Principality of Lippe

Lippe, later called Lippe-Detmold and then again Lippe, was a small German state ruled by the House of Lippe, lying between the Weser and the south-eastern Teutoburg Forest. It began as a state of the Holy Roman Empire, was promoted to a principality in 1789, and survived the empire's fall as an independent country, joining the North German Confederation in 1866 and the German Empire in 1871. Its founder was Bernhard I, who received a grant of land from Lothair III in 1123 and called himself noble lord at Lippe; the house really grew under his son Bernard II, whose territory was formed from land taken on the destruction of Henry the Lion's Saxony in 1180, while Simon V was the first to call himself a count in 1528. On Simon VI's death in 1613 the county was split among his three sons, Detmold to Simon VII, Brake to Otto and Alverdissen to Philip, though Brake returned to the main line in 1709. The main line resided at Detmold. In religion the land turned Lutheran in 1538 and Calvinist in 1604, and in the nineteenth century it became a constitutional monarchy, though its economy stayed overwhelmingly agrarian and among the weakest in the empire. After the last prince abdicated in 1918 it continued as a free state until it was merged into North Rhine-Westphalia in 1947.