Schaumburg-Lippe, former state, N Germany, E of the Weser River. In 1946 it was placed in Lower Saxony. Bückeburg was the capital. It was situated in a fertile agricultural region. The county of Schauenburg (as Schaumburg was originally called) included a considerable part of Westphalia in the 12th cent., and its lord, Count Adolf, was invested with Holstein in 1111. The direct line died out in 1459, and the branch line that succeeded retained only Schaumburg and the seigniory of Pinneberg in Holstein. When it in turn became extinct (1640), Pinneberg passed to the Danish crown and part of Schaumburg was divided between Brunswick-Lüneburg (later the electorate of Hanover) and Hesse-Kassel. The remainder of Schaumburg passed to Count Philip of Lippe, thus forming the county of Schaumburg-Lippe. The county became a principality in 1807. The last prince abdicated in 1918, and Schaumburg-Lippe joined the Weimar Republic.

Former German state. Schaumburg was the ancestral seat of a line of counts recorded from the early 12th century. The line died out in 1640 and the lands were partitioned. It joined the German Confederation in 1815 and the German empire in 1871. It joined the Weimar Republic in 1918 as a free state; in 1946 it was merged into the state of Lower Saxony.

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Schaumburg-Lippe was a small state in Germany, in the present day state of Lower Saxony, with its capital at Bückeburg. With the death of Count Wilhelm in 1777 the junior Schaumburg-Lippe-Alverdissen inherited the County thereby reuniting Schaumburg-Lippe with Lippe-Alverdissen.

Schaumburg-Lippe was a county until 1807 when it became a principality, which lasted until the end of the German monarchies in 1918, when it became a free state as the Free State of Schaumburg-Lippe.

Rulers of Schaumburg-Lippe

Counts of Schaumburg-Lippe (1643–1807)

• Philipp I (1643–81)
• Friedrich Christian (1681–1728)
• Albrecht Wolfgang (1728–48)
• Wilhelm (1748–77)
• Philipp II (1777–87)
• Georg Wilhelm (1787–1807)

Princes of Schaumburg-Lippe (1807–1918)

• Georg Wilhelm (1807–60)
• Adolf I (1860–93)
• Georg (1893–1911)
• Adolf II (1911–18)

Heads of the House of Schaumburg-Lippe, post monarchy

• Adolf II (1918–36)
• Wolrad (1936–62)
• Philipp-Ernst (1962–2003)
• Alexander (2003–present)

Heir: Hereditary Prince Heinrich-Donatus (born 1994)