Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin |Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
|Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin| |-||1728–1756||Christian Ludwig
II| |-||1785–1815||Frederick Francis I| |-||Treaty of
Hamburg||1701| |-||Raised to Grand Duchy||1815| |Today part
of||Germany| The Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin was a duchy in
northern Germany created in 1701, when Frederick William and
Adolphus Frederick II divided the Duchy of Mecklenburg between
Schwerin and Strelitz. Ruled by the successors of the Nikloting
House of Mecklenburg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin remained a relatively
poor state of the Holy Roman Empire along the Baltic Sea
littoral between Holstein-Glückstadt and Duchy of Pomerania. The
dynasty's progenitor, Niklot (1090–1160), was a chief of the
Slavic Obotrite tribal federation, who fought against the
advancing Saxons and was finally defeated in 1160 by Henry the
Lion in the course of the Wendish Crusade. Niklot's son,
Pribislav, submitted himself to Henry, and in 1167 came into his
paternal inheritance as the first Prince of M