Hanover (Ger. Hanno'ver), formerly a kingdom of northern Germany, but since 1866 incorporated with Prussia. Area of the Prussian province, 14,833 sq. m., or nearly twice the size of Wales; pop. (1871) 1,963,080; (1885) 2,172,702; (1890) 2,278,361, mainly Lutherans, with 280,000 Catholics, and 16,000 Jews. Except in the south, where the Harz Mountains (q.v.) attain a maximum altitude in Hanover of 3037 feet, the surface belongs to the great north German plain, and is diversified by moors and heaths, notably the extensive Lüneburg Heath. It is watered by the Elbe, Weser, Ems, and their tributaries. The people carry on mining in the Harz, cattle-breeding on the marshes and heaths, agriculture in the more fertile regions, and seafaring pursuits on the coast. The weaving of linen, cloth, and cotton, the working of iron and other metals, glass, paper, and pottery making, and bleaching, count amongst the more important industries. The mining products are very various, and include iron, silver, zinc, lead, copper, coal, salt, petroleum, and turf. Bees are kept in the Lüneburg Heath; Norderney and Borkum (islands) are much frequented as seaside resorts. Göttingen is the seat of a university, and the capital is Hanover (q.v.). See also PRUSSIA, GERMANY.
The people of the north-eastern and central provinces are mostly Saxons; those on the coast are of Frisian origin; those on the west of the Ems, Dutch; and those in the southern provinces, Thuringians and Franconians. Platt-Deutsch, or Low German, is commonly spoken in the rural districts; but High German is the language of the educated and higher classes, and is spoken with more purity than in any other part of the empire.
History.—Hanover was occupied in remote ages by Saxon tribes, who, after an obstinate resistance, submitted to Charlemagne and embraced Christianity. In the time of Louis the German it was incorporated in the duchy of Saxony. In 951 the Emperor Otho I. bestowed it on Hermann Billing; on the extinction of his family in 1106 it fell to
Lothaire of Supplinburg. By the marriage of his daughter to Henry the Proud of Bavaria, the duchy passed to the Guelphs. Henry the Lion, son of Henry the Proud, did much to advance the civilisation of his subjects by conferring rights and privileges upon various towns which had advocated his cause; but, when he fell under the ban of the empire, a period of anarchy and confusion succeeded, which at first threatened the ruin of the country. When, however, in 1180 Henry was deprived of the duchy of Saxony, he was allowed to retain his hereditary lands of Brunswick and Lüneburg. From this time down to the 16th century the history of Hanover is inseparable from that of Brunswick (q.v.).
The history of Hanover as a modern state begins with the foundation of the line of Brunswick-Lüneburg by William, who, in the partition which he and his elder brother Henry (founder of the Brunswick house, extinct in 1884) made of the dominions of their father, Ernest I., obtained in 1569 the duchies of Lüneburg and Celle (Zell). William died in 1592, leaving seven sons, of whom four successively ruled over the land. Of the seven only one (George) married. His eldest son, Christian Lewis, in accordance with a family compact, took (1648) as his portion of the inheritance Lüneburg, Grubenhagen, Diepholz, and Hoya, with Celle for his residence; while his next brother, George William, obtained Kalenberg and Göttingen, with Hanover for his residence. Thus originated the lines of Celle and Hanover. Christian Lewis set himself the task of raising his country from the miseries it had endured in the Thirty Years' War. After his death in 1665 his brother George William exchanged his own duchy for that of Celle, leaving Hanover to a younger brother, John Frederick. George William, as Duke of Celle, deserves notice for his warlike and active administration: he sent auxiliaries to Venice to aid the republic against the Turks; co-operated with the Duke of Brunswick to reduce his insurgent capital; entered into an alliance with the emperor against France and Sweden; sent an army into Hungary to resist the Turks; and in 1688 lent troops and money to William of Orange against James II. of England. John Frederick of Hanover entertained a great admiration for the French, and aped the magnificence of the court of Versailles. He was succeeded by his brother, Ernest Augustus (another son of George), in 1679. Thus the Hanoverian territories were again united under one head, in George Lewis, son of Ernest Augustus, who succeeded to the duchy of Hanover in 1698, and to that of Celle in 1705. The mother of George Lewis was Sophia, daughter of Frederick V. of the Palatinate and of Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of England. In 1714 George Lewis became king of England as George I. His father, Ernest Augustus, had in 1692 been invested with the dignity of the newly-created ninth electorate.
Under George Lewis as king of England and second elector of Hanover or Brunswick-Lüneburg, a brighter epoch opened to the Hanoverians; they were relieved from the burden of maintaining the ducal court and household, and the revenues of the crown were thenceforth appropriated to the general purposes of the state. The government was left in the hands of a viceroy and the confidential council. Bremen and Verden were obtained in this reign by purchase from Sweden (1719). George II., who succeeded in 1727, like his father spared the revenues of Hanover at the expense of those of England. In his character of elector, he espoused the cause of Maria Theresa in the Austrian war of succession; but in the Seven Years' War Hanover sided with Prussia against Austria and France, and suffered severely, especially by the capitulation of Closter-Seven (1757). This king founded the university of Göttingen in 1734-37. The peace which prevailed during the first thirty years of the reign of George III., who succeeded on the death of his grandfather in 1760, and who alone of the four Georges never visited his German dominions, proved a veritable godsend to Hanover, which also profited by the increased English and American trade. In 1793 Hanoverian troops took part in the wars against the French Republic, the expenses of their maintenance being defrayed by England. But in 1801 Prussia, refusing to acknowledge the neutrality of Hanover, threw troops into the electorate, and maintained her military occupancy for a year. In 1803, when war was renewed between England and France, an army under Mortier intimidated the Hanoverians to such an extent that, without striking a blow, they pledged themselves to abstain from serving against France, to disband their army, to give up their arms and horses to the enemy, and to submit to receive a French corps of occupation 30,000 strong. In 1807 Napoleon appropriated a portion of the electorate to complete the newly-formed kingdom of Westphalia, which in 1810 received the whole of the Hanoverian territory. On the successful termination of the war of liberation, Hanover was created a kingdom in 1815. In 1819 a new constitution was granted, which made provision for the election of two representative chambers; but it only lasted until 1833. Nevertheless, the general disaffection and distrust had risen to the highest pitch when William IV. ascended the throne; and in 1831 the prime-minister, Count Münster, who had long been obnoxious to the mass of the people, was dismissed, and the Duke of Cambridge, son of George III., who had since 1816 acted as governor-general, was invested with the title of viceroy. George IV. was of course also king of Hanover; but on the death of William IV. in 1837 Hanover was separated from England and given to the next male heir, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, the fifth son of George III. (1771-1851). This prince initiated a policy in all respects reactionary; but in 1848 he did so far yield to the storm as to just save his throne by the unwilling concession of liberal reforms. A famous incident in the struggle was the protest and expulsion in 1837 of seven Göttingen professors (see GÖTTINGEN). His son, the blind George V. (1819-78), who succeeded in 1851, held very extreme views in regard to the kingly power and the claims of the aristocracy, and for fifteen years he struggled against the will of the people in defence of his absolutist ideas. In 1866 Hanover took part with Austria, and at Langensalza (27th June) the army, after a successful defence, was surrounded and capitulated; Hanover was then occupied by Prussia, and finally annexed. George V. until his death, and since then his son, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (b. 1845), still maintaining their claim to the Hanoverian throne, were compelled to live in banishment. The incorporation with Prussia was viewed with anything but general favour; Professor Ewald, for instance, to the day of his death, being a staunch adherent of the exiled house. In 1868 the so-called Welfenfonds ('Guelph-fund')—the private property of the king of Hanover—was sequestered by Prussia, and has subsequently been managed by a commission. Prince Bismarck's enemies were wont to affirm that this fund—called by them Reptilienfonds ('Reptile-fund')—was largely used for bribing newspapers to support the government policy.
See Gemeinde-lexikon für die Provinz Hannover (Berl. 1887); and works by J. Meyer (1886), Grotefend (1857), and Meding (1881-84).