Duchy of Courland and Semigallia (1918)

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 (German: Mitau), 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 (modern Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), the German High Command still favored the policy of including those lands into the German Empire by relying on the local Baltic German nobility.

On 15 March (1918), Germany recognized the creation and independence of the Duchy, but already during the spring of the same year wider political solutions were supported by Baltic German leaders from the neighboring provinces of Estonia and Livonia, who met on 12–13 April in Riga and proclaimed the creation and independence of a distinctive state in Livonia-Estonia, but also proposed a wider state that would include Courland.

By September 1918, various efforts were made in order to implement some of those plans, but already in October 1918, the Chancellor of Germany, prince Maximilian of Baden, proposed to have the German military administration over the Baltic lands (Ober Ost) replaced by civilian authorities. On 5 November, representatives of Baltic Germans and their allies, from Courland, Livonia and Estonia, met in Riga and proclaimed the United Baltic Duchy (UBD), thus finally abandoning the idea of a separate Courlandian state. The UBD project also failed, since already on 18 November 1918 the People's Council of Latvia proclaimed the creation of Latvia as an independent state that would include Courland, and on 7 December the German military handed over authority to the Latvian Provisional Government.