
Luneburg-Calenberg, came gradually into use to designate, first,
the duchy itself, and secondly, the electorate of Brunswick-Luneburg,
and it was officially recognized as the name of the state when in
1814 the electorate was raised to the rank of a kingdom.
The early history of Hanover is
merged in that of the duchy of Brunswick, from which the duchy of
Brunswick-Liineburg and its offshoots, the duchies of Luneburg-Celle
and Luneburg-Calenberg have sprung. Ernest I (1497-1546), duke of
Brunswick-Luneburg, who introduced the reformed doctrines into
Luneburg, obtained the whole of this duchy in 1539 and in 1569,
his two surviving sons made an arrangement which was afterwards
responsible for the birth of the kingdom of Hanover.
By this
agreement the greater part of the duchy, with its capital at Celle,
came to William (1535-1592), the younger of the brothers, who gave
laws to his land and added to its area. and this duchy of
LUneburg-Celle was subsequently ruled in turn by four of his sons:
Ernest II (1564-1611), Christian (1566-1633), Augustus (d. 1636)
and Frederick (d. 1648). In addition to these four princes, Duke
William left three other sons, and in 1610, the seven brothers
entered into a compact that the duchy should not be divided and
that only one of them should marry and continue the family.
Casting lots to determine this question, the lot fell upon the
sixth brother, George (1582-1641) who was a prominent soldier
during the period of the Thirty Years' War and saw service in
almost all parts of Europe, fighting successively for Christian IV of Denmark, the emperor Ferdinand
II and for the Swedes, both
before and after the death of Gustavus Adolphus.
In 1617, he aided
his brother, Duke Christian to add Grubenhagen to Luneburg and
after the extinction of the family of BrunswickWolfenbuttel, in
1634, he obtained Calenberg for himself, making Hanover the
capital of his small dukedom.
In 1648, on Duke Frederick's death,
George's eldest son, Christian Louis (d. 1665) became duke of
Luneburg-Celle and at this time he handed over Calenberg, which
he had ruled since his father's death, to his second brother,
George William (d. 1705). When Christian Louis died, George William
succeeded him in Luneburg-Celle, but the duchy was also claimed by
a younger brother, John Frederick, a cultured and enlightened
prince who had forsaken the Lutheran faith of his family and had
become a Roman Catholic.
Soon, however, by an arrangement, John
Frederick received Calenberg and Grubenhagen which he ruled in
absolute fashion creating a standing army and modeling his court
after that of Louis XIV and which came, on his death in 1679, to
his youngest brother Ernest Augustus (1630-1698) the Protestant
bishop of Osnabruck.
During the French wars of aggression, the
Luneburg princes were eagerly courted by Louis XIV and by his
opponents and after some hesitation George William, influenced by
Ernest Augustus, fought among the Imperialists while John
Frederick was ranged on the side of France. In 1689 George William
was one of the claimants for the duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg which
was left without a ruler in that year and after a struggle with
John George III, elector of Saxony and other rivals, he was
invested with the duchy by the emperor Leopold I. It was, however,
his more ambitious brother, Ernest Augustus, who did most for the
prestige and advancement of the house. Having introduced the
principle of primogeniture into Calenberg in 1682, Ernest
determined to secure for himself the position of an elector and
the condition of Europe and the exigencies of the emperor favored
his pretensions. He made skilful use of Leopold's difficulties, and in 1692, in return for lavish promises of assistance to the
Empire and the Habsburgs, the emperor granted him the rank and
title of elector of Brunswick-Luneburg with the office of
standardbearer in the Holy Roman Empire.
Indignant protests
followed this proceeding. A league was formed to prevent any
addition to the electoral college, France and Sweden were called
upon for assistance and the constitution of the Empire was
reduced to a state of chaos. This agitation, however, soon died
away and in 1708, George Louis, the son and successor of Ernest
Augustus, was recognized as an elector by the imperial diet.
George Louis married his cousin Sophia Dorothea the only child of
George William of Luneburg-Celle and on his uncle's death, in 1705,
he united this duchy together with Saxe-Lauenburg with his
paternal inheritance of Calenberg or Hanover. His father, Ernest
Augustus, had taken a step of great importance in the history of
Hanover when he married Sophia, daughter of the elector palatine,
Frederick V, and grand-daughter of James I of England, for,
through his mother, the elector George Louis became, by the terms
of the Act of Settlement of 1701, king of Great Britain and
Ireland in 1714.
From this time until the death of
William IV in 1837, Luneburg, or Hanover, was ruled by the same
sovereign as Great Britain and this personal union was not
without important results for both countries.
Under George
I,
Hanover joined the alliance against Charles XII of Sweden in 1715 and by the peace of Stockholm in November
1719, the elector
received the duchies of Bremen and Verden which formed an
important addition to the electorate. His son and successor,
George II, who founded the university of Göttingen in 1737, was
on bad terms with his brother-in-law Frederick William I of
Prussia and his nephew, Frederick the Great, and in 1729 war
between Prussia and Hanover was only just avoided.
In 1743, George
took up arms on behalf of the empress Maria Theresa, but in August
1745, the danger in England from the Jacobites led him to sign the
convention of Hanover with Frederick the Great although the
struggle with France raged around his electorate until the peace
of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Induced by political exigencies, George
allied himself with Frederick the Great when the Seven Years' War
broke out in 1756, but in September 1757, his son, William Augustus,
duke of Cumberland, was compelled after his defeat at Hastenbeck
to sign the convention of Klosterzeven and to abandon Hanover to
the French.
English money, however, came to the
rescue, and in 1758,
Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick, cleared the electorate of the
invader and Hanover suffered no loss of territory at the peace of
1763. Both George I and George II preferred Hanover to England
as a place of residence and it was a frequent and perhaps
justifiable cause of complaint that the interests of Great Britain
were sacrificed to those of the smaller country. But George III
was more British than either his grandfather or his
great-grandfather and owing to a variety of causes, the foreign
policies of the two countries began to diverge in the later years
of his reign.
Two main considerations dominated the fortunes of
Hanover during the period of the Napoleonic wars: the jealousy
felt by Prussia at the increasing strength and prestige of the
electorate and its position as a vulnerable outpost of Great
Britain.
From 1793, the Hanoverian
troops fought for the Allies against France until the treaty of
Basel between France and Prussia in 1795
imposed a forced neutrality upon Hanover. At the instigation of
Bonaparte, Hanover was occupied by the Prussians for a few months,
in 1801, but at the settlement which
followed the peace of Luneville, the secularized bishopric of
Osnabruck was added to the electorate.
Again tempting the fortune
of war after the rupture of the peace of Amiens, the Hanoverians
found that the odds against them were too great and in June 1803,
by the convention of Sulingen, their territory was occupied by the
French. The formation of the third coalition against France, in
1805, induced Napoleon to purchase the support of Prussia by
allowing her troops to seize Hanover, but in 1807, after the
defeat of Prussia at Jena, he incorporated the southern part of
the electorate in the kingdom of Westphalia and adding the northern
portion to France in 1810. The French
occupation was costly and aggressive and the Hanoverians, many of
whom were found in the allied armies, welcomed the fall of
Napoleon and the return of the old order.
Represented at the
congress of Vienna by Ernest, Count Munster the elector, was
granted the title of king but the British ministers wished to
keep the interests of Great Britain distinct from those of
Hanover. The result of the congress, however, was not unfavorable
to the new kingdom which received East Friesland, the secularized
bishopric of Hildesheim, the city of Goslar and some smaller
additions of territory in return for the surrender of the greater
part of the duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg to Prussia.
Like those of the other districts
of Germany, the estates of the different provinces which formed
the kingdom of Hanover had met for many years in an irregular
fashion to exercise their varying and ill-defined authority and,
although the elector Ernest Augustus introduced a system of
administrative councils into Celle, these estates, consisting of
the three orders of prelates, nobles and towns, together with a
body somewhat resembling the English privy council, were the only
constitution which the country possessed and the only check upon
the power of its ruler.
When the elector George Louis became king
of Great Britain in 1714, he appointed
a representative, or statthalter, to govern the electorate
and thus the union of the two countries was attended with
constitutional changes in Hanover as well as in Great Britain.
Responsible of course to the elector, the Statthalter, aided by
the privy council, conducted the internal affairs of the
electorate generally in a peaceful and satisfactory fashion
until the welter of the Napoleonic wars.
On the conclusion of
peace in 1814, the estates of the several provinces of the kingdom
were fused into one body consisting of eighty-five members but
the chief power was exercised, as before, by the members of a few
noble families.
In 1819, however,
this feudal relic was supplanted by a new constitution. Two
chambers were established: the one formed of nobles and the other
of elected representatives. But although they were authorized to
control the finances, their power with regard to legislation was
very circumscribed. This constitution was sanctioned by the prince
regent, afterwards King George IV, but it was out of harmony with
the new and liberal ideas which prevailed in Europe and it hardly
survived George's death in 1830.
The revolution of that year compelled George's brother and
successor, William, to dismiss Count Munster, who had been the
actual ruler of the country and to name his own brother, Adolphus
Frederick, duke of Cambridge, a viceroy of Hanover, with one of the
viceroy's earliest duties being to appoint a commission to draw up
a new constitution. This was done, and after William had insisted
upon certain alterations it was accepted and promulgated in 1833.
Representation was granted to the peasants, the two chambers were
empowered to initiate legislation, ministers were made responsible
for all acts of government, a civil list was given to the king in
return for the surrender of the crown lands and, in short, the
new constitution was similar to that of Great Britain. These
liberal arrangements, however, did not entirely allay the
discontent. A strong and energetic party endeavored to thwart the
working of the new order and matters came to a climax on the
death of William IV in 1837.
By the law of Hanover, a woman could
not ascend the throne and accordingly Ernest Augustus, duke of
Cumberland, the fifth son of George III, and not Victoria,
succeeded William as sovereign in 1837,
thus separating the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover after a
union of 123 years. Ernest, a prince with very autocratic ideas,
had disapproved of the constitution of 1833,
and his first important act as king was to declare it invalid. He
appears to have been especially chagrined because the crown lands
were not his personal property, but the whole of the new
arrangements were repugnant to him.
Seven Göttingen professors
who protested against this proceeding were deprived of their
chairs and some of them, including F. C. Dahlmann and Jakob
Grimm, were banished from the country for publishing their
protest. To save the constitution, an appeal was made to the German
Confederation, which Hanover had joined in 1815,
but the federal diet declined to interfere, and, in 1840,
Ernest altered the constitution to suit his own illiberal views.
Recovering the crown lands, he abolished the principle of
ministerial responsibility, the legislative power of the two
chambers and other reforms, virtually restoring affairs to their
condition before 1833.
The inevitable
crisis was delayed until the stormy year 1848, when the king
probably saved his crown by hastily giving back the constitution
of 1833. Order, however, having been
restored, in 1850, he dismissed the
Liberal ministry and attempted to evade his concessions. A bitter
struggle had just broken out when Ernest Augustus died in November
1851. During this reign, the foreign policy of Hanover, both within
and without Germany, had been colored by jealousy of Prussia and
by the king's autocratic ideas.
Refusing to join the Prussian Zollverein,
Hanover had become a member of the rival commercial union, the Steuerverein,
three years before Ernest's accession, but as this union was not a
great success, the Zollverein was joined in 1851.
In 1849, after the failure of the
German parliament at Frankfort, the king had joined with the
sovereigns of Prussia and Saxony to form the "three kings'
alliance," but this union with Prussia was unreal and with
the king of Saxony he soon transferred his support to Austria and
became a member of the "four kings' alliance." George V, the new king of Hanover, who was unfortunately blind, sharing
his father's political ideas, at once appointed a ministry whose
aim was to sweep away the constitution of 1848.
This project, however, was resisted by the second chamber of the Landtag,
or parliament, and after several changes of government a new
ministry advised the king in 1855 to
appeal to the diet of the German Confederation. This was done and
the diet declared the constitution of 1848
to be invalid.
Acting on this verdict, not only was a ministry
formed to restore the constitution of 1840,
but after some trouble a body of members, fully in sympathy with
this object, was returned to parliament in 1857.
But these members were so far from representing the opinions of
the people that popular resentment compelled George to dismiss his
advisers in 1862. But the more
liberal government which succeeded did not enjoy his complete
confidence and, in 1865, a ministry
was once more formed which was more in accord with his own ideas.
This contest soon lost both interest and importance owing to the
condition of affairs in Germany.
Bismarck, the director of the
policy of Prussia, was devising methods for the realization of his
schemes, and it became clear after the war over the duchies of
Schleswig and Holstein that the smaller German states would soon
be obliged to decide definitely between Austria and Prussia. After
a period of vacillation, Hanover threw in her lot with Austria, the
decisive step being taken when the question of the mobilization of
the federal army was voted upon in the diet on the 14th of June 1866.
At once Prussia requested Hanover to remain unarmed and neutral
during the war and with equal promptness King George refused to
assent to these demands. Prussian troops then crossed his frontier
and took possession of his capital.
The Hanoverians, however, were
victorious at the battle of Langensalza on the 27th of June 1866,
but the advance of fresh bodies of the enemy compelled them to
capitulate two days later. By the terms of this surrender, the king
was not to reside in Hanover, his officers were to take no further
part in the war and his ammunition and stores became the property
of Prussia. The decree of the 10th of September 1866
formally annexed Hanover to Prussia when it became a province of
that kingdom, while King George, from his retreat at Hietzing,
appealed in vain to the powers of Europe. Many of the Hanoverians
remained loyal to their sovereign, some of them serving in the
Guelph Legion which was maintained largely at his expense in
France where a paper, La Situation, was founded by Oskar
Meding (1829-1903) and conducted in
his interests. These and other elaborate efforts, however, failed
to bring about the return of the king to Hanover, though the
Guelph party continued to agitate and to hope even after the Franco-German
War had immensely increased the power and the prestige of
Prussia.
George died in June 1878.
His son, Ernest Augustus, duke of Cumberland, continued to
maintain his claim to the crown of Hanover and refused to be
reconciled with Prussia. Owing to this attitude, the German
imperial government refused to allow him to take possession of the
duchy of Brunswick, which he inherited on the extinction of the
elder branch of his family in 1884,
and again in 1906, when the same
subject came up for settlement on the death of the regent, Prince
Albert of Prussia.
In 1867,
King George had agreed to accept Prussian bonds to the value of
about 1,600,000 as compensation for the confiscation of his
estates in Hanover. In 1868, however,
on account of his continued hostility to Prussia, the Prussian
government sequestrated this property and, known as the Welfenfonds,
or Reptilienfonds, it was employed as a secret service fund
to combat the intrigues of the Guelphs in various parts of Europe
until, in 1892, it was arranged that
the interest should be paid to the duke of Cumberland.
In 1885,
measures were taken to incorporate the province of Hanover more
thoroughly in the kingdom of Prussia and there is little doubt
but that the great majority of the Hanoverians submitted to
the inevitable and were loyal subjects of the king of Prussia.
So, in
moderately recaptured format, Hanover was an independent kingdom from
1814
to 1866 and a province of Prussia from 1866
to 1946.
