Brunswick was the name of a distinguished German family descended from the Welf family (see Guelphs and Ghibellines). The German spelling of the name is Braunschweig. The present line of British monarchs is descended from a branch of Brunswick dukes that lived in Hanover, Germany, called the Brunswick-Lüneburg branch.
The House of Brunswick was founded in the early 1200’s by William, son of Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. The lands of Brunswick and Lüneburg were combined into a single duchy (territory) in 1235, when Otto the Child, a son of William, became the first Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg. The title of Duke of Brunswick was later used by the ruling Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel branch after the Brunswick-Lüneburg branch assumed the more prestigious title of electors of Hanover in 1708.
In 1714, Elector George Louis of Hanover succeeded to the throne of Britain as George I. He was the cousin and closest Protestant relative of Britain’s Queen Anne, who died that year. British law prohibited a Roman Catholic from being the nation’s monarch. The Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel branch ruled the Duchy of Brunswick until 1884. Prussian regents governed it from 1885 to 1913, when Duke Ernest Augustus, a descendant of the Brunswick-Lüneburg branch, was allowed to rule. He gave up this position in 1918.
