Schwarzburg is a municipality in the valley of the Schwarza (german: Schwarzatal) in the district Saalfeld-Rudolstadt in

Thuringia Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million. Erfurt is the capital and lar ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. It was first mentioned in 1071 as ''Swartzinburg''. The (now-ruined) castle was from the 12th century the seat of the

Counts of Schwarzburg The House of Schwarzburg was one of the oldest noble families of Thuringia. Upon the death of Prince Friedrich Günther in 1971, a claim to the headship of the house passed under Semi-Salic primogeniture to his elder sister, Princess Marie An ...

. Then

Rudolstadt Rudolstadt is a town in the German federal state Thuringia, with the Thuringian Forest to the southwest, and to Jena and Weimar to the north. The former capital of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, the town is built along the River Saale inside a wide v ...

became seat of the new line of

Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt was a small historic state in present-day Thuringia, Germany, with its capital at Rudolstadt. History Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt was established in 1599 in the course of a resettlement of Schwarzburg dynasty lands. Since t ...

. On 11 August 1919, while on holiday in Schwarzburg,

Friedrich Ebert Friedrich Ebert (; 4 February 187128 February 1925) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the first president of Germany from 1919 until his death in office in 1925. Ebert was elected leader of the SPD on t ...

, the first '' Reichspräsident'' of Germany, signed the Weimar constitution, the first democratic

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princ ...

References

Saalfeld-Rudolstadt Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt {{SaalfeldRudolstadt-geo-stub