Grand Duchy of Oldenburg

The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, also known as Holstein-Oldenburg, was the northwest German state the Congress of Vienna raised in 1815 by joining the old duchy to Birkenfeld, ranking tenth among the German lands with one Bundesrat vote and three Reichstag seats. Its lands lay in three far-flung pieces, Oldenburg itself with Eutin and Birkenfeld, and its House of Oldenburg gave kings to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Greece, Russia and Britain. The first grand dukes still called themselves dukes until Augustus took the higher title in 1829, and paternalist rule, which 1848 touched only lightly with no serious disturbances, yielded his subjects a notably liberal constitution in the revolutionary year 1849. Oldenburg passed through the German Confederation, sided with Prussia in the Seven Weeks War of 1866, joined the North German Confederation and Bismarck's Empire without drama, a small Protestant state of free peasants and proud towns, until Frederick Augustus abdicated in the German Revolution and Oldenburg became a free state.