The Baltic nobility was the privileged social class in the territories of today's Estonia and Latvia. It existed continuously since the medieval foundation of Terra Mariana. Most of the gentry were Baltic Germans, but Poles and Swedes joined as well, and Russians later under the Russian empire.
This nobility was a source of officers and other servants to Swedish and Polish kings in 16th and particularly 17th centuries, when Couronian, Estonian, Livonian and Oeselian lands belonged to them. Russian emperors used Baltic nobles in government.
They were organized in the Estonian Noble Corporation in Reval, Couronian Noble Corporation in Mitau, and Livonian Noble Corporation in Riga. Viborg also had an institution to register rolls of nobles in accordance with Baltic models in the 18th century. Most of the nobility was recalled by Hitler to Germany in late 1939, a few months prior to the annexation of Estonia and Latvia by the Soviet Union in June 1940, although, nowadays it is possible to find the successors of the Baltic nobility all around the world.
Famous quotes containing the word nobility:
“If there be no nobility of descent in a nation, all the more indispensable is it that there should be nobility of ascent—a character in them that bear rule, so fine and high and pure, that as men come within the circle of its influence, they involuntarily pay homage to that which is the one pre-eminent distinction, the Royalty of Virtue.”
—Henry Codman Potter (1835–1908)