By the 19th century, only some of the small states of Germany still had a "Landesrabbiner", namely, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Oldenburg, Birkenfeld, Saxe-Meiningen, Anhalt, Brunswick, and Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. Prussia, which always proclaimed the principle of non-interference in internal Jewish affairs, retained the office in some of the provinces annexed in 1866, as the 4 Landrabbinate in the Province of Hanover and in the province of Hesse-Nassau (Cassel). The office of "Landesrabbiner" for the province of Brandenburg, which existed in Berlin and in Frankfort-on-the-Oder, survived, as in other countries, up to the end of the 18th century by virtue of the rabbi's capacity as civil judge. The last one to hold the title was Hirschel Lewin, while his successor, Simon Mayer Weyl (d. 1828), held the title of ""Vice[-]ober[-]landesrabbiner"". As an exceptional favor the government in 1849 gave to Gedaliah Tiktin of Breslau the title of "Landesrabbiner", which was interpreted as a manifestation of the government in favor of Orthodoxy and as a disapproval of the Reform movement (L. Geiger, ""Abraham Geiger's Leben in Briefen"", pp. 113 et seq., Berlin, 1878).