The Stade Region emerged in 1823 by an administrative reorganisation of the dominions of the Kingdom of Hanover, a sovereign state, whose then territory is almost completely part of today's German federal state of Lower Saxony.The reorganisation's legal basis was the Ordinance of High-Bailiwicks (Landdrostei-Ordnung). Until 1837 the Kingdom of Hanover was ruled in personal union by the Kings of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The official title of the Region was High-Bailiwick of Stade (1823–1885; ) and then Governorate of Stade (1885–1978; ). The High-Bailiwick of Stade, being a mere administrative unit of the integrated Kingdom of Hanover, was named after and seated in Stade, Bremen-Verden's former capital, taking over its staff, installations and buildings. The territory of the Stade Region was combined by the territories of the Land of Hadeln, the Duchies of Bremen and Verden (), all Hanoverian dominions, which were collectively administered. The territory belonging to the Stade Region covered about the triangular area between the mouths of the rivers Elbe and Weser to the North Sea and today's German federal states of Hamburg and Bremen.For a map of the High-Bailiwick of Stade see here Landdrostei Stade This area included about today's Lower Saxon counties ( or ) of Cuxhaven (southernly), Osterholz, Rotenburg upon Wümme, Stade and Verden as well as of the Bremian exclave of the city of Bremerhaven.
History
Before the establishment of the High-Bailiwick of Stade The collectively administered Land of Hadeln, the Duchy of Bremen and the Duchy of Verden were therefore colloquially referred to as the Duchies of Bremen-Verden or simply Bremen-Verden. The latter two emerged in 1648 by the transformation of the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen, then Duchy of Bremen, and the Prince-Bishopric of Verden, then Duchy of Verden.
The Kingdom of Hanover's predecessor the Prince-Electorate of Brunswick and Lunenburg (or, colloquially called after its capital Electorate of Hanover; , or ) purchased Bremen-Verden from its Danish occupants de facto in 1715 (and again from its legitimate owner Sweden in 1719 (Treaty of Stockholm) for rixdollars [Rtlr] 1 million). De jure this acquisition had to be legitimised by imperial feoffment. It took Elector George II Augustus until 1733 to get Charles VI to enfeoff him with the Duchy of Bremen and Verden.
In 1728 Emperor Charles VI enfeoffed Elector George II Augustus, who in 1727 had succeeded his father George I Louis, with the reverted fief of Saxe-Lauenburg. By a redeployment of Hanoverian territories in 1731 Bremen-Verden was conveyed the administration of the neighboured Land of Hadeln (at the Northern tip of Bremen-Verden), since 1180 an exclave, first of the younger Duchy of Saxony, from 1296 on of the Duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg, one of the former's successors.
At both feoffments George II Augustus swore that he would respect the existing privileges and constitutions of the Estates of Bremen-Verden and of Hadeln, thus confirming 400-year-old traditions of Estate participation in government. The small Land of Hadeln maintained until 1885 as to its legislation a certain level of internal autonomy (The Estates of Hadeln were unique in central Europe for not being organised by social status, but by regional division of the Hadeln territory into three subsections of equal status. Cf. Gerhard Köbler, Historisches Lexikon der deutschen Länder: Die deutschen Territorien vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, 7th ed., Munich: Beck, 2007, p. 244.) but as to the executive power Hadeln was administered by neighboured Bremen-Verden's provincial government.
Being a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire and represented in its Diet by virtue of his Electorate of Hanover, George II Augustus didn't bother about Bremen-Verden's status of Imperial immediacy. Since Bremen-Verden had turned Hanoverian it never again sent its own representatives to a Diet .
The Stade Region as part of the state of Hanover in the years from 1813 to 1866 After the Napoleonic Wars, which brought changing occupations and annexations of the Duchies of Bremen and Verden (for more details see Bremen-Verden), Bremen-Verden was restored in 1813 to the Electorate of Hanover, which transformed into the Kingdom of Hanover in 1814. Even though Bremen-Verden's status as a territory of imperial immediacy had become void with the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the Duchies were not right away incorporated in real union into the Hanoverian state. Since the Hanoverian monarchs had moved to London, Hanover had become a state of very conservative and backwarded rule, with a local government recruited from local aristocrats adding up much to the preservation of outdated structures.
The real union with Hanover only followed in 1823, when an administrative reform united Bremen-Verden and Hadeln to form the High-Bailiwick of Stade, administered according to unitarian modern standards, thereby doing away with various traditional Bremian government forms. Hadeln kept part of its traditional autonomy until 1852, its Estates continued to function with restricted authority until 1884. In 1823 the high-bailiwick consisted of 7,025 square kilometres with 208,251 inhabitants.
On 1 May 1827 a small section of the lower Weser shore in the West of the High-Bailiwick of Stade, forming the nucleus of the future city of Bremerhaven, was transferred to the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, as agreed upon earlier that year in a contract by the Hanoveran minister Friedrich Franz Dieterich von Bremer and Bremen's Burgomaster Johann Smidt. Bremerhaven (literally English: Bremian Harbour) was founded to be a haven for Bremen's merchant marine, with that city located upstream the Weser being more and more disconnected from the sea, due to that river's silting up. Bremerhaven also became the home port of the German Confederation's Navy under Karl Rudolf Brommy.
Reorganisation of religious bodies in the Stade region Two Lutheran consistories, one for the Land of Hadeln in Otterndorf (founded by Hadeln's Estates in 1535, integrated into Stade's consistory in 1885) and one in Stade (founded by Swedish Bremen-Verden's government in 1650) for the rest of the High-Bailiwick supervised the Lutheran cult and clergy. A general superintendent chaired each consistory. Lutherans made up by far the majority of the population. Among Lutherans revivalism played a major role in the 1850s. In 1848 the Lutheran parishes were democratised by the introduction of presbyteries (parish councils), elected by all major male parishioners and chairing each parish in co-operation with the pastor, being before the sole chairman. This introduction of presbyteries was somewhat revolutionary in the rather hierarchically structured Lutheran church.
The Lutheran church was the state church of the Kingdom of Hanover with the king being (Supreme Governor of the Lutheran Church). In 1864 , Hanoverian minister of education, cultural and religious affairs (1862–1865), persuaded the to pass a new law as to the constitution of the Lutheran church. The constitution provided a state synod (parishioners' parliament, ). But its first session only materialised in 1869, when after the Prussian annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover (1866) the Hanoverian Lutherans desired a representative body separate from Prussian rule, though it was restricted to Lutheran matters only.
After the Prussian conquest in 1866, on 19 September 1866, the day before the official Prussian annexation took place and with the last king, George V of Hanover, in exile, the Kingdom's six consistories joined to form the still existing Lutheran State Church of Hanover. An all-Hanoverian consistory, the Landeskonsistorium (state consistory), was formed with representatives from the regional consistories.The regional consistories were in Aurich, a simultaneously Lutheran and Calvinist consistory dominated by Lutherans (for East Frisia) and the Lutheran consistories in Hanover (for the former Electorate of Brunswick and Lunenburg proper), in Ilfeld (for the Province of Hohnstein, a Hanoveran exclave in the Eastern Harz mountains), in Osnabrück (for the former Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück), in Otterndorf (for the Land of Hadeln) as well as in Stade (for Bremen-Verden proper without Hadeln).
Until 1903 all regional consistories, except of the one in Aurich were dissolved, their functions taken over by the state consistory. The Lutheran state church became a stronghold of Hanoverian separatism and therefore somewhat politicised. It opposed the Evangelical State Church in Prussia, comprising the Protestant parishes in the Prussian territory prior the 1866 annexations, not only for its being a stronghold of Prussian patriotism, but for being a united church of formerly Lutheran and Calvinist parishes, with a preponderance of Calvinism because the Calvinist Hohenzollern dynasty wielded its influence in the unification of Lutherans and Calvinists in then Prussia in 1817. The Hanoverian Lutherans managed to maintain their independence and the Evangelical State Church in Prussia stayed abreast of the changes and renamed in 1875 into Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces.
The Calvinist communities were in a somewhat sorry state. They emerged in the 1590s, when the Calvinist city of Bremen actually possessed some area around Bederkesa and Lehe (a part of today's Bremerhaven) at the lower Weser stream. In 1654, after the First Bremian War, the city ceded the area to Swedish Bremen-Verden, which subjected the Calvinists there to supervision by the Lutheran consistory. Under Lutheran pressure only six congregations stood fast to Calvinism.Blumenthal (since 1939 part of the city of Bremen), Lehe (since 1924 a part of Wesermünde, today part of the Bremian exclave of Bremerhaven) and (since 2015 a part of Geestland), (since 1974 a part of Schwanewede), as well as Ringstedt (all Stade Region). In the municipalities, where they were located, Calvinists made up the majority of the population, later Lutheran migration outweighed the Calvinist preponderance. The rest of the Stade Region was and is a Calvinist diaspora.
In 1848 Hanoverian law also provided for presbyteries in the Calvinist parishes in the Stade Region, which exactly fit the presbyterian structure of Calvinism. But only in 1882 – long after the Prussian annexation of Hanover – the inappropriate supervision by Lutheran consistorials ended, when King William I of Prussia decreed the creation of the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Province of Hanover comprising all the Calvinist communities in the prevailingly Lutheran Province of Hanover. The simultaneously Lutheran and Calvinist consistory in Aurich was made the consistory of that church body, becoming an exclusively Calvinist body only in 1922, following the constitutional reorganisation of the church bodies after the Weimar Constitution had decreed the separation of church and state in 1919.