After the Welf duke Henry the Lion was placed under Imperial ban in 1180, Eastphalia was increasingly subdivided into smaller states,[1] foremost the Welf Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the counties of Anhalt, Wernigerode and Blankenburg as well as the Imperial city of Goslar, but also the ecclesiastical territories of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, the prince-bishoprics of Hildesheim and Halberstadt and Quedlinburg Abbey. The Saxon tradition was perpetuated by the Ascanian dukes of Saxe-Wittenberg, who secured for themselves the electoral dignity and later established the Electorate of Saxony on the upper Elbe.