Talk:Ernestine duchies

(First comments)
The images I want to use are in the German WP space, and I can't download images form the Internet right now. I'll be working on fixing that. --  Dalbury ( Talk )  00:35, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Historical Atlas of Saxony
Someone may consider it is worth adding a link to http://www.maproom.org/00/12/sub1/index.html I am not doing so myself because it is against wikipedia policy to add links to one's own pages. Maproom 11:21, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * When I wrote the above, I was new to Wikipedia, and failed to include a section heading. Maproom (talk) 21:04, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Meiningen and Hildburghausen not sovereign?
Text says:

"The other Ernestine duchies were never members of the Imperial Circle, and were subordinate to the five duchies that did belong to the Imperial Circle (for example, the principalities of Meiningen and Hildburghausen were such; that was one reason why Duke of Hildburghausen exchanged his patrimony to that of Altenburg). Ultimately, in the German Confederation, all these became equally sovereign."

My understanding is that this was not, in fact, true. All of the Ernestine Dukes in the eighteenth century had voices in both the imperial diet and the Franconian circle due to their possession of lands in the former Princely County of Henneberg. I have also seen some evidence that the lands which made up "Saxe-Coburg" were not in fact all held by the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, but were in fact divided up among the three, so that all three (Coburg, Meiningen, and Hildburghausen) jointly held that voice in the Upper Saxon Circle, while Coburg and Meiningen shared it in the Imperial Diet. This I am uncertain of, although I've normally found that website to be pretty accurate (and it cites its sources). Certainly I've never heard that any of the Ernestine duchies were mere apanages. john k (talk) 04:06, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * there seems to be several issues. First, the section in question implies that membership in the imperial circle is necessary for sovereignty, which seems odd, since Imperial and electoral possessions weren't originally encircled. Second, there seems to be confusion between fief and ruler. A ruler can have multiple fiefs, with multiple ranks. So if the principality of Meiningen was not sovereign nor immediate, and the County of Henneberg was, then the ruler of both would be a reichsfurst. Of course participation in the reichstag was complicated, and changed a lot. While a ruler could basically divide up his lands as he pleased, that didn't mean every division resulted in another vote in the reichstag. So imperial immediacy does not mean a vote in the reichstag. In some reichstags votes were shared, between multiple princes, while at the same time a single prince got multiple votes.

As far as being subordinate or an appanage, that suggests that the Princes of these realms answered to the other dukes, which from what I have read is not true. Tinynanorobots (talk) 21:50, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * You have responded to a two-year old post. I don't see where any of the Ernestine principalities are called "appanages" in the current version of the article. It does currently say that they were all autonomous. -- Donald Albury 11:51, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

To the question of the Circles. I'm from Germany an have done recent works in archives on Hildburghausen. This is the version as i got it: all Ernestine duchies belonged to the Upper Saxon Circle, except Meiningen, which holds the greatest part of former Henneberg and was therefore member of the Franconian Circle. Although Hildburghausen was member of the Upper Saxon Circle and provided troops in a contingent together with Weimar and Gotha, it also holds some territory of former Henneberg (Behrungen) and was therefore obliged to provide very few men to the Franconian Circle also. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.248.248.241 (talk) 16:32, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Table
I’ve split the “Detailed history…” section into “Table” and “History”; it was too unwieldy to edit as it was. Does anyone know how to fix the table, BTW? The bottom right-hand section Dukes of SCE should be on the bottom left. Moonraker12 (talk) 13:11, 5 July 2012 (UTC)