Duchy of Nassau

Geography

The territory of the duchy was essentially congruent with the Taunus and Westerwald mountain ranges. The southern and western borders were formed by the Main and the Rhine, while in the northern part of the territory, the Lahn river separated the two mountain ranges. The neighbouring territory to the east and south was the Grand Duchy of Hesse. The Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg and the Free City of Frankfurt were also to the east. To the west was the Rhine Province of the Kingdom of Prussia, which also controlled an exclave in the eastern part of Nassau, called Wetzlar.

Population

At its foundation in 1806, the Duchy had 302,769 inhabitants. The citizens were mostly farmers, day labourers, or artisans. In 1819, 7% of Nassauers lived in settlements with more than 2,000 inhabitants, while the rest lived in 850 smaller settlements and 1,200 isolated homesteads. Wiesbaden, with 5,000 inhabitants, was the largest settlement and Limburg an der Lahn, with around 2,600 inhabitants, was the second-largest. By 1847, Wiesbaden had grown to 14,000 inhabitants and Limburg to 3,400. The third-largest city was Höchst am Main.

History

Establishment

The House of Nassau produced many collateral lines in the course of its nearly one-thousand-year history. Up to the 18th century, the three main lines were the small princedoms of Nassau-Usingen, Nassau-Weilburg, and Nassau-Dietz (later Orange-Nassau), with large, scattered territories in what is now the Netherlands and Belgium. From 1736, many treaties and agreements were made between the different lines (The Nassau Family Pact), which prevented further splitting of territories and enabled general political co-ordination between the branches. In this context, the administrative subdivisions of the individual territories were adjusted, laying the foundations for the later unification of the territories.

After the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797), Nassau-Dietz lost its possessions in Belgium and the Netherlands, while Nassau-Usingen and Nassau-Weilburg lost all their territories west of the Rhine to France. On the other hand, like other German secular principalities, the Nassaus gained territory that had formerly belonged to the church as a result of secularisation. The Nassaus participated in negotiations at the Second Congress of Rastatt (1797) and in Paris, in order to secure the territories of the Prince-Bishops of Mainz and Trier. The Imperial Recess of 1803 largely accorded with the desires of Nassau-Usingen and Nassau-Weilburg. Orange-Nassau had already agreed separate terms with Napoleon.

Nassau-Usingen had lost Saarbrücken, two-thirds of Saarwerden, Ottweiler, and some smaller territories (totalling 60,000 inhabitants and 447,000 guilders of income per year). In compensation, it received: from Mainz, Höchst, Königstein, Cronberg, Lahnstein and the Rheingau; from Cologne some districts on the east bank of the Rhine; from Bavaria, the sub-district of Kaub; from Hesse-Darmstadt, the lordship of Eppstein, Katzenelnbogen, and Braubach; from Prussia, Sayn-Altenkirchen, Sayn-Hachenburg; and several cloisters were received from Mainz. Thus Nassau-Usingen regained its lost population and increased its annual income by around 130,000 guilders.

Nassau-Weilburg lost Kirchheim, Stauf, and its third of Saarwerden (15,500 inhabitants and 178,000 guilders in revenue). For these, it received many small possessions of Trier, including Ehrenbreitstein, Vallendar, Sayn, Montabaur, Limburg an der Lahn, three abbeys, and the holdings of Limburg Cathedral. This totalled 37,000 inhabitants and 147,000 guilders of revenue.

Reform period

The Chief ministers in 1806 were Hans Christoph Ernst von Gagern and Ernst Franz Ludwig von Bieberstein. Von Gagern resigned in 1811, after which von Bieberstein served alone until his death in 1834.

A series of reforms were carried out in the first years of the Duchy: the abolition of serfdom in 1806, the introduction of freedom of movement in 1810, and a fundamental tax reform in 1812, which replaced 991 direct taxes with a single progressive tax on land and trade. Degrading corporal punishment was abolished and the Kulturverordnung (cultivation ordinance) promoted the autonomous management of soil and land. After a transitional period with four districts, the new Duchy was consolidated into three districts on 1 August 1809: Wiesbaden, Weilburg, and Ehrenbreitstein. In turn, these were abolished in 1816, with the establishment of Wiesbaden as sole capital. The number of Amt subdivisions was slowly reduced, from sixty-two in 1806 to forty-eight in 1812. Due to the religious heterogeneity of the territory, a system of "combined schools" was introduced on 24 March 1817. On 14 March 1818, a state-wide public health system was established – the first such system in Germany.

On 2 September 1814, a constitution was promulgated. It was the first modern constitution in any of the German states. Because there was (very limited) parliamentary involvement in government, especially in taxation, it was considered to be a "Parliamentary Constitution" in the language of the day. The constitution guaranteed the freedom of the individual, religious tolerance, and the freedom of the press. It was heavily influenced by Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein, who originally came from Nassau and had substantial holdings there. The princes encouraged his involvement because he was part of the class of Imperial Knights who had been dispossessed by them and due to his involvement, the opposition of the Knights was diminished. However, the legislation of the Concert of Europe period, especially the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, marked a new restriction of freedoms in Nassau as elsewhere.

On 28 December 1849, the constitution was replaced by a reformed constitution which took account of the democratic demands of the German revolutions of 1848–49. On 25 November 1851, this constitution was repealed and the old constitution was restored.

Under the constitution of 1814, the Parliament (Landstände) of Nassau had two chambers: a chamber of deputies (Landesdeputiertenversammlung) and a house of lords (Herrenbank). The eleven members of the house of lords were all princes of the House of Nassau or representatives of the nobility. The twenty-two members of the chamber of deputies were mostly elected by census suffrage but had to be land owners, except for three representatives of ecclesiastics and one representative of teachers.

The Nassau Domain dispute

At the foundation of the Duchy, Minister von Bieberstein established a strong fiscal distinction between the treasury of the general domain and that of the regional taxes. The domain, which included court estates and land, and mineral water springs, as well as the tithe and other feudal dues was the property of the Ducal House, which could not be used for paying state expenses and which Parliament had no power over. Even in the very earliest years of the Duchy, this system was loudly criticised. The parliamentary president Carl Friedrich Emil von Ibell in particular complained about this in letters to Bieberstein and petitions to the Duke, with ever greater frequency. His hostile position was one of the justifications for his impeachment in 1821.

In the following years, there was more debate with and within Parliament, as well as with the government, about the division between Ducal and state funds. The conflict only came out into the open, however, in the course of the July Revolution of 1830 sparked unrest in neighbouring countries. In 1831, the government prevented the submission of petitions to the Duke on the subject and held a joint manoeuvre in Rheingau with Austrian troops from the fortress in Mainz. At its next sitting, Parliament, which had not been very active up to this point, drafted several reform proposals, few of which were accepted. The issue of the Domain thus progressed to burning point. On 24 March, the deputies of the lower chamber put forward a proposal for the Domain to become property of the populace. The government forbade a public assemblies on this issue and announced the opposite opinion. To suppress any revolt following this decision, several hundred troops were called in from the neighbouring Grand Duchy of Hesse. However, no revolt actually broke out. In the press within the state and in the neighbouring principalities, articles in newspapers and pamphlets supported both sides of the issue.

The president of the chamber Georg Herber was the main figure on the side of the deputies, especially in a polemical piece published in the Hanauer Zeitung on 21 October 1831. At the end of 1831, the Nassau court began investigations against Herber. On 3 December 1832, Herber was finally sentenced to three years in prison for 'Abuse of the sovereign' and 'libel' against Bieberstein. On the night of 4 December, the president of the chamber was arrested as he slept in his bed. On 7 January 1833, he was released on bail. Herber's lawyer, August Hergenhahn, later the revolutionary Chief Minister of Nassau, attempted to get him a reduced sentence, but he was prevented. However, the sentence was never enforced, because Herber, who was very sick, died on 11 March 1833.

Accession of Duke Adolphe

After the Domain Dispute, the politics of Nassau became quiet. After the death of von Bieberstein, Nassau entered the German Zollverein in 1835, which Bieberstein had energetically resisted. In 1839, Duke William also died and his twenty-two-year-old son Adolphe replaced him as Duke. Adolphe moved his residence to the Wiesbaden City Palace in 1841 and in January 1845, he married the Russian Grand Duchess Elizabeth Mikhailovna, who died in childbirth a year later. To honour her, he had the Russian orthodox church in Wiesbaden. In 1842, Adolphe was one of the founding members of the Mainz Adelsverein, which was intended to establish a German colony in Texas, but was not successful.

From 1844, there was a wave of community foundations in Nassau, especially trade and athletic associations. These were initially apolitical, but they would play a role in the upcoming Revolution. Wiesbaden was additionally one of the centres of German Catholicism. The government attempted some tentative reforms in 1845 with a somewhat more liberal municipalities law and with a law about district courts in 1846. In 1847, Parliament drafted laws on press freedom and damage to the land by animals, in response to complaints from the rural population about the consequences of Ducal hunts.

Revolution of 1848

Like most of Europe, Nassau was engulfed in a revolutionary wave after the February Revolution in France in 1848. On 1 March a liberal group headed by the jurist August Hergenhahn gathered at the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel in Wiesbaden to present a list of moderate liberal nationalist demands to the government. This list included civil freedoms, a German national assembly, and a new electoral law. The next day, the Neun Forderungen der Nassauer (Nine Demands of the Nassauers) were presented to Chief Minister Emil August von Dungern, who immediately approved the formation of a citizens' militia, freedom of the press, and the convocation of the lower chamber of Parliament to discuss electoral reform. Decisions on the other demands were reserved for the Duke, who was in Berlin at that moment.

In accordance with a proclamation of Hergenhahn, around 40,000 men assembled in Wiesbaden on 4 March. There was a clear conflict in this action, which would shape the subsequent development of events: while the circle around Hergenhahn hoped to receive confirmation of their demands by the acclamation of the people, they were mainly peasants, armed with scythes, cudgels, and axes, seeking the abolition of old Feudal impositions and an easing of forest and hunting laws. As the crowd moved restlessly through the city, the Duke announced from the balcony of his residence that he would meet all their demands. Then the crowd happily dispersed.

With the advent of press freedom, thirteen political newspapers appeared within weeks, including five in Wiesbaden alone. Numerous local gazettes in rural areas also began to print political texts.

From the second week of March, electoral reform took centre stage in the political scene. The most important demand of the liberals was that the right to vote should no longer be tied to a minimum property requirement. On 6 March, the lower chamber held a debate on this subject. When the house of lords sought to discuss voting rights as well, there were protests among the populace of Wiesbaden. Around 500 people gathered in Wiesbaden in the evening to publicly debate the question of voting rights. Smaller meetings occurred in other cities of Nassau. By the middle of the month however, these public discussions had faded away. Meanwhile, the lower chamber agreed that the future parliament should be unicameral with 40–60 members and that the property requirement for voting should be abolished. Most controversial was whether the members of the new parliament should be elected directly or by an electoral college. A draft bill was presented on 20 March and finally passed on 28 March. They decided in favour of an electoral college by 18 votes to three. On 5 April the electoral law came into effect. It stated that every hundred people would choose an elector, who in turn would meet in one of 14 electoral colleges, each of which would choose one member of parliament. The right to vote was extended to several groups that had hitherto been excluded, such as noblemen, officials, pensioners, and Jews. Those who received poor relief or were bankrupt were not allowed to vote. All citizens were eligible to serve as members of Parliament except for the highest administrative officials, military officers, and court officials.

The Restoration

After a brief period of calm, Duke Adolphe began a reactionary programme. There were ever more conflicts between the Duke and the Chief Minister Friedrich von Wintzingerode who was only moderately conservative and resigned at the end of 1851. His successor was August Ludwig von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, who took his position on 7 February 1852. With his help, the Duke reduced the freedoms that had been granted over the following years and began to remove liberal officials from office. By the middle of 1852, nearly all political societies had been banned.

In 1849, the government submitted a proposal for new elections to Parliament, which were to elect a bicameral system in which the upper chamber would be elected by wealthy citizens. This proposal was opposed by the Liberals, while the constitutional monarchists supported it. After that there was no further discussion about elections until September 1850, when the government submitted a new proposal for a twenty-four member chamber elected using the Prussian three-class franchise, modelled on the Erfurt Parliament. There was no further consultation with Parliament about the new elections, since the Duke dissolved Parliament on 2 April 1851. On 25 November, the Duke finally brought regulations into effect for the election of a Parliament similar to the bicameral system that existed before 1848. The political groups and the few remaining societies made no attempt at campaigning. On 14 and 16 February 1852 the landowners and merchants in the highest tax-bracket (less than a hundred people in the whole duchy) voted first for the six members of the upper chamber. The electoral college for the lower house was elected on 9 February and the elected college met on 18 February. The eligible voters for the lower chamber numbered 70,490. Voter turnout was between 3–4%. In some areas, lack of interest meant that the elections could not take place at all. Unlike the previous Parliament, farmers were the largest group in the new lower house.

Bitter political strife returned once more in 1864, when the Government made plans to sell Marienstatt Abbey in the Westerwald. It had been secularised in 1803 and passed into private ownership. In 1841 the site was put up for sale and the government made plans to turn the abbey into the first state-run home for the elderly and poor in Nassau. The Minister of Construction estimated the costs for the required renovations at 34,000 guilders. In 1842, the Duchy bought the Abbey for 19,500 guilders. Shortly after that it was reported the buildings were in too bad a condition for the project. By the 1860s, the buildings had declined even further. The diocese of Limburg began to be interested in acquiring it, in order to make it into an orphanage. The government was also interested in selling it because of the costs of maintaining the unused complex. The abbey was sold on 18 May 1864 for 20,900 guilders.

End of the Duchy

When the Austro-Prussian War broke out on 14 June 1866, the Duchy of Nassau took the side of Austria. The war was won at the Battle of Königgrätz on 3 July and the "victory" of Nassau over Prussia at the Battle of Zorn near Wiesbaden on 12 July 1866 did nothing to prevent the annexation of Nassau by Prussia. Nassau became the Wiesbaden Region of the Province of Hesse-Nassau.

Before the conclusion of the Prague Peace on 23 August 1866 and two days before the creation of the North German Confederation, on 16 August 1866, the king announced to both houses of the Landtag of Prussia that Prussia would annex Hannover, Hesse-Kassel, the city of Frankfurt, and Nassau. Both houses were asked to give their assent to a law bringing the Prussian constitution into force in those territories on 1 October 1867. The law was passed by both houses of the Prussian Landtag on 20 September 1866 and was published in the gazette. The next step was the publication of the notice of annexation, which made the citizens of the nine annexed regions into citizens of Prussia. After these official actions, further practical actions were taken to bring the annexed regions into full union with the rest of Prussia.

Duke Adolphe, the last Duke of Nassau, received 15,000,000 guilders as compensation, as well as Biebrich Palace, Schloss Weilburg, Jagdschloss Platte and Luxemburgisches Schloss in Königstein. He became Grand Duke of Luxembourg in 1890 after the male line of Orange-Nassau became extinct.

In 1868, Nassau, along with Frankfurt and the Electorate of Hesse were united in the new Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. The capital of the new province was Kassel, which had previously been the capital of the Electorate of Hesse. Nassau and Frankfurt became the administrative region of Wiesbaden. In 1945, the majority of the old Duchy of Nassau fell within the American occupation zone and became part of the state of Hesse. Wiesbaden remained an administrative region within Hesse until 1968, when it was incorporated into Darmstadt. A small part of the Duchy of Nassau fell within the French occupation zone and became the administrative region of Montabaur in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1956, a referendum on joining the state of Hesse was rejected by voters.

Politics

Foreign affairs

In foreign affairs, the Duchy's geographic location and economic weakness greatly limited its room to manoeuvre – in the Napoleonic period, it had no autonomy at all. The Nassau 'army' was at the beck and call of Napoleon. In 1806, they were stationed as occupation troops in Berlin. Then three battalions were stationed at the Siege of Kolberg. Two regiments of infantry and two cavalry squadrons fought for more than five years in the Peninsular war; only half of them came back. In November 1813, Nassau joined the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon.

Nassau troops fought at the battle of Waterloo: 1/2 rgt. was part of the crew of the fortified Hougemont farm which hold out against Napoleon, 1/1 rgt. was heavily battered after the French taking of La Haye Sainte. Of 7507 men inc. volunteers, 887 were killed in action.

After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Nassau was a member of the German Confederation.

Military

Nassau's military policy was shaped by Duchy's membership of the German Confederation. Like the rest of the administration, the military was reformed in order to unite the various military forces inherited from Nassau's predecessor states into a single body.

The majority of the troops consisted of two regiments of infantry, created in 1808/09. During the Napoleonic Wars, these were supported by squadrons of Jäger. After the Battle of Waterloo, the Duchy raised an artillery company, which became an artillery division with two companies in it after 1833. Further units were added (pioneers, Jägers, baggage trains, reserves). Further contingents were added as required during wartime. The whole military was placed under a brigade command structure. At its head was the Duke, but day-to-day operations were organised by an Adjutant general. Ordinarily, the Nassau army contained roughly 4,000 soldiers.

After the annexation of the Duchy, most of the officers and soldiers joined the Prussian Army.

Education

The Duchy could not afford its own university, so Duke William I made a treaty with the Kingdom of Hannover, which allowed citizens of Nassau to study at the University of Göttingen. In order to finance schools and university scholarships, on 29 March 1817, Duke William established the Nassau Central Study Fund, which still exists today, by consolidating a number of older secular and religious funds, and endowed it with farmland, forests, and bonds.

In Göttingen, non-Nassau students occasionally participated illicitly in a free dinner funded by the Central Study Fund. The German term nassauer, meaning 'someone who partakes of a privilege they are not entitled to' is said to derive from this practice, although etymologists report that the word is actually a Berlin dialect term derived from Rotwelsch Yiddish and that this story was invented after the fact.

Religion

As a result of the disparate territories that were joined to form the Duchy, Nassau was not a religiously unified state. In 1820, the breakdown of religious groups was: 53% United Protestant, 45% Catholic, 1.7% Jewish, and 0.06% Mennonite. However, settlements with more than one religion were unusual. Most villages and cities were clearly dominated by the members of one of the two major Christian groups. As was common in Protestant parts of Germany, the constitution placed the church under state control. The Lutheran and Reformed churches agreed to unite into the single Protestant Church in Nassau in 1817, at the Unionskirche in Idstein, making it the first united Protestant church in the German Confederation.

Even in 1804 there was an effort to establish a Catholic diocese of Nassau, but it was only in 1821 that the Duchy of Nassau and the Holy See came to an agreement on the establishment of the diocese of Limburg, which was formally established in 1827.

Alongside the actual church policy, there were other points of interaction between state politics and ecclesiastical matters. The relocation of a religious society, the order of the Redemptorists, to Bornhofen led to conflict between the state and the Bishop. The Redemptorists stayed in Bornhofen. The Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, founded in Dernbach were another religious society, which soon took charge of care for the sick within the diocese. After some initial problems at lower levels, they were tolerated by the government of the Duchy and even tacitly supported, because they had received enthusiastic commendation by doctors. In many places 'hospitals' or mobile medical stations were established, the fore-runners of modern Sozialstationen.

Dukes

The Dukes of Nassau derived from the Walram line of the House of Nassau. Members of the Walram line of the House of Nassau still reign in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (Nassau-Weilburg). The reigning Grand Duke still uses Duke of Nassau as a courtesy title.

The royal family of the Netherlands derives from the Ottonian line of Orange-Nassau, which split from the Walramian line in 1255.

Economy

The economic situation of the small Duchy was precarious. The majority of the land area of the country was Mittelgebirge, which had little agricultural value and represented a substantial barrier to internal transport. Even so, more than a third of the population worked on their own farmland, which was broken up into small areas as a result of partible inheritance. This smallholdings generally had to supplement their income from other sources – often in the Westerwald, this was by service as a peddler. Among tradesmen, the overwhelming majority were artisans.

Currency

The Duchy belonged the south German currency area. The most important denomination was therefore the guilder. This was minted for use as currency money. Up to 1837, there were 24 guilders to the Cologne silver marks (233.856 grammes). The guilder was divided into 60 kreutzer. Small change was minted in silver and copper, at 6, 3, 1, 0.5, and 0.25 grammes.

From 1816, there were also Kronenthaler of 162 kreutzer (i.e. 2.7 guilders). Between 1816 and 1828, the mint of the Duchy was located in buildings in Limburg, which are now the Bishop's curia. From 1837, the Duchy was one of the members of the Munich Currency Treaty, which set the silver mark (233.855 g) at 24.5 guilders. After the conclusion of the Dresden Coinage Convention in 1838, the Thaler was also legal tender and was minted in small quantities. Two dollars were equivalent to 3.5 guilders. In 1842, the Heller, valued at a quarter of a kreutzer, was introduced as the smallest denomination. After the Vienna Currency Treaty of 1857, the Duchy also minted the Vereinsthaler. A Pfund (500 g) of silver was equivalent to 52.5 guilder or 30 taler. The Heller was replaced by the Pfennige, also worth a quarter of a Kreutzer.

Banknotes, known as Landes-Credit-Casse-Scheine were produced at Wiesbaden by the Landes-Credit-Casse from 1840. They had a face value of one, five, ten, and twenty-five guilders.