Ernestine Wettin duchy on the south-west flank of the Thuringian Forest, created in the 1681 partition of Saxe-Gotha among the sons of Ernest the Pious and tripled in size by the 1826 Ernestine reshuffle; famous in the 19th century for Duke Georg II's Meiningen court theatre.
Proclaimed a republic in November 1918; the Free State of Saxe-Meiningen was merged into the State of Thuringia in 1920.
The standard English study of the duchy's most consequential ruler and its court theatre; polity-specific, verified on Open Library (ISBN 9780804711968).