lip , one of the smallest federal states, has formed the northeast corner of the since 1946/47 country North Rhine-Westphalia; the smaller one Schaumburg-Lippe , now in the southern part of the country by Lower Saxony , was founded under a separate branch of the House of Lippe in the 1640s. Both were in until 1990 West Germany . The lip lies north and south of the east-west bend of the middle Weser and extends southwest to Teutoburg Forest .
The medieval Lords of Lippe had their original possessions near Lippstadt an der lip west of Paderborn. Simon V von Lippe (died 1536) took over the title of count in 1528. During the Reformation, Lippe became a Lutheran (1538) and later a Calvinist (1605). Dynastic splits appeared in the early 17th century; But the Lippe-Detmold line, princes of 1720, united most of the Lippe lands except those held by Schaumburg-Lippe.
Schaumburg or Schauenburg northeast of Rinteln was the seat of a Dynasty by counts from c. 1100 to 1640. Hesse-Kassel and Brunswick acquired some of these lands; but Philipp von Lippe-Alverdissen, brother of the last Countess of Schaumburg, kept others to form a principality with his capital Bückeburg. Both states joined the Rheinbund under the auspices of Napoleon I. , in 1807, and the German Confederation in 1815 Schaumburg-Lippe adhered to the fiscal union of the north-eastern German states in 1837, the Zollverein (German Customs Union) in 1854 the North German Confederation 1866 (Lippe joins 1867) and the German Empire 1871. After the constitution of the Weimar Republic (1919–33) the princely regimes in both states gave way to republican governments suppressed during the Nazi era.