Anhalt-Dessau

Anhalt-Dessau was a principality of the Holy Roman Empire and later a duchy within the German Confederation, ruled by the House of Ascania. It emerged in 1396, when the sons of Prince John II of Anhalt-Zerbst divided their inheritance: Sigismund I took the lands around Dessau and made the town his residence, while his brother Albert IV received Anhalt-Köthen. The principality was partitioned again in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and was even ruled by Anhalt-Zerbst between 1561 and 1603, before being recreated in 1603. Its rulers bore the title of prince and, in 1807, were raised to dukes; the state joined the Confederation of the Rhine in 1807 and the German Confederation in 1815. Anhalt-Dessau absorbed Anhalt-Köthen by patent in 1853, and after the extinction of the Anhalt-Bernburg line in 1863 its duke took the title of Duke of Anhalt, uniting all the Anhalt lands. The small state is remembered for its eighteenth-century rulers' interest in Enlightenment reform and landscape gardening, above all the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm.