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 (at the Northern tip of Bremen-Verden), 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.

Reorganisation of Religious Bodies in the Region Stade

Two Lutheran consistories, one for the Land of Hadeln in Otterndorf (founded by Hadeln's Estates in 1535, integrated into Stade's consistory in 1855) and one in Stade (founded by Swedish Bremen-Verden's government in 1650) for the rest of the High-Bailiwick supervised the Lutheran cult and clergy. A general superintendent chaired the consistory. Lutherans made up by far the majority of the population. Among Lutherans revivalism played a major role in the 1850-ies.

The Calvinist communities were in a somewhat sorry state. They emerged in the 1590-ies, when the Calvinist city of Bremen actually possessed some area around Bederkesa and Lehe (a part of today's Bremerhaven) at the lower Weser stream. In 1654, after the First Bremian War, the city ceded the area to Swedish Bremen-Verden, which subjected the Calvinists there to supervision by the Lutheran consistory. Under Lutheran pressure only four communities stood fast to Calvinism.^[4] In the municipalities, where they were located, Calvinists made up the majority of the population. The rest of the Stade Region was and is a Calvinist diaspora. Only in 1882 - long after the Prussian annexation of Hanover - the inappropriate supervision by Lutheran consistorials ended, when King William I of Prussia decreed the creation of the Evangelical Reformed Church comprising all the Calvinist communities in the prevailingly Lutheran Province of Hanover.

After the forcefully wielded attempts of reCatholicisation in 1628-1632, which ended with the reconquest by the legitimate Lutheran Administrator of the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen, no Catholic communities existed and missionary and pastoral activities were supervised by the Roman Catholic Vicariate Apostolic of the Nordic Missions, but widely hindered by Bremen-Verden's government. By annexations after the Napoléonic Wars, the Kingdom of Hanover had become a state of three Christian denominations. In 1824 Hanover and the Holy See thus agreed upon to integrate the territory comprising the Stade Region into the neighboured Diocese of Hildesheim, with the Vicariate Apostolic's competence ending there. In 1859 (in Blumenthal, 170 Catholics) and in 1872 (in Verden) the first Catholic parishes were founded (after 1632), with all the Stade Region being a Catholic diaspora.^[5]

Jews left scarce archival traces in the mediaeval Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen. In 1611 the city of Stade signed a contract with Sephardic Jews, allowing the foundation of a community. The Prince-Archbishop of Bremen followed in 1613 by settling Ashkenazzi Jews in the city, but during the turmoil of Catholic conquest and Lutheran reconquest the last archival traces of Jews date from 1630. Only by the end of the 17th century Jews reappear in Bremen-Verden. At the beginning of the 19th century some 30 Jewish families lived dispersedly over the region, under precarious legal status, and without Jewish institutions. By the Westphalian and French annexations in 1807 and 1810 the Jews in the Stade Region had been emancipated, only to lose their citizenship again by France's defeat in 1813, falling back into a status of toleration or mere indigenousness without political rights. Only in 1842 the Kingdom of Hanover granted equal rights to Jews and promoted to build up Jewish community structures. In 1844 a land-rabbinate, under land-rabbi Joseph Heilbut, was established in Stade, serving 16 Jewish communities, which were founded over the years, with altogether 1,250 Jews in 1864. The communities of Lehe (28 families), Scharmbeck (20 families) and Verden were the biggest by membership. Nevertheless, the Stade Region stayed a Jewish diaspora, and after 1860 the land-rabbinate was never staffed again, but served by the neighboured land-rabbinate of Hildesheim. Labour migration and Jewish demography rather lead to a reduction of Jews in the Stade Region.

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.^[6] 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 urban county of Wesermünde. In 1932 by an administrative reform the number of the governorate's 13 rural counties was reduced to a mere seven.^[7] In 1932 in the Great Depression the Lutheran Church of the State of Hanover opened a camp for formerly workless singles, employed in public works (roadworks, amelioration) in Sandbostel.

In 1933 the Nazis seized the power in Germany (Machtergreifung). On the Reich's and the level of the states gradually all resistance was decapitated. Anti-Semitic discriminations were imposed onto Jewish Germans and Germans of Jewish descent. In 1932 Franz von Papen's Reich's government had overthrown the last democratic Prussian government under Otto Braun (Prussian Coup). So the Governorate of Stade, being a part of the Free State of Prussia, one of the most stable and democratised German states, came fast under Nazi influence. The governor Hermann Rose retired premature. The Nazis' rule enforcement was characterised by installing Nazi-loyal parallel structures, which would interfere with existing public administration and bring it to dictatorial lines. The Governorate of Stade came under ever increasing interference of the Nazi party's regional subsection (Gau) of Eastern Hanover under Gauleiter Otto Telschow.

The new Nazi Reich's government – 'provisionally' ruling Prussia had direct rule over the Prussian police, with police being an institution of the respective German states. The ordinary police had to guard together with S.A. men, the Prussian Criminal Police Department in charge for the Governorate of Stade was seated in its biggest city Wesermünde. In March/April 1933 the Criminal Police was transformed into the new State Police Department Wesermünde, directly subordinated to the new Geheime Staatspolizei (GeStapo, secret state police), circumventing all prior existing Prussian administrative structures, to which the former Criminal Police had been subjected and reporting before. At first Wesermünde's Stapo Department persecuted all political enemies of Nazism and later persons involved in all kinds of disobediences, such as strikes, absenteeism, black marketing, circumventions of ordered dues to be delivered, which all became an ever growing phenomenon with the increasing weariness in the long duration of the war. The Stapo had its special eye on forced labourers in the governorate, abducted from all over German occupied Europe.

In 1939 the Sandbostel camp, meanwhile usurped by the Nazi trade union Reichsarbeitsdienst, was converted into the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag X-B and a camp of internment for civilian enemy aliens. Until 1945 about a million inmates passed through the camp, with about 46,000 perished.

As to territorial changes the Reich's Nazi government decreed by the Greater Hamburg Act (1937) to incorporate the Hamburgian exclave of Cuxhaven into the Governorate of Stade, forming then an urban county. While at the 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 incorporate some municipalities of the counties of Osterholz and Verden into the city of Bremen and in return 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 the last president of the provisional government (1813–23) after the French retreat. In 1823 he became the first High-Bailiff of the Stade Region, the merely administrative entity succeeding Bremen-Verden's dissolution in 1823.
1841–63 von Bülow
1863–72 August Theodor Braun (*1802-1887*), 1848-1850 minister for education, cultural and religious affairs of the Kingdom of Hanover
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 (*1879-1943*)
1933–36 Albert Leister (*1890-1968*)
1936–44 Arthur Schmidt-Kügler
1944–45 Hermann Fiebing
1945 Dr. Oskar Brenken provisional
1946–50 Dr. Werner Pollack (*1886-1979*), until 1948 only per pro as Regierungsvizepräsident
1950–54 Dr. Walter Harm (*1897-1964*), member of the Bundestag (1957-1964)
1954?–1973 Helmut-Ernst Miericke (*1914-1973*)
1973–77 Joachim Passow (*1925-1983*), only per pro as Regierungsvizepräsident

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.
^ Blumenthal (since 1939 part of the city of Bremen), Bremerhaven-Lehe (since 1947 part of the state of Bremen), Holßel and Ringstedt (both Stade Region).
^ Later labour migration (first in an intra-Central European, and then in a post-WW II trans-Alpine range) enabled to found more parishes. Among the refugees of World War II and the post-war expellees (1945-1948), settled in the Stade Region, a considerable number was Catholic.
^ HGIS Multimedia Staatsarchiv: Landdrostei Stade
^ The county of Blumenthal was incorporated into the county of Osterholz, Achim into Verden, Zeven into Bremervörde, Neuhaus into Hadeln, Altes Land and Kehdingen into Stade and the counties of Geestemünde and Lehe were united to form the county of Wesermünde]].

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)