- Micronations
- Founded 1933
- Creator Groucho Marx
Freedonia is a fictional country created by Groucho Marx for the film Duck Soup—released by Paramount Pictures in 1933. The film parodied war and dictatorship, dipping right into the zeitgeist. Despite the tepid critical response at the time, Duck Soup is now seen as a classic political farce. The name Freedonia became part of American vocabulary, used to refer to any fictional country with similar characteristics to the country in the film: autocracy, diminutiveness, and obscurity, to name a few. Other Freedonia’s have since been established but this was the first.