The northern (Oberland) half of the old Burgraviate of Nuremberg - mountainous, forested and mined - held as a free imperial principality by a Franconian Hohenzollern line and officially styled Brandenburg-Kulmbach; its Rococo court under Margravine Wilhelmine, sister of Frederick the Great, outshone its revenues.
Ceded with Ansbach to Prussia by Margrave Charles Alexander in the treaty of January/December 1791, ending Hohenzollern-Franconian sovereignty; Prussia ceded Bayreuth to France in 1807 and France transferred it to Bavaria in 1810.
Memoirs of Wilhelmine, margravine of BaireuthWilhelmine of Prussia, Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth · 1887 (English ed.)
The court memoir written from inside Bayreuth by Frederick the Great's sister - the one genuinely polity-specific English-language book on this margraviate, and the source of its reputation as a cultural capital.
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947Christopher Clark · 2006
Frames the Franconian principalities as Hohenzollern secundogenitures and the 1791 absorption into Prussia.