Saxe-Meiningen

Saxe-Meiningen was the Thuringian duchy of the Ernestine Wettins, born in 1681 when the inheritance of Ernest the Pious of Saxe-Gotha was carved among his seven sons. The Wettins had split at Leipzig in 1485 into Albrechtine and Ernestine branches, Thuringia falling to the Ernestines, and Saxe-Coburg-Eisenach and Saxe-Weimar had branched off in 1572 before Gotha itself divided, because Duke Ernest opposed primogeniture and left every son a share. Bernhard, the third son, took the town of Meiningen with other holdings and made it his capital as the first duke, raising Elisabethenburg palace and a court orchestra. The duchy gained Hildburghausen lands in 1825, backed losing Austria in 1866, and joined the German Empire in 1871 as one more loyal Thuringian vote. In November 1918 Bernhard III abdicated and his brother refused the succession, so the Meiningen line ended, its free state merging in May 1920 into the new state of Thuringia.