Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin

The Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin was a territory in Northern Germany held by the House of Mecklenburg, whose dukes resided at Schwerin — the state shown on the map. The ducal rule of the Mecklenburgs had remained inviolate through the Napoleonic reshaping of northern Europe, the duchy having lost Swedish Pomerania by the 1814 Peace of Kiel; at the 1815 Congress of Vienna, Frederick Francis joined the newly established German Confederation, and like his Strelitz cousin Charles II was elevated to the title of Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The grand duchy was bounded by the Baltic coast in the north and the Prussian province of Pomerania in the northeast, and its lands also included those of the former Prince-Bishopric of Ratzeburg in the far northwest. It was a sovereign member state of the German Confederation, became a federated state of the North German Confederation and finally of the German Empire; in 1819 serfdom, long the mark of Mecklenburg's rural order, was formally abolished. The grand duchy lasted until the fall of the German monarchies in 1918, when the revolution ended the grand ducal house's reign and the state became a free state within the republic.