Talk:Frederick August I, Duke of Oldenburg

"Titular History" Corrections

1. There was never any duchy (fief) or dukedom (title) called "Holstein-Oldenburg"
2. Holstein-Gottorp duchy had already been ceded to Denmark by Tsar Paul's mother, Catherine the Great, in the 1767 Treaty of Denmark. But Paul was still a minor then, so he merely confirmed that cession at his mother's command in 1773, after attaining his majority
3. Denmark did not then mediatize Holstein-Gottorp, since that implies that some Duke of HG retained some seigneurial rights over it, under new Danish sovereignty. In fact, the former Gottorp ducal princes remained absent from Holstein in their domains in Russia, Sweden and Oldenburg, retaining no lands or rights in Holstein, other than rights of reversion in caase of the complete extinction of the Danish male line. The Danish kings simply continued ruling Holstein-Gottorp directly as they had since 1767, and none of the cadet Schleswig-Holstein dukelings acquired any jurisdiction or lands there
4. No new "Schleswig-Holstein" entity was created. Schleswig and Holstein continued in the union they had been in since 1403 and which had been recognized as indissoluble by Christian I since 1460. The duchies at times had different overlords, but their right to be treated as a joint entity and to have their shared privileges respected continued intact. The struggles between the Danish kings and Holstein dukes had been over suzerainty, property, troops and revenues, not primarily over severing the duchies or imposing differing laws in them
5. Denmark gave Russia the counties of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst -- they were not duchies or a duchy
6. Paul did not make the combined counties a duchy -- he deeded them over to his agnate, Friedrich-August of Holstein-Gottorp(-Eutin), and they were then erected into a duchy by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1774, and that duchy was officially conferred upon the Eutin branch in 1777.
7. The duchy created in 1774 was named "Oldenburg" not "Oldenburg-Holstein". But it was attached to the ducal Reichsstand in the Reichstag that had previously been attached to the duchy of Holstein-Gottorp. By so doing, the Emperor did not need to create a new Reichsstand in the Reichstag's College of Princes, which would have required the prior approval of the other princes in that College

Most of the above information is taken from "L'Allemagne Dynastique Tome VII: Oldenbourg", by Huberty, Giraud, and Magdelaine, 768 pages, passim. Information currently in the article stub that differs from the above should be corrected accordingly. Lethiere 06:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)