t, separated from Saxony, passed to his son
Henry, who in 1218 took the title of prince and was the real founder
of the house of Anhalt. On Henry's death in 1252 his three sons
partitioned the principality and founded respectively the lines of
Aschersleben, Bernburg and Zerbst. The family ruling in Aschersleben
became extinct in 1315, and this district was subsequently
incorporated with the neighbouring bishopric of Halberstadt. The last
prince of the line of Anhalt-Bernburg died in 1468 and his lands
were inherited by the princes of the sole remaining line, that of
Anhalt-Zerbst. The territory belonging to this branch of the family
had been divided in 1396, and after the acquisition of Bernburg
Prince George I. made a further partition of Zerbst. Early in the 16th
century, however, owing to the death or abdication of several
princes, the family had become narrowed down to the two branches
of Anhalt-Coethen and Anhalt-Dessau. Wolfgang, who became prince of
Anhalt-Coethen in 1508, was a stalwart adherent of the Reformation,
and after the battle of Muehlberg in 1547 was placed under the ban and
deprived of his lands by the emperor Charles V. After the peace
of Passau in 1552 he bought back his principality, but as he was
childless he surrendered it in 1562 to his kinsmen the princes of
Anhalt-Dessau. Ernest I. of Anhalt-Dessau (d. 1516) left three sons,
John II., George III., and Joachim, who ruled their lands together
for many years, and who, like Prince Wolfgang, favoured the reformed
doctrines, which thus became dominant in Anhalt. About 1546 the three
brothers divided their principality and founded the lines of Zerbst,
Ploetzkau and Dessau. This division, however, was only temporary, as
the acquisition of Coethen, and a series of deaths among the ruling
princes, enabled Joachim Ernest, a son of John II., to unite the whole
of Anhalt under his rule in 1570.

Joachim Ernest died in 1586 and his five sons ruled the land in common
until 1603, when Anhalt was again divided, and the lines of Dessau,
Bernburg, Ploetzkau, Zerbst and Coethen were refounded. The principality
was ravaged during the Thirty Years' War, and in the earlier part of
this struggle Christian I. of Anhalt-Bernburg took an important part.
In 1635 an arrangement was made by the various princes of Anhalt,
which gave a certain authority to the eldest member of the family,
who was thus able to represent the principality as a whole. This
proceeding was probab