Principality of Waldeck

Waldeck, later the Principality of Waldeck and Pyrmont, was a state of the Holy Roman Empire and its successors from the late twelfth century to 1929, in today's Hesse and Lower Saxony. Its princes descended in the male line from the counts of Schwalenberg, from Widekind I, and Waldeck Castle over the Eder, attested in 1120, gave the branch its name in 1180, when Volkwin II gained it by marrying the heiress of Waldeck. The county won imperial immediacy in 1349 and became a principality in 1712, and after 1806 it belonged in turn to the Confederation of the Rhine, the German Confederation, the North German Confederation and the German Empire, before the Free State of Waldeck-Pyrmont was divided between Hanover and other Prussian provinces in 1929. At first a fief of Mainz, it passed under Hesse's sovereignty in the 1430s, when the landgraves took over its debts in exchange for tribute. On Count Henry VI's death in 1397 the house split into the Landau and Waldeck lines, which sometimes fought, and Pyrmont came in later to complete the name.