The author Fritz Mielert (1879-1947) was a Westphalian regional and travel writer as well as a photographer of landscapes and cultural-historical objects. As the Prussian province of Westphalia, a large part of the Westphalian territories was part of a political unit for the first time from 1816 to 1946. The provincial capital and seat of the Oberpräsident was Münster. The new province essentially included the areas that had belonged to Prussia before 1800, such as Minden, the counties of Mark and Ravensberg, Tecklenburg, as well as the prince-bishoprics of Münster and Paderborn, which came under Prussian control after 1803, along with some smaller lordships, including the County of Limburg an der Lenne. Against this backdrop, a stronger Westphalian identity developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, also supported by the state authorities, which was always in competition with the national state.