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Grobiņa Castle
Grobiņa Castle is a medieval castle located in the town of Grobiņa, in South Kurzeme Municipality in the Courland region of Latvia. The ancient Curonian castle hill (''Skābāržu kalns'') is located only 100 m from the castle. It is supposed to be the famous Seeburg, which is mentioned in Scandinavian sources as early as the 9th century.Birger Nerman ''Grobin-Seeburg; Ausgrabungen und Funde'' xii, 200 pages illustrations, 61 plates, maps. Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell (1958) History The Livonian Order erected the castle in 1253 to protect the roads from Livonia to Prussia. It was a square type building and was a three storey high living block in the southern aisle. It also had a gate tower in the middle of the western wall. The castle was built of bricks and crude stone. Once it had arched ceilings. It was a residence for the local viceroy of the Livonian Order from 1399 to 1590. From 1590 to 1609 it was ruled by Prussia. As support base in south Courland it was many tim ...
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South Kurzeme Municipality
South Kurzeme Municipality ( lv, Dienvidkurzemes novads) is one of the 35 municipalities established in Latvia in 2021. It surrounds Liepāja, Latvia's third largest city. Its first elected municipal council will take office on 1 July 2021. Its seat is at Grobiņa. Geography South Kurzeme is Latvia's largest municipality, covering an area of . It is located in the southwestern part of the Courland region in western Latvia, on the coast of the Baltic Sea. It borders Ventspils Municipality to the north, Kuldīga Municipality to the northeast, and Saldus Municipality to the east. It surrounds the port city of Liepāja in the west. It also borders the Lithuanian counties of Klaipėda and Telšiai to the south and southeast respectively. The westernmost point of Latvia is located at Cape Bernāti in Nīca Parish south of Liepāja. The coastline of South Kurzeme Municipality is over long. Erosion of the coast north of Liepāja has been accelerated because breakwaters at Liepā ...
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Friedrich Wilhelm III
Frederick William III (german: Friedrich Wilhelm III.; 3 August 1770 – 7 June 1840) was King of Prussia from 16 November 1797 until his death in 1840. He was concurrently Elector of Brandenburg in the Holy Roman Empire until 6 August 1806, when the Empire was dissolved. Frederick William III ruled Prussia during the difficult times of the Napoleonic Wars. The king reluctantly joined the coalition against Napoleon in the . Following Napoleon's defeat, he took part in the Congress of Vienna, which assembled to settle the political questions arising from the new, post-Napoleonic order in Europe. His primary interests were internal – the reform of Prussia's Protestant churches. He was determined to unify the Protestant churches to homogenize their liturgy, organization, and architecture. The long-term goal was to have fully centralized royal control of all the Protestant churches in the Prussian Union of Churches. The king was said to be extremely shy and indecisive. His wife ...
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Wilhelm Kettler
Wilhelm Kettler (20 June 1574 – 7 April 1640) was the Duke of Courland, a Baltic German region in today's Latvia. Wilhelm ruled the western Courland portion of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, while his brother Friedrich Kettler, Friedrich ruled the eastern Semigallia portion. Life and family

Born in Jelgava, Mitau in 1574, Wilhelm Kettler was the youngest son of Gotthard Kettler and his wife, Anna of Mecklenburg. After their father's death in 1587, Wilhelm and his brother Friedrich inherited the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia. The brothers divided the duchy between themselves, and Wilhelm ruled the Courland portion, with the seat in Kuldīga. In 1609, William married Princess Sophia of Prussia (1582-1610), Sophia of Brandenburg-Prussia (1582–1610), daughter of Albert Frederick, Duke of Prussia, receiving as a dowry the territory of Grobiņa. Due to conflicts with the local nobility, he lost control of the duchy in 1617 and emigrated. Thereafter, his brothe ...
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Duchy Of Courland And Semigallia
The Duchy of Courland and Semigallia ( la, Ducatus Curlandiæ et Semigalliæ; german: Herzogtum Kurland und Semgallen; lv, Kurzemes un Zemgales hercogiste; lt, Kuršo ir Žiemgalos kunigaikštystė; pl, Księstwo Kurlandii i Semigalii) was a duchy in the Baltic region, then known as Livonia, that existed from 1561 to 1569 as a nominally vassal state of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and subsequently made part of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom from 1569 to 1726 and incorporated into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1726. On March 28, 1795, it was annexed by the Russian Empire in the Third Partition of Poland. There was also a short-lived wartime state existing from March 8 to September 22, 1918, with the same name. Plans for it to become part of the United Baltic Duchy, subject to the German Empire, were thwarted by Germany's surrender of the Baltic region at the end of the First World War. The area became a part of Latvia at the end of World War I. History In 1561 ...
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Bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They are sometimes divided into a petty (), middle (), large (), upper (), and ancient () bourgeoisie and collectively designated as "the bourgeoisie". The bourgeoisie in its original sense is intimately linked to the existence of cities, recognized as such by their urban charters (e.g., municipal charters, town privileges, German town law), so there was no bourgeoisie apart from the citizenry of the cities. Rural peasants came under a different legal system. In Marxist philosophy, the bourgeoisie is the social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialization and whose societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital to ensure the perpetuation of their economic supremacy in society. ...
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Reval
Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ''maakond'' (county). Tallinn is the main financial, industrial, and cultural centre of Estonia. It is located northwest of the country's second largest city Tartu, however only south of Helsinki, Finland, also west of Saint Petersburg, Russia, north of Riga, Latvia, and east of Stockholm, Sweden. From the 13th century until the first half of the 20th century, Tallinn was known in most of the world by variants of its other historical name Reval. Tallinn received Lübeck city rights in 1248,, however the earliest evidence of human population in the area dates back nearly 5,000 years. The medieval indigenous population of what is now Tallinn and northern Estonia was one of the last "pagan" civilisations in Europe to adopt Christianity fol ...
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Livonian War
The Livonian War (1558–1583) was the Russian invasion of Old Livonia, and the prolonged series of military conflicts that followed, in which Tsar Ivan the Terrible of Russia (Muscovy) unsuccessfully fought for control of the region (present-day Estonia and Latvia). The Tsardom of Russia (Muscovy) faced a varying coalition of the Dano-Norwegian Realm, the Kingdom of Sweden, and the Union (later Commonwealth) of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. From 1558 to 1578, Russia controlled the greater part of the region with early military successes at Dorpat (Tartu) and Narwa (Narva). The dissolution of the Livonian Confederation brought Poland–Lithuania into the conflict, and Sweden and Denmark intervened between 1559 and 1561. Swedish Estonia was established despite continuing attacks from Russia, and Frederick II of Denmark bought the old Bishopric of Ösel–Wiek, which he placed under the control of his brother Magnus of Holstein. Magnus attemp ...
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Guilder
Guilder is the English translation of the Dutch and German ''gulden'', originally shortened from Middle High German ''guldin pfenninc'' "gold penny". This was the term that became current in the southern and western parts of the Holy Roman Empire for the Fiorino d'oro (introduced in 1252). Hence, the name has often been interchangeable with ''florin'' ( currency sign ''ƒ'' or ''fl.''). The guilder is also the name of several currencies used in Europe and the former colonies of the Dutch Empire. Gold guilder The guilder or gulden was the name of several gold coins used during the Holy Roman Empire. It first referred to the Italian gold florin introduced in the 13th century. It then referred to the Rhenish gulden (florenus Rheni) issued by several states of the Holy Roman Empire from the 14th century. The Rhenish gulden was issued by Trier, Cologne and Mainz in the 14th and 15th centuries. Basel minted its own ''Apfelgulden'' between 1429 and 1509. Bern and Solothurn followed i ...
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Gotthard Kettler
Gotthard Kettler, Duke of Courland (also ''Godert'', ''Ketteler'', german: Gotthard Kettler, Herzog von Kurland; 2 February 1517 – 17 May 1587) was the last Master of the Livonian Order and the first Duke of Courland and Semigallia. Biography Kettler was born near Anröchte, Kreis Soest, of an old Westphalian noble family and the ninth child of the German knight Gotthard Kettler zu Melrich (mentioned 1527–1556) and his wife Sophie of Nesselrode. Gotthard's older brother Wilhelm Kettler was bishop of Münster from 1553 to 1557. Kettler enlisted in the Livonian order around 1537 and became a knight. In 1554 Gotthard Kettler became Komtur of Dünaburg (Daugavpils), and in 1557 Komtur of Fellin (Viljandi). In 1559, during the Livonian War (1558–1582) he succeeded Wilhelm von Fürstenberg as a Master of the Teutonic Order in Livonia. When the Livonian Confederation came under increasing pressure from Ivan IV of Russia, Kettler converted to Lutheranism and secularised Semigallia ...
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Bailiff
A bailiff (from Middle English baillif, Old French ''baillis'', ''bail'' "custody") is a manager, overseer or custodian – a legal officer to whom some degree of authority or jurisdiction is given. Bailiffs are of various kinds and their offices and duties vary greatly. Another official sometimes referred to as a ''bailiff'' was the ''Vogt''. In the Holy Roman Empire a similar function was performed by the ''Amtmann''. British Isles Historic bailiffs ''Bailiff'' was the term used by the Normans for what the Saxons had called a '' reeve'': the officer responsible for executing the decisions of a court. The duty of the bailiff would thus include serving summonses and orders, and executing all warrants issued out of the corresponding court. The district within which the bailiff operated was called his '' bailiwick'', even to the present day. Bailiffs were outsiders and free men, that is, they were not usually from the bailiwick for which they were responsible. Throughout Nor ...
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State Of The Teutonic Order
The State of the Teutonic Order (german: Staat des Deutschen Ordens, ; la, Civitas Ordinis Theutonici; lt, Vokiečių ordino valstybė; pl, Państwo zakonu krzyżackiego), also called () or (), was a medieval Crusader state, located in Central Europe along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea. It was formed by the knights of the Teutonic Order during the 13th century Northern Crusades in the region of Prussia. The Livonian Brothers of the Sword merged in 1237 with the Teutonic Order of Prussia and became known as its branch, the Livonian Order, while their state (''Terra Mariana'') became a part of the Teutonic Order State. At its greatest territorial extent, in the early 15th century, it encompassed Chełmno Land, Courland, Gotland, Livonia, Neumark, Pomerelia (Gdańsk Pomerania), Prussia and Samogitia, i.e. territories nowadays located in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Russia, and Sweden. Following the battles of Grunwald in 1410 and Wilkomierz in 1435 ...
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