Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/469

Rh H A N V E B 447 dustry, especially at Papenburg, Emden, Leer, Stade, and Har- burg ; and at Miinden river barges are built. Commerce. Although the carrying trade of Hanover is to a great extent absorbed by Hamburg and Bremen, the shipping of the province counts 867 sea-going vessels, the larger vessels all belonging to Geestemiiude. Emden is destined to become a very important seaport when the extensive harbour improvements have been completed. Administration. The province is divided into six landdrosteien or counties, and these again have been subdivided, since the annexa tion by Prussia, into smaller districts. There is a provincial assembly representing 43 towns and 10 bailiwicks. A court of appeal for the whole province sits at Celle, and there are 12 superior courts. To the German parliament (reichstag) Hanover sends 19 members ; to the Prussian house of assembly (abgeordnctenhaus) 36. The debts of the province, contracted before the occupation by Prussia, amount to 226,622. Population. The censusof 1871 gave the population asl, 963,618 ; 1,7 13, 664 belonged to the Evangelical Church, 233,633 were Roman Catholics, arid 12,790 Jews. The urban population numbered Counti-js. Extent in Knglish sq. miles. Population, 1st Dec. 1875. Inhabit ants to the sq. mile. Males. Females. Total. Hanover Hildesheim.. Liineburg ... Stade 2197-4 19417 4375-6 24937 2358-6 1181-0 215,364 204,010 194,586 154,694 139,761 99,310 214,695 209,587 192,128 153,515 138,000 101,743 430,059 413,597 386,714 308,209 277,761 201,053 196 213 88 123 128 170 Osnabrlick.. . Vurich. . 14548-0 1,007,725 1,009,668 2,017,393 139 503,102, and the rural 1,454,587. P&amp;gt;y the census of 1875 the popu lation had reached 2,017,393. There are 114 towns, but only 9 have a population exceeding 10, 000, viz. , Hanover, Osnabriick, Hildesheim, Linden, Harburg, Liineburg, Celle, Gottingen, and Emden. Education. Amongst the educational institutions the university of Gottingen stands first, with an average yearly attendance of 900 students. There are besides 18 gymnasiums, a progymnasium, 9 first-class grammar schools, 11 normal and training schools, a polytechnic school at Hanover, a school of mines and forestry at Klausthal, several naval academies and schools of arts, 3 asylums for the deaf and dumb, 2 for the blind, and numerous other charitable institutions. History. The word Hanover originally applied only to the city so called. It was gradually, however, extended to the country of which Hanover was the capital ; and it was officially recognized as the name of the state when in 1814 the electorate of Ltineburg was made a kingdom. In ancient times the country formed part of Saxony, which re mained independent until the time of Charlemagne ; and afterwards it was included in the duchy of Saxony. After the extinction of the Billing family, which ruled Saxony for about two centuries, the duchy was granted to Lothair of Supplinburg, who in 1125 was elected emperor. He gave his daughter in marriage to Henry the Proud, duke of Bavaria, of the ancient house of Guelpli, which already had important allodial possessions in Saxony. Henry the Proud became duke of Saxony as well as of Bavaria ; and his son Henry the Lion, after a time of bitter dispute, was installed by Frederick Barbarossa in his father s great position. In the latter part of Frederick s reign, in 1180, Henry was deprived of botli his duchies, but was allowed to keep the allodial possessions of his family, viz., Brunswick and Liineburg. In 1235 these lands were yielded by Henry s grandson, Otto Puer, to the emperor Frederick II., who granted them to him in fief as a duchy. Otto s two sons divided their inheritance into two duchies in 1267, and thus were formed the old Liineburg and the old Brunswick lines. There was a fresh division in 1428, whereby were formed the so-called middle lines of Brunswick and Liineburg. From 1527 Liineburg was under the sole government of Duke Ernest the Confessor, who was an ardent adherent of Luther, and so persistently laboured to promote the Reformation in his country that it has been essentially Pro- tejitant ever since. He died in the same year as his friend Luther, 1546 ; and from him descended the younger lines of Brunswick and Liineburg, or of Brunswick- Wolfenbuttel and Brunswick-Lune- burg. For in 1634 Duke Frederick Ulrich of Brunswick-Wolfen- biittel suddenly died childless, and his duchy was inherited by Augustus the younger, the descendant of Ernest s eldest son Henry ; and Brunswick has remained in the hands of this dynasty till the present day. Meanwhile Liineburg had been ruled over by William, the younger son of Ernest the Confessor; and when he died in 1592 he left seven sons, of whom four, Ernest, Christian, Augustus the elder, and Frederick, one after the other, became rulers of the land. Frederick, who survived all his brothers, died in 1648, the year in which the Thirty Years War was brought to a close. The only one of the seven brothers who married was George, to whom was granted as a separate duchy a part of Liineburg called Calen berg, of which he made Hanover the capital, Celle being the capital of Liineburg. He arranged that his eldest son should be allowed to select either Calenberg or Liineburg, that the second should take the duchy not chosen by his brother, and that the remaining sons should be content without having territory to govern. The result of this settlement was that his eldest son, Christian Louis, chose Liineburg, where he ruled till his death in 1665. George William, the second son, ruled over Calenberg till 1665, when he transferred himself to Liineburg, which he governed till 1705. On his going to Liineburg, the third brother, John Frederick, became duke of Calenberg, in which position he was succeeded in 1679 by Ernest Augustus, the fourth brother, who married Sophia the grand daughter of James I. of England. Ernest Augustus was an exceedingly ambitious prince, and in Older to increase the power of his country introduced in 1682 the law of primogeniture. After wards, in 1692, in consequence of a vast amount of negotiation and intrigue, he managed to secure for himself and his successors the electoral title. He died in 1698, and was succeeded by his son George Louis, who, having married his cousin Sophia Dorothea, the daughter of George William of Calenberg, finally united the two duchies on the death of the latter prince. In 1714 George Louis, the elector of Liineburg, ascended the throne of Great Britain as George I. After this time, until the death of William IY., Liineburg or Hanover had the same sovereign as Great Britain ; and this per sonal union of the two countries was not without important results for both. George II., as the ally of Frederick the Great in the Seven Years W ar, joined the struggle in the capacity both of elector and of king ; and while George III. was on the throne there was hardly a phase of the foreign policy of England by which Hanover was not affected. In 1803, when the Hanoverian troops capitulated at Sulingen, the country was invested by a French corps, which it had to maintain at a heavy cost. The Prussians received temporary possession of Hanover from Napoleon in 1806 ; but in 1807 a part of it was annexed to the kingdom of Westphalin, to which the remaining portion was added in 1810. The people never acquiesced in French predominance, and when the final struggle with Napoleon came they distinguished themselves by the ardour with which they flung themselves into it. At the congress of Vienna in 1815 it was demanded in the name of the elector (King George III.) that the electorate should be recognized as a kingdom ; and not only was the demand admitted, but the new kingdom received considerable accessions of territory. Partly through the influence of the French, partly in consequence of the general progress of ideas, Hanover was now, like many other parts of Germany, penetrated by a desire for freedom ; and such had been the sufferings of the people, willingly borne for their sovereign and country, that they felt they had a right to be treated in a con ciliatory and generous spirit. Their wishes were, however, disre garded. Count Minister, who virtually ruled the country from London, drew up a constitution which came into force in 1819. It was thoroughly reactionary in tendency, and the more resolutely it was enforced the more completely were the people alienated from the ruling class. Not until 1831, when there were several popular risings of so serious a nature that Count Miinster resigned, was it deemed necessary to make important concessions, and even then the constitution which the states assembly prepared was made con siderably less liberal by William IV. before he sanctioned it in 1833. As the knv of Hanover prevented a woman from mounting the throne, Ernest Augustus, duke of Cumberland, became king after the death of William IY. in 1837. He proved to be a harsh and narrow-minded despot. In 1837 he arbitrarily abolished the con stitution of 1833, and when seven professors of the university of Gottingen protested against the act as unlawful, they were deprived of their chairs, and three of the most distinguished Gervinus, Jacob Grimm, and Dahlmann were banished from the country. The people were profoundly stirred, and it was hoped that the confederate diet might be induced to protect their rights, but it declined to interfere. A pitiful imitation of a constitution was granted in 1840, but this only intensified the public indignation, which became so strong that in 1848 the revolutionary movement that swept over Europe seemed about to overthrow King Ernest Augustus and his throne together. By hasty concessions he suc ceeded in preventing this catastrophe, but no sooner did the agita tion begin to abate than he showed a disposition to evade the obligations imposed by the constitution which had been wrung from him. The comparatiA ely liberal ministry which had been appointed in the moment of danger was dismissed in 1850, and probably only the death of the king in 1851 prevented him from engaging in as serious a contest as ever with the progressive forces that surrounded him. In 1849, when the PYankfort diet failed to establish the unity of Germany, he joined the kings of Prussia and Saxony in forming what was called &quot;the three kings alliance&quot;; but he soon withdrew from this connexion, and associated himself with the- thoroughly conservative policy of Austria.