Stade (region)

The Stade Region emerged in 1823 by an administrative reorganisation of the dominions of the Kingdom of Hanover, a souvereign state, whose then territory is almost completely part of today's German federal state of Lower Saxony.^[1] Until 1837 the Kingdom of Hanover was ruled in personal union by the Kings of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

The official title of the Region was High-Bailiwick of Stade (1823-1885; German: Landdrostei Stade) and then Governorate of Stade (1885-1977; German: Regierungsbezirk Stade). The High-Bailiwick of Stade, being a mere administrative unit of the integrated Kingdom of Hanover, was named after and seated in Stade, Bremen-Verden's former capital, taking over its staff, installations and buildings. The territory of the Stade Region was combined by the territories of the Land of Hadeln, the Duchy of Bremen and the Principality of Verden (IPA: [ˈfeːɐdn]), all Hanoverian dominions, which were collectively administered. The territory belonging to the Stade Region covered about the triangular area between the mouths of the rivers Elbe and Weser to the North Sea and today's German federal states of Hamburg and Bremen.^[2] This area included about today's Lower Saxon counties (German singular: Landkreis) of Cuxhaven (southernly), Osterholz, Rotenburg upon Wümme, Stade and Verden as well as of the Bremian exclave of the city of Bremerhaven.

History

Before the establishment of the High-Bailiwick of Stade

The collectively administered Land of Hadeln, the Duchy of Bremen and the Principality of Verden were therefore colloquially referred to as the Duchies of Bremen-Verden or simply Bremen-Verden. The latter two emerged in 1648 by the transformation of the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen, then Duchy of Bremen, and the Prince-Bishopric of Verden, then Principality of Verden. The Kingdom of Hanover's predecessor the Prince-Electorate of Brunswick and Lunenburg (or, colloquially called after its capital Electorate of Hanover; German: Kurfürstentum Braunschweig und Lüneburg, or Kurhannover) purchased Bremen-Verden from its Danish occupants de facto in 1715 (and again from its legitimate owner Sweden in 1719 (Treaty of Stockholm) for 1 million rixdollars). De jure this acquisition had to be legitimised by imperial feoffment. It took Elector George II Augustus until 1733 to get Charles VI to enfeoff him with the Duchy of Bremen and the Principality of Verden.

Sketch map of the Electorate of Brunswick and Lunenburg (alias Electorate of Hanover), c.1720, and its neighbouring territories such as the Principality of Brunswick and Lunenburg-Wolfenbüttel (alias Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel), and the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück. *George I Louis* acquired *Saxe-Lauenburg* and *Bremen-Verden* for his electorate.

In 1728 Emperor Charles VI enfeoffed Elector George II Augustus, who in 1727 had succeeded his father George I Louis, with the reverted fief of Saxe-Lauenburg. By a redeployment of Hanoverian territories in 1731 Bremen-Verden was conveyed the administration of the neighboured Land of Hadeln, since 1180 an exclave, first of the younger Duchy of Saxony, from 1296 on of the Duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg, one of the former's successors.

At both feoffments George II Augustus swore that he would respect the existing privileges and constitutions of the Estates of Bremen-Verden and of Hadeln, thus confirming 400-year-old traditions of Estate participation in government. The small Land of Hadeln maintained until 1885 as to its legislation a certain level of internal autonomy (Estates of Hadeln^[3]) but as to the executive power Hadeln was administered by neighboured Bremen-Verden's provincial government.

Being a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire and represented in its Diet by virtue of his Electorate of Hanover, George II Augustus didn't bother about Bremen-Verden's status of Imperial immediacy. Since Bremen-Verden had turned Hanoverian it never again sent its own representatives to a Diet .

The Stade Region as part of the state of Hanover in the years from 1813 to 1866

After the Napoleonic Wars, which brought changing occupations and annexations of the Duchies of Bremen and Verden, Bremen-Verden was restored in 1813 to the Electorate of Hanover, which transformed into the Kingdom of Hanover in 1814. Even though Bremen-Verden's status as a territory of imperial immediacy had become void with the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the Duchies were not right away incorporated in real union into the Hanoverian state. Since the Hanoverian monarchs had moved to London, Hanover had become a state of very conservative and backwarded rule, with a local government recruited from local aristocrats adding up much to the preservation of outdated structures.

The real union with Hanover only followed in 1823, when an administrative reform united Bremen-Verden and Hadeln to form the High-Bailiwick of Stade, administered according to unitarian modern standards, thereby doing away with various traditional Bremian government forms. Hadeln kept part of its traditional autonomy until 1852, its Estates continued to function with restricted authority until 1884. In 1823 the high-bailiwick consisted of 7,025 square kilometres with 208,251 inhabitants.

On 1 May 1827 a small section of the lower Weser shore in the West of the High-Bailiwick of Stade, forming the nucleus of the future city of Bremerhaven, was transferred to the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, as agreed upon earlier that year in a contract by the Hanoveran minister Friedrich Franz Dieterich von Bremer and Bremen's Burgomaster Johann Smidt. Bremerhaven (literally English: Bremian Harbour) was founded to be a haven for Bremen's merchant marine, with that city located upstream the Weser being more and more disconnected from the sea, due to that river's silting up. Bremerhaven also became the home port of the German Confederation's Navy.

The Stade Region as an administrative unit of Prussia (1866-1945/1947)

After the Prussian annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover in 1866, the kingdom was transformed into the Prussian Province of Hanover. The adaptation to other Prussian administrative structures took only place in 1885, when the high-bailiwick was redesigned according to Prussian law as the Governorate of Stade (German: Regierungsbezirk Stade). The Hanoverian subsections of a high-bailiwick (German: Amt, plural: Ämter), were redeployed into 14 bigger Prussian style counties (German: Kreis, plural: Kreise). At the time of its redeployment the high-bailiwick's population amounted to 300,000.^[4] The Governorate of Stade weathered the following wars and constitutional changes.

Bremerhaven was several times enlarged at the expense of the Governorate of Stade's territory. But on the latter's territory several suburbs grew and in 1924 were united to form the city of Wesermünde. In 1937 the Reich's Nazi government decreed to incorporate the Hamburgian exclave of Cuxhaven into the Governorate of Stade, forming then an urban county. While at most eastern end of the governorate some municipalities were integrated into the state of Hamburg. Two years later the Reich's Nazi government decreed to disentangle Bremerhaven from the Hanseatic City of Bremen and to incorporate it into Wesermünde. But that redeployment didn't last long.

The Governorate of Stade as part of the British and US Zone of Occupation (1945-1949)

From 1945 on the occupational US forces in defeated Germany used the harbours of Bremen and Wesermünde as their Port of Embarkation. Being actually located in the British Zone of Occupation the Control Commission for Germany - British Element and the Office of Military Government for Germany, U.S. (OMGUS) agreed in 1947 to constitute the cities of Bremen and Wesermünde as a German state named Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, becoming at that occasion an exclave of the American Zone of Occupation within the British zone. Radio AFN (American Forces Network), based in rechristened Bremerhaven, became popular for its transmissions of jazz and rock music.

After this territorial toing and froing the Governorate of Stade belonged to Lower Saxony, the state newly founded in 1946 by the Control Commission for Germany - British Element, even before in 1947 the Allies officially dissolved the Free State of Prussia.

The Governorate of Stade as an administrative unit of the state of Lower Saxony (1946-1977)

From 1973 to 1977 the number of Lower Saxon counties has been reduced by uniting counties. The urban county of Cuxhaven and the neighboured counties of the Land of Hadeln and Wesermünde were united to form the new County of Cuxhaven. The county of Bremervörde was integrated into the County of Rotenburg upon Wümme. Thus the governorate consisted only of a mere five counties: Cuxhaven, Osterholz, Rotenburg (Wümme), Stade and Verden. In 1977 the governorate's population amounted to almost 700,000.

The Governorate of Stade continued to exist until December 31, 1977. Then it was incorporated into the neighboured Governorate of Lunenburg (German: Regierungsbezirk Lüneburg), with the complete dissolution of all Lower Saxon governorates following in 2004.

Today no single administrative entity covers the territory of the former Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen. Today’s efforts and activities in the field of culture in the territory of the former Duchy of Bremen and the former Principality of Verden are covered by the Landschaftsverband der ehemaligen Herzogtümer Bremen und Verden (Engl. about: landscape union of the former duchies of Bremen and Verden, or short Landschaftsverband Stade).

List of High-Bailiffs and Governors

Bearing the title: High-Bailiff (German: Landdrost, plural Landdroste)

1823–41 Engelbert Johann Marschalck (*1766-1845*), Bremen-Verden's Estates elected him president of the provisional government (1813–23) after the French retreat. In 1823 he became the first High-Bailiff of Stade Region, the merely administrative entity succeeding Bremen-Verden's dissolution in 1823.
1841–63? von Bülow
1863–72 August Theodor Braun
1872–85 Heinrich Küster

Bearing the title: Governor (German: Regierungspräsident, plural Regierungspräsidenten)

1885–88 Ludwig Eberhardt Franzius
1888–95 Dr. Gustav Bernhard von Heyer
1895–99 Dr. Edgar Himly
1899–1909 Freiherr Rudolf von Reiswitz und Kaderzin
1909–11 Graf Kurd von Berg-Schönfeldt
1911–22 Hans Grashoff
1922–33 Dr. Hermann Rose
1933–36 Albert Leister
1936–44 Arthur Schmidt-Kügler
1944–45 Hermann Fiebing
1945 Dr. Oskar Brenken provisional
1948–50 Dr. Werner Pollack (*1886-1979*)
1950–60? Dr. W. Harm
1960?–1973 Helmut-Ernst Miericke (*1914-1973*)

Notes

^ The reorganisation's legal basis was the Ordinance of High-Bailiwicks (Landdrostei-Ordnung).
^ For a map of the High-Bailiwick of Stade see here Landdrostei Stade
^ The Estates of Hadeln were unique in central Europe for not being organised by social status, but by regional division of the Hadeln territory into three subsections of equal status. Cf. Gerhard Köbler, Historisches Lexikon der deutschen Länder: Die deutschen Territorien vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, 7th ed., Munich: Beck, 2007, p. 244.
^ HGIS Multimedia Staatsarchiv: Landdrostei Stade

References

Dannenberg, Hans-Eckhard and Heinz-Joachim Schulze (eds.) (1995–2008). Geschichte des Landes zwischen Elbe und Weser (3 vol., vol. 1 Vor- und Frühgeschichte (1995), vol. 2 Mittelalter (einschl. Kunstgeschichte) (1995), vol. 3 Neuzeit (2008), (Schriftenreihe des Landschaftsverbandes der ehem. Herzogtümer Bremen und Verden; vol. 7) ed.). Stade: Landschaftsverband der ehem. Herzogtümer Bremen und Verden. ISBN (vol. 1) ISBN 3-9801919-7-5, (vol. 2) ISBN 3-9801919-8-2, (vol. 3) ISBN 3-9801919-9-9. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: date format (link)