Duchy of Courland and Semigallia
From Warlike
The Duchy of Courland and Semigallia was a proposed client state of the German Empire during World War I which did not come into existence. It was proclaimed on 8 March 1918 in Jelgava, the capital city of the German-occupied Courland Governorate, by a council composed of political representatives of Baltic Germans, who offered the ducal crown to German emperor Wilhelm II, thus bypassing the old ducal House of Biron, that previously ruled over the historical Duchy of Courland and Semigallia until 1795. Although the majority in the German Reichstag supported national self-determination for the peoples of Baltic lands, the German High Command still favored the policy of including those lands into the German Empire by relying on the local Baltic German nobility.
