Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

The Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was an Ernestine duchy of the House of Wettin in Thuringia, created by the Treaty of Hildburghausen of 1826, when the lands of the extinct Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg line were divided among the surviving Ernestine branches. Ernest III of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld exchanged Saalfeld for Gotha and took the title Duke Ernest I of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The two duchies were at first joined only in personal union, each with its own Landtag and finances, but the constitution of 1852 bound them in a real union with a common ministry at Gotha. The duchy joined the Zollverein in 1834, the North German Confederation in 1866 and the German Empire in 1871, with one vote in the Bundesrat. Its ruling house was extraordinarily well connected: princes of the family sat on the thrones of Belgium, Portugal, Bulgaria and the United Kingdom, where Queen Victoria's consort Albert came from Coburg. Ernest II died childless in 1893 and was succeeded by his nephew Alfred, then in 1900 by the sixteen-year-old Carl Eduard, who reigned under a regency until 1905. He abdicated in November 1918, and the duchy split into the Free States of Coburg and Gotha, which joined Bavaria and Thuringia in 1920.