Kingdom of Hanover Königreich Hannover (German) | |||||||||||
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| 1814–1866 | |||||||||||
.svg)  Top: Flag (1814–1837); Royal standard (1837–1866) Bottom: Flag (1837–1866) | |||||||||||
| Motto: Suscipere et Finire "To Undertake and Finish" | |||||||||||
| Anthem: Heil dir, Hannover "Hail to you, Hanover" | |||||||||||
.svg) The Kingdom of Hanover in 1815 | |||||||||||
| Status | State of theGerman Confederation, inpersonal union with theUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1814–1837) | ||||||||||
| Capital | Hanover | ||||||||||
| Common languages | German West Low German | ||||||||||
| Religion | Protestantism (mainlyLutheranism,[1] but alsoCalvinism),Catholicism | ||||||||||
| Government | Constitutional monarchy | ||||||||||
| King | |||||||||||
• 1814–1820 | George III | ||||||||||
• 1820–1830 | George IV | ||||||||||
• 1830–1837 | William IV | ||||||||||
• 1837–1851 | Ernest Augustus | ||||||||||
• 1851–1866 | George V | ||||||||||
| Legislature | Assembly of the Kingdom of Hanover | ||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||
| 12 October 1814 | |||||||||||
| 13 March 1848 | |||||||||||
| 14 June 1866 | |||||||||||
| 23 August 1866 | |||||||||||
• Annexed byPrussia | 20 September 1866 | ||||||||||
| Currency | Hanoverian thaler (1814–1857) Hanoverian vereinsthaler (1857–1866) | ||||||||||
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| Today part of | Germany Netherlands[dubious –discuss] | ||||||||||
TheKingdom of Hanover (German:Königreich Hannover) was established in October 1814 by theCongress of Vienna, with the restoration ofGeorge III to his Hanoverian territories after theNapoleonic era. It succeeded the formerElectorate of Hanover,[2] and joined 38 other sovereign states in theGerman Confederation in June 1815. The kingdom was ruled by theHouse of Hanover, a cadet branch of theHouse of Welf, inpersonal union with Great Britain between 1714 and 1837. Since its monarch resided in London, aviceroy, usually a younger member of theBritish royal family, handled the administration of the Kingdom of Hanover.
The personal union with the United Kingdom ended in 1837 upon the accession ofQueen Victoria becausesemi-Salic law prevented females from inheriting the Hanoverian throne while a dynastic male was still alive. Her uncleErnest Augustus thus became the ruler of Hanover. His only son succeeded him to the throne asGeorge V. As he backed the losing side in theAustro-Prussian War, his kingdom was conquered byPrussia in 1866 and ceased to exist as an independent kingdom, becoming the PrussianProvince of Hanover. In January 1871, along with the rest of Prussia, Hanover became part of theGerman Empire upon theunification of Germany. Briefly revived as theState of Hanover in 1946, the state was later merged with some smaller states to form the current state ofLower Saxony inWest Germany.
The territory of Hanover had earlier been a principality within theHoly Roman Empire before being elevated into anelectorate in 1708, when Hanover was formed by union of the dynastic divisions of theDuchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, excepting thePrincipality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.
After his accession in 1714, George Louis of the House of Hanover ascended the throne of Great Britain asGeorge I, and Hanover was joined in apersonal union with Great Britain. In 1803, Hanover was conquered by the French and Prussian armies in theNapoleonic Wars. TheTreaties of Tilsit in 1807 joined it to territories from Prussia and created theKingdom of Westphalia, ruled byNapoleon's youngest brother,Jérôme Bonaparte. French control lasted until October 1813, when the territory was overrun by RussianCossacks. TheBattle of Leipzig, shortly thereafter, spelled the definitive end of the Napoleonicclient states, and the electorate was restored to the House of Hanover.
The terms of theCongress of Vienna in 1814 not only restored Hanover but also elevated it to an independent kingdom with its Prince-Elector,George III of the United Kingdom, asKing of Hanover. The new kingdom was also greatly expanded and became the fourth-largest state in the German Confederation (behind Prussia,Austria andBavaria) and the second-largest in northern Germany.
George III never visited the kingdom during his 60-year reign. Having succumbed todementia prior to the elevation of Hanover, it is unlikely that he ever understood that he had gained an additional kingship, and he took no role in its governance. Functional administration of Hanover was usually handled by a viceroy, which during thelater years of George III's reign and the reigns of KingsGeorge IV andWilliam IV from 1816 to 1837, wasAdolph Frederick, George III's youngest surviving son. WhenQueen Victoria succeeded to the British throne in 1837, the 123-year personal union of Great Britain and Hanover ended. Unlike in Britain, semi-Salic law operated in Hanover, prohibiting the accession to the throne by a female if any male of the dynasty had survived.
Ernest Augustus, now the eldest surviving son of George III, succeeded to the throne as King of Hanover. Adolph Frederick, the younger brother and long-time Viceroy, returned to Britain. Ernest Augustus had a personally-strained relationship with his niece Queen Victoria, and they frequently squabbled over family affairs. Domestically, his reign began with aconstitutional crisis as he tried to suspend parliament and nullify the written constitution of 1819. He also presided over the country during the turbulentRevolutions of 1848.
His son,George V, assumed the throne in 1851. In 1866, during theAustro-Prussian War, Hanover attempted to maintain a neutral position, along with some other member states of theGerman Confederation. Hanover's vote in favor of the mobilisation of Confederation troops against Prussia on 14 June 1866 prompted Prussia to declare war. The outcome of the war led to the dissolution of Hanover as an independent kingdom, which wasannexed by theKingdom of Prussia and became the PrussianProvince of Hanover. In 1871, along with the rest of Prussia, it became part of theGerman Empire.
After George V fled Hanover in 1866, he raised forces loyal to him in theNetherlands, called theGuelphic Legion. It was eventually disbanded in 1870. Nevertheless, George refused to accept the Prussian takeover of his realm and claimed he was still the legitimate king of Hanover. His only son,Ernest Augustus, Crown Prince of Hanover, inherited the claim upon George's death in 1878. Ernest Augustus was also first in line to the throne of theDuchy of Brunswick, whose rulers had been a junior branch of the House of Hanover. In 1884, that branch became extinct with the death ofWilliam, a distant cousin of Ernest Augustus.
Since Ernest Augustus refused to renounce his claim to annexed Hanover, theBundesrat of the German Empire ruled that he would disturb the peace of the empire if he ascended the throne of Brunswick. As a result, Brunswick was ruled by a regency until 1913, when his son, also namedErnest Augustus, married the German Emperor's daughter,Princess Viktoria Luise and swore allegiance to the German Empire. The Duke then renounced his claim to Brunswick in favour of his son, and the Bundesrat allowed the younger Ernest Augustus to take possession of Brunswick as a kind ofdowry compensation for Hanover.
TheGerman-Hanoverian Party, which at times supportedsecession from theReich, demanded a separate status for the province in the Reichstag. The party existed until banned by theNazi government.
With Prussia on the verge of official dissolution (1947), Hanoverian politicians in 1946 took advantage of the opportunity and advocated that theControl Commission for Germany (British Element) [de] (CCG/BE) revive Hanoverian statehood, reconstituting the Prussian Province of Hanover as theState of Hanover. The state saw itself in the tradition of the kingdom.
Its prime minister,Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf, played a central role when the state ofLower Saxony was founded just a few months later by merging Hanover with several smaller states, with the city of Hanover as its capital. The former territory of Hanover makes up 85 percent of Lower Saxony and is the origin of its coat of arms.
TheLutheran church was thestate church of the Kingdom of Hanover with the King beingsummus episcopus (Supreme Governor of the Lutheran Church).[3] Regionalconsistories supervised church and clergy. These were inAurich, a simultaneously Lutheran andCalvinist consistory dominated by Lutherans (forEast Frisia) and the Lutheran consistories inHanover (for the former Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg proper), inIlfeld (for theCounty of Hohenstein [de], a Hanoverianexclave in the EasternHarz mountains), inOsnabrück (for the formerPrince-Bishopric of Osnabrück), inOtterndorf (existed 1535–1885 for theLand of Hadeln) as well as inStade (existed 1650–1903, until 1885 for the formerBremen-Verden proper without Hadeln, then including the completeStade region). Ageneral superintendent chaired each consistory.
In 1848, the Lutheran parishes were democratised by the introduction ofpresbyteries (German:Kirchenvorstände, singularKirchenvorstand; literally:church boards), elected by all major male parishioners and chairing each congregation in co-operation with thepastor, being before the sole chairman. This introduction of presbyteries was somewhat revolutionary in the rather hierarchically structured Lutheran church.
In 1864,Carl Lichtenberg, Hanoverian minister of education, cultural and religious affairs (1862–65), persuaded theStändeversammlung (lit.Estates Assembly, the Hanoverian parliament) to pass a new law as to the constitution of the Lutheran church. The constitution provided a statesynod (parishioners' parliament,German:Landessynode). But its first session only materialised in 1869 when, after the 1866Prussian annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover, the Hanoverian Lutherans desired a representative body separate from Prussian rule, though it was restricted to Lutheran matters only.
After the Prussian conquest in 1866, on 19 September 1866, the day before the official Prussian annexation took place and with the lastsummus episcopus, King George V of Hanover, in exile, the Kingdom's six consistories joined to form today's still-existing church body, theLutheran State Church of Hanover. An all-Hanoverian consistory, theLandeskonsistorium (state consistory), was formed with representatives from the regional consistories.
While theCalvinist congregations in formerly-Prussian East Frisia had a common roof organisation with the Lutherans there ("Coetus") and theReformed Church in the formerCounty of Bentheim, then being the state church, had fully established church bodies for Bentheim only (German:Königlich-Großbrittanisch-Hannoverscher Ober-Kirchenrath, English:Royal British-Hanoverian Supreme Church Council), the Calvinist congregations elsewhere in Hanover were in a somewhat sorry state. Though some Calvinist congregations ofHuguenot origin were organised in theLower Saxon Confederation (German:Niedersächsische Konföderation). The Lutheran church being the state church of Hanover also supervised the Calvinistdiaspora parishes outside East Frisia and Bentheim. In 1848 the new Hanoverian law also provided for presbyteries in these Calvinist parishes, which exactly fit the presbyterian structure of Calvinism.[4]
Catholics formed an overall minority in Hanover, but regionally majorities in the former prince-bishoprics. By the annexations in 1803 and 1814 Hanover had become a state of three Christian denominations. In 1824, Hanover and theHoly See thus agreed to integrate diaspora parishes which were located in prevailingly Protestant areas, until then supervised by the Roman CatholicVicariate Apostolic of the Nordic Missions, into the existing dioceses of the former prince-bishoprics, whose diocesan territories were thus extended into the diaspora areas.
Jews lived all over Hanover indiaspora. Until 1806, they were not allowed to reside in some areas. By theWestphalian andFrench annexations in 1807 and 1810, all-male inhabitants in later restituted Hanover became Westphalian or French citizens of equal rights. On 17 March 1808,Napoléon Bonaparte restricted the rights of Jews in the French-annexed territory by his so-calleddécret infâme. The Jewish congregations became subject to French regionalJewish consistories or theRoyal Westphalian Consistory of the Israelites [he], respectively. In 1813, when Hanover resumed independence and sovereignty, its government deprived the Jews their legal equality. Arguing it was the French or Westphalian state and not Hanover, which hademancipated the Jews, the government took the decisions of the German Confederation on the rights of the Jews, inJohann Smidt's manipulated formulation, as the legal grounds.[5]
In 1842, Hanover finally granted equal rights to Jews and promoted to build up Jewish congregations, where this did not already happen earlier, and a superstructure of four regionalland-rabbinates. These were theEmden Land-Rabbinate (Aurich and Osnabrück regions), theHanover Land-Rabbinate [de] (Hanover andLüneburg regions), the Hildesheim Land-Rabbinate (Hildesheim region andClausthal Mountain Captaincy [de]), and theStade Land-Rabbinate [nds] (Stade region).[6]
In many diaspora areas Jews regarded this a progress and a burden alike, because of the implied financial burden forrabbis and religion teacher,synagogues orschools. The local authorities now requested that the Jewish congregations establish synagogues and Jewish education for the pupils. Theland-rabbins, chairing the land-rabbinates, simultaneously fulfilled religious and state functions, like supervising Jewish elementary schools and the teaching of Jewish religion in all schools. The Kingdom of Hanover was thus one of the few states within the German Confederation, where rabbins held a similar semi-state authoritative position as to Jews as did, e.g., Lutheran clergy towards Lutherans.[7]
In 1813, George III was restored to his Hanoverian territories, and in October 1814, they were constituted as the independentKingdom of Hanover at the Congress of Vienna. Thepersonal union with theUnited Kingdom ended in 1837 on the accession of Queen Victoria because the succession laws in Hanover, based onsemi-Salic law, prevented a female inheriting the title if there was a surviving male heir. In the United Kingdom, a male took precedence only over his own sisters.
| Portrait | Name | Lifespan | Reign began | Reign ended | Succession | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | George III German:Georg III. | 4 June 1738 – 29 January 1820 (aged 81) | 12 October 1814 | 29 January 1820 | Previously Prince Elector of Hanover from 1760 to 1806. | George III was mentally incapacitated during these years, and his constitutional powers were exercised by his eldest son, George Augustus Frederick (the future George IV), asRegent. In Hanover, his youngest son,Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, officiated as Viceroy from 1816. |
 | George IV German:Georg IV. | 12 August 1762 – 26 June 1830 (aged 67) | 29 January 1820 | 26 June 1830 | Son of George III. | Prince regent 1811–1820, represented in Hanover by his brother, the Duke of Cambridge, as Viceroy |
 | William IV German:Wilhelm IV. | 21 August 1765 – 20 June 1837 (aged 71) | 26 June 1830 | 20 June 1837 | Son of George III • Younger brother of George IV. | Last monarch to rule both Hanover and the United Kingdom, represented in Hanover by his brother, the Duke of Cambridge, as Viceroy |
%2c_by_Edmund_Koken.jpg) | Ernest Augustus German:Ernst August. | 5 June 1771 – 18 November 1851 (aged 80) | 20 June 1837 | 18 November 1851 | Son of George III • Younger brother of George IV and William IV. | The accession of Queen Victoria separated the crowns of the United Kingdom and Hanover, and the latter passed to her uncle. |
 | George V German:Georg V. | 27 May 1819 – 12 June 1878 (aged 59) | 18 November 1851 | 20 September 1866 | Son of Ernest Augustus. | Hanover wasannexed by Prussia in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War. |
TheCongress of Vienna instituted a territorial adjustment between Hanover and Prussia to form more contiguous borders. Hanover increased its area substantially, gaining thePrince-Bishopric of Hildesheim,East Frisia, thePrince-Bishopric of Osnabrück, the LowerCounty of Lingen and the northern part of thePrince-Bishopric of Münster. Hanover also annexed territories that had previously been ruled in personal union by its Elector, such as the Duchies ofBremen-Verden and theCounty of Bentheim. It lost those parts ofSaxe-Lauenburg to the northeast of theElbe, which was assigned in personal union toDenmark, except theAmt Neuhaus. Further smallexclaves in the east were lost.
Hanover comprised a number of territories, which had beenImperial Estates within theHoly Roman Empire. Their respective governments, now called provincial governments, were organised according to partially very old traditions, including different levels ofestate participation in rule. In 1823, the kingdom was reorganised intohigh-bailiwicks (German:Landdrosteien, singular:Landdrostei), each led by ahigh-bailiff (German:Landdrost) according to unitary standards, doing away with the inherited provincial peculiarities.
The high-bailiwicks were subdivided into bailiwicks (German:Ämter, singularAmt), presided by a bailiff (Amtmann, pluralAmtleute).[8] The high-bailiwicks, named after their capitals, were the following:
The Hanoverian subdivisions into high-bailiwicks and bailiwicks remained unchanged until 1 April 1885, when they were replaced by Prussian-style provinces (Regierungsbezirke) and districts (Kreise).
The Kingdom of Hanover maintained an army after the Napoleonic Wars. In 1832, King William IV of Hanover and the United Kingdom issued his troops withBritish Army uniforms, but they differed slightly from their original British versions. When the personal union with the United Kingdom ended in 1837 and Ernst August ascended to the crown of Hanover, he replaced their uniforms withPrussian Army-style ones, which included thepickelhaube spiked helmet for his Guard Corps.[9]
By 1866 they wore a moreAustrian style of uniform, with only the guard corps keeping the Prussian one. During theAustro-Prussian War, theHanoverian Army fought and defeated the Prussians during its march south towards Austria, at theBattle of Langensalza. However, it was later surrounded and forced to surrender to Prussia.[10]
After the personal union with the United Kingdom ended in 1837 with the accession of Queen Victoria, Hanover kept theBritish royal arms andstandard[citation needed], only introducing a new Crown, after the British model. The centre of this coat of arms and royal standard included the original arms of Hanover, which consisted of the two lions of theBrunswick, the rampant lion with hearts ofLüneburg and the horse of Hanover, surmounted by theImperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire for the Holy Roman office of Archbannerbearer/Archtreasurer. As Hanover no longer was ruled by the British monarchs, the arms of Hanover was simultaneously removed from the British coat of arms and royal standard, so it was no longer identical with that of the Kingdom of Hanover.
.svg)
![Civil ensign of Hanover[11][12]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aCivil_Ensign_of_Hannover_(1801-1866).svg)
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover, the official church of the kingdom
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover, the official church of the kingdom
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