During this period the ruling house split into a number of branches, with the main line residing at Detmold.

Over the course of the nineteenth century it gradually developed into a constitutional monarchy with moderate participation in government for the landed nobility.

His territory was probably formed out of land he acquired on the destruction of the Duchy of Saxony following the demise of Henry the Lion in 1180.

The title nominally passed to his brother Alexander who was incapable of governing due to mental illness.

Since the counts of Lippe-Biesterfled and Lippe-Weissenfeld also laid claim to the regency and the right to succeed Alexander, a succession dispute arose, which continued until 1905.

The Schaumburg-Lippe claim was actively supported by Emperor Wilhelm II (whose sister was married to Prince Adolf).

A ruling in the Reichsgericht in Leipzig in 1897 decided the matter in favour of Ernest, Count of Lippe-Biesterfeld, who then assumed the regency.

However, at the instruction of Wilhelm II, the military forces stationed in Lippe refused to address him as "illustrious" and denied the other honours that he was entitled to.

The 1876 electoral law abolished an estates-based system and introduced the three-class franchise, which did not offer a general, equal, or democratic possibility of participation to the citizens.

The Princes retained a large personal estate, including palaces, land, forests, long-term leases, Bad Meinberg, and the salt deposits at Uflen, which mostly came under state control after the abdication of Leopold IV in 1918.

The Bundesrat was dominated by Prussia, which had 17 representatives, out of a total of 58, meaning that Lippe was practically irrelevant in the council.

From 1817, Lippe fell under the Oberappellationsgericht [de] (upper appellate court) in Wolfenbüttel, along with the Duchy of Brunswick, and the principalities of Schaumberg-Lippe and Waldeck-Pyrmont.

Instead, activity focussed on animal husbandry and the breeding of Senner horses at Jagdschloss Lopshorn [de].

[7] Industry existed only on a limited scale and was mostly based on the direct extraction of the land's mineral and forest resources.

This was partially a consequence of the power of the landed nobility and the unfriendly attitude of the monarchs towards economic undertakings at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

The Lippe soldiers were mainly employed in the 55th (6th Westphalian) Infantry Regiment "Count Bülow von Dennewitz" [de].

This uniform was also depicted on the Notgeld issued by the city of Detmold in the 1920s and bottles of Lipper Schütze schnapps were modelled on it, ensuring that it remained part of the popular imagination.

In reality, Lippe no longer had a military of its own after 1867 and even before that was in no position to maintain an independent force the size of a regiment.