Principality of Lichtenberg
former German principality
The Principality of Lichtenberg (German: Fürstentum Lichtenberg) on the Nahe River was an exclave of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld from 1816 to 1826 and the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha from 1826 to 1834, when it was sold to the Kingdom of Prussia. Today its territories lie in two States of Germany: the District of St. Wendel in Saarland and the District of Birkenfeld in Rhineland-Palatinate.
History
Before the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, most of the future Principality of Lichtenberg was held by the Counts Palatine of Zweibrücken. The area of St. Wendel was held by the Prince-Bishops of Trier while the Princes von Salm, as the Rheingrafen (Counts of the Rhine), had Grumbach and the lands west of it. The rest of the area belonged to the Margraves of Baden (as the Counts of Sponheim), the Imperial Counts von den Leyen, and the Princes of Nassau-Usingen.
In the War of the First Coalition Napoleon and his Grande Armée overran the whole Left Bank of the Rhine, which was formally ceded by Holy Roman Emperor Francis II in the 1797 Treaty of Campo Formio. At first an attempt was made to establish a Cisrhenian sister republic but in 1801 (in the Treaty of Lunéville) the land was annexed to the First French Republic, which became the First French Empire in 1804. The future Lichtenberger lands became part of the Département de la Sarre in 1798.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Principality of Lichtenberg” is former German principality. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Principality, Lichtenberg and former, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “former German principality” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 8, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q547629. Authority coordinates are 49.600, 7.283. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1816, 1826, 1834 and 1797.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Principality of Lichtenberg” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.