“Landesdirector,” while the state officials take the oath of allegiance to the king of Prussia. The prince of Waldeck reserves his whole rights as head of the church, and also the right of granting pardons, and in certain circumstances may exercise a veto on proposals to alter or enact laws. Education and similar matters are thus all conducted on the Prussian model; a previous convention had already handed over military affairs to Prussia. The budget for 1910 showed a revenue of £57,000 and a like expenditure. The public debt was £79,710, paying interest at 312%. The prince is supported by the income derived from crown lands. As regards the administration of justice, Waldeck and Pyrmont belong to the districts of Cassel and Hanover respectively.
The princes of Waldeck-Pyrmont are descendants of the counts of Schwalenberg, the earliest of whom known to history was one Widukind (d. 1137). His son Volkwin (d. 1178) acquired by marriage the county of Waldeck, and his line was divided into two branches, Waldeck and Landau, in 1397. In 1438 the landgrave of Hesse obtained rights of suzerainty over Waldeck, and the claims arising from this action were not finally disposed of until 1847, when it was decided that the rights of Hesse over Waldeck had ceased with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. The Landau branch of the family became extinct in 1495, and in 1631 Waldeck inherited the county of Pyrmont, which had originally belonged to a branch of the Schwalenberg family. For a few years Waldeck was divided into Wildungen and Eisenberg, but in 1692, when the Wildungen branch died out with George Frederick, the imperial field-marshal, the whole principality was united under the rule of Christian Louis of Eisenberg. From 1692 the land has been undivided with the exception of a brief period from 1805 to 1812, when Waldeck and Pyrmont were ruled by two brothers. Frederick Anthony Ulrich (d. 1728), who succeeded his father, Christian Louis, in 1706, was made a prince of the empire in 1712. In 1807 Waldeck joined the confederation of the Rhine, and in 1815 entered the German confederation. Its first constitution was granted in 1816 by Prince George II. (d. 1845). Prince Frederick (b. 1865) succeeded his father, George Victor (1831–1893), as ruler on the 12th of May 1893. The most important fact in the recent history of the principality is its connexion with Prussia, to which reference has already been made.
See Curtze, Geschichte und Beschreibung des Fürstentums Waldeck (Arolsen, 1850); Lowe, Heimatskunde von Waldeck (Arolsen, 1887); J. C. C. Hoffmeister, Historisch-genealogisches Handbuch über alle Grafen und Fürsten von Waldeck seit 1228 (Cassel, 1883); Böttcher, Das Staatsrecht des Fürstentums Waldeck (Freiburg, 1884); A. Wagner, Die Geschichte Waldecks und Pyrmonts (Wildungen, 1888), and the Geschichtsblätter für Waldeck und Pyrmont (Mengermghausen, 1901, fol.).
WALDECK-ROUSSSAU, PIERRE MARIE RENÉ ERNEST (1846–1904), French statesman, was born at Nantes on the 2nd of December 1846. His father, Rene Valdec-Rousseau (1809–1882), a barrister at Nantes and a leader of the local republican party, figured in the revolution of 1848 as one of the deputies returned to the Constituent Assembly for Loire Inférieure. With Jules Simon, Louis Blanc and others he sat on the commission appointed to inquire into the labour question, making many important proposals, one of which, for the establishment of national banks, was partially realized in 1850. After the election of Louis Napoleon to the presidency he returned to his practice at the bar, and for some time after the coup d’état was in hiding to escape arrest. He came back to political life in the crisis of 1870, when he became mayor of Nantes in August and proclaimed the third republic there on the 4th of September. He shortly afterwards resigned municipal office in consequence of differences with his colleagues on the education question.
The son was a delicate child whose defective eyesight forbade him the use of books, and his early education was therefore entirely oral. He studied law at Poitiers and in Paris, where he took his licentiate in January 1869. His father's record ensured his reception in high republican circles. Jules Grévy stood sponsor for him at the Parisian bar, and he was a regular visitor at the houses of Stanislas Dufaure and of Jules Simon. After six months of waiting for briefs in Paris, he decided to return home and to join the bar of St Nazaire, where he inscribed his name early in 1870. In September he became, in spite of his youth, secretary to the municipal commission temporarily appointed to carry on the town business. He organized the National Defence at St Nazaire, and himself marched out with the contingent, though no part of the force saw active service owing to lack of ammunition, their private store having been commandeered by the state. In 1873 he removed to the bar of Rennes, and six years later was returned to the Chamber of Deputies. In his electoral programme he had stated that he was prepared to respect all liberties except those of conspiracy against the institutions of the country and of educating the young in hatred of the modern social order. In the Chamber he supported the policy of Gambetta. The Waldeck-Rousseau family was strictly Catholic in spite of its republican principles; nevertheless Waldeck-Rousseau supported the anti-clerical education law submitted by Jules Ferry as minister of education in the Waddington cabinet. He further voted for the abrogation of the law of 1814 forbidding work on Sundays and fête days, for compulsory service of one year for seminarists and for the re-establishment of divorce. He made his reputation in the Chamber by a report which he drew up in 1880 on behalf of the committee appointed to inquire into the French judicial system. But then as later he was chiefly occupied with the relations between capital and labour. He had a large share in 1884 in securing the recognition of trade unions. In 1881 he became minister of the interior in Gambetta's grand ministère, and he held the same portfolio in the Jules Ferry cabinet of 1883–1885, when he gave proof of great administrative powers. He sought to put down the system by which civil posts were obtained through the local deputy, and he made it clear that the central authority could not be defied by local officials. He had begun to practise at the Paris bar in 1886, and in 1889 he did not seek re-election to the Chamber, but devoted himself to his legal work. The most famous of the many noteworthy cases in which his cold and penetrating intellect and his power of clear exposition were retained was the defence of M. de Lesseps in 1893. In 1894 he returned to political life as senator for the department of the Loire, and next year stood for the presidency of the republic against Félix Faure and Henri Brisson, being supported by the Conservatives, who were soon to be his bitter enemies. He received 184 votes, but retired before the second ballot to allow Faure to receive an absolute majority. During the political anarchy of the next few years he was recognized by the moderate republicans as the successor of Jules Ferry and Gambetta, and at the crisis of 1899 on the fall of the Dupuy cabinet he was asked by President Loubet to form a government. After an initial failure he succeeded in forming a coalition cabinet which included such widely different politicians as M. Millerand and General de Galliffet. He himself returned to his former post at the ministry of the interior, and set to work to quell the discontent with which the country was seething, to put an end to the various agitations which under specious pretences were directed against republican institutions, and to restore independence to the judicial authority. His appeal to all republicans to sink their differences before the common peril met with some degree of success, and enabled the government to leave the second court-martial of Captain Dreyfus at Rennes an absolutely free hand, and then to compromise the affair by granting a pardon to Dreyfus. Waldeck-Rousseau won a great personal success in October by his successful intervention in the strikes at Le Creusot. With the condemnation in January 1900 of Paul Déroulède and his monarchist and nationalist followers by the High Court the worst of the danger was past, and Waldeck-Rousseau kept order in Paris without having recourse to irritating displays of force. The Senate was staunch in support of M. Waldeck-Rousseau, and in the Chamber he displayed remarkable astuteness in winning support from various groups. The Amnesty Bill, passed on 19th December, chiefly through his unwearied advocacy, went far to smooth down the acerbity of the preceding years. With the object of aiding the industry of wine-producing, and of
