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The growth of Prussia provided Anhalt with a formidable neighbour, and the establishment and practice of primogeniture by all branches of the family prevented further divisions of the principality. In 1806 Alexius of Anhalt-Bernburg was created a duke by the emperor Francis II., and after the dissolution of the Empire each of the three princes took this title.
When the succeeding prince, Henry, died in 1847, this family became extinct, and according to an arrangement between the lines of Anhalt-Dessau and Anhalt-Bernburg, Cöthen was added to Dessau. Anhalt-Bernburg had been weakened by partitions, but its princes had added several districts to their lands; and in 1812, on the extinction of a cadet branch, it was again united under a single ruler.
Joachim Ernest died in 1586 and his five sons ruled the land in common until 1603, when Anhalt was again divided, and the lines of Dessau, Bernburg, Plötzkau, Zerbst and Cöthen were refounded. The principality was ravaged during the Thirty Years' War, and in the earlier part of this struggle Christian I. of Anhalt-Bernburg took an important part.
The late Princess Frederick of Prussia was afflicted like her brother, the last Duke of Anhalt-Bernburg, with a peculiar kind of lunacy which took the form of an invincible objection to clothing of any kind whatsoever; while one of her two sons, Prince Alexander, who died only a few months ago, suffered from a species of good-natured imbecility, which led him to offer his heart and his hand to every woman or young girl that he encountered, no matter what her age, or looks, or rank, sometimes making as many as thirty or forty offers of marriage in the same day!
The family ruling in Aschersleben became extinct in 1315, and this district was subsequently incorporated with the neighbouring bishopric of Halberstadt. The last prince of the line of Anhalt-Bernburg died in 1468 and his lands were inherited by the princes of the sole remaining line, that of Anhalt-Zerbst.
ANHALT, a duchy of Germany, and a constituent state of the German empire, formed, in 1863, by the amalgamation of the two duchies Anhalt-Dessau-Cöthen and Anhalt-Bernburg, and comprising all the various Anhalt territories which were sundered apart in 1603.
Old Leopold had wells of strange sorrow in the rugged heart of him, sorrow, and still better things, which he does not wear on his sleeve. "Louisa, Leopold's eldest Daughter, Wife of Victor Leopold, reigning Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg, lay dying of a decline." Still only twenty-three, poor Lady, though married seven years ago; the end now evidently drawing nigh.
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