Basdahl is a municipality in the district of Rotenburg

Rotenburg (district)

Rotenburg is a district in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is bounded by the districts of Stade, Harburg, Heidekreis, Verden, Osterholz and Cuxhaven.-History:...

, in Lower Saxony

Lower Saxony

Lower Saxony is a German state situated in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen states of Germany...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.

History

Basdahl belonged to the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen, established in 1180. Its parliament, the Bremian Estates

Estates of the realm

The Estates of the realm were the broad social orders of the hierarchically conceived society, recognized in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period in Christian Europe; they are sometimes distinguished as the three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and commoners, and are often referred to by...

 , convened in diets

Diet (assembly)

In politics, a diet is a formal deliberative assembly. The term is mainly used historically for the Imperial Diet, the general assembly of the Imperial Estates of the Holy Roman Empire, and for the legislative bodies of certain countries.-Etymology:...

 (Tohopesaten or Landtage) usually in Basdahl, with Bremervörde

Bremervörde

Bremervörde is a town in the north of the district Rotenburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated at the Oste river near the mid of the triangle, which is formed of the rivers Weser and Elbe respectively the cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Cuxhaven....

 serving as capital with the prince-archiepiscopal residence and seat of government (as of 1219). The Bremian chapter

Chapter (religion)

Chapter designates certain corporate ecclesiastical bodies in the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Nordic Lutheran churches....

 had its seat in the city of Bremen

Bremen

The City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A commercial and industrial city with a major port on the river Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area . Bremen is the second most populous city in North Germany and tenth in Germany.Bremen is...

. In 1648 the Prince-Archbishopric was transformed into the Duchy of Bremen, which was first ruled in personal union

Personal union

A personal union is the combination by which two or more different states have the same monarch while their boundaries, their laws and their interests remain distinct. It should not be confused with a federation which is internationally considered a single state...

 by the Swedish Crown - interrupted by a Danish occupation (1712–1715) - and from 1715 on by the Hanoverian

House of Hanover

The House of Hanover is a deposed German royal dynasty which has ruled the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg , the Kingdom of Hanover, the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Kingdom of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...

 Crown. The estates met then much less frequent, because the Swedish rulers tried to discard the estates influence in legislation. In 1807 the ephemeric Kingdom of Westphalia

Kingdom of Westphalia

The Kingdom of Westphalia was a new country of 2.6 million Germans that existed from 1807-1813. It included of territory in Hesse and other parts of present-day Germany. While formally independent, it was a vassal state of the First French Empire, ruled by Napoleon's brother Jérôme Bonaparte...

 annexed the Duchy, before France

First French Empire

The First French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I of France...

 annexed it in 1810. In 1813 the Duchy was restored to the Electorate of Hanover

Electorate of Hanover

The Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg was the ninth Electorate of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation...

, which - after its upgrade to the Kingdom of Hanover

Kingdom of Hanover

The Kingdom of Hanover was established in October 1814 by the Congress of Vienna, with the restoration of George III to his Hanoverian territories after the Napoleonic era. It succeeded the former Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg , and joined with 38 other sovereign states in the German...

 in 1814 - incorporated the Duchy in a real union

Real union

Real union is a union of two or more states, which share some state institutions as in contrast to personal unions; however they are not as unified as states in a political union...

 and the Ducal territory, including Basdahl, became part of the new Stade Region

Stade (region)

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...

, established in 1823. Basdahl's historical role in the prince-archbishopric is commemorated in its coat-of-arms showing on the left side the crisscrossed keys, the coat-of-arms of the prince-archbishopric.