Ferdinand Albert I, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern
Ferdinand Albert I, a member of the House of Welf, was a Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. After a 1667 inheritance agreement in the Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, he received the secundogeniture of Brunswick-Bevern, which he ruled until his death. Ferdinand Albert was born in Brunswick, the fourth son of Duke Augustus the Younger, reigning Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, from his third marriage with Duchess Elisabeth Sophie of Mecklenburg. Raised at his father's residence, the young man received a comprehensive education, with Justus Georg Schottel and Sigmund von Birken among his tutors. After the father's death in 1666, the sons quarreled about the heritage. Ferdinand Albert received the palace of Bevern near Holzminden, some feudal rights, a certain amount of money in exchange for his claims to the government of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, to be ruled by his elder half-brothers Rudolph Augustus and Anthony Ulrich. Ferdinand Albert joined the Royal Society in 1665 and was admitted to the Fruitbearing Society by Duke Augustus of Saxe-Weissenfels in 1673.
Over the years, however, he grew more and more eccentric, at some point his brothers had to send a military force to restore order at his palace. He collected many works of art, which became part of the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick, he died in 1687 at Bevern. Ferdinand Albert married Christine, a daughter of Landgrave Frederick of Hesse-Eschwege, in 1667, they had the following children that reached adulthood: Sophia Eleanora, died childless Augustus Ferdinand, died childless Ferdinand Albert II Ferdinand Christian, died childless Ernest Ferdinand Henry Ferdinand, died childless At the House of Welf site Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliographie, vol. 6, p. 679-681
Maria Theresa
Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Croatia, Transylvania, Milan and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands, Parma. By marriage, she was Duchess of Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Holy Roman Empress, she started her 40-year reign when her father, Emperor Charles VI, died in October 1740. Charles VI paved the way for her accession with the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 and spent his entire reign securing it, he neglected the advice of Prince Eugene of Savoy, who averred that a strong military and a rich treasury were more important than mere signatures. He left behind a weakened and impoverished state due to the War of the Polish Succession and the Russo-Turkish War. Moreover, upon his death, Prussia and France all repudiated the sanction they had recognised during his lifetime. Frederick II of Prussia promptly invaded and took the affluent Habsburg province of Silesia in the seven-year conflict known as the War of the Austrian Succession.
In defiance of the grave situation, she managed to secure the vital support of the Hungarians for the war effort. Over the course of the war, despite the loss of Silesia and a few minor territories in Italy, Maria Theresa defended her rule over most of the Habsburg empire. Maria Theresa unsuccessfully tried to reconquer Silesia during the Seven Years' War. Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, had eleven daughters, including the Queen of France, the Queen of Naples and Sicily, the Duchess of Parma, five sons, including two Holy Roman Emperors, Joseph II and Leopold II. Of the sixteen children, ten survived to adulthood. Though she was expected to cede power to Francis and Joseph, both of whom were her co-rulers in Austria and Bohemia, Maria Theresa was the absolute sovereign who ruled with the counsel of her advisers. Maria Theresa promulgated institutional and educational reforms, with the assistance of Wenzel Anton of Kaunitz-Rietberg, Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz and Gerard van Swieten.
She promoted commerce and the development of agriculture, reorganised Austria's ramshackle military, all of which strengthened Austria's international standing. However, she despised the Jews and the Protestants, on certain occasions she ordered their expulsion to remote parts of the realm, she advocated for the state church and refused to allow religious pluralism. Her regime was criticized as intolerant by some contemporaries; the second and eldest surviving child of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI and Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Archduchess Maria Theresa was born on 13 May 1717 in Vienna, a year after the death of her elder brother, Archduke Leopold, was baptised on that same evening. The dowager empresses, her aunt Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg and grandmother Eleonor Magdalene of Neuburg, were her godmothers. Most descriptions of her baptism stress that the infant was carried ahead of her cousins, Maria Josepha and Maria Amalia, the daughters of Charles VI's elder brother and predecessor, Joseph I, before the eyes of their mother, Wilhelmine Amalia.
It was clear that Maria Theresa would outrank them though their grandfather, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, had his sons sign the Mutual Pact of Succession, which gave precedence to the daughters of the elder brother. Her father was the only surviving male member of the House of Habsburg and hoped for a son who would prevent the extinction of his dynasty and succeed him. Thus, the birth of Maria Theresa was the people of Vienna. Maria Theresa replaced Maria Josepha as heir presumptive to the Habsburg realms the moment she was born. Charles sought the other European powers' approval for disinheriting his nieces, they exacted harsh terms: in the Treaty of Vienna, Great Britain demanded that Austria abolish the Ostend Company in return for its recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction. In total, Great Britain, Saxony, United Provinces, Prussia, Denmark, Sardinia and the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire recognised the sanction. France, Saxony and Prussia reneged. Little more than a year after her birth, Maria Theresa was joined by a sister, Maria Anna, another one, named Maria Amalia, was born in 1724.
The portraits of the imperial family show that Maria Theresa resembled Elisabeth Christine and Maria Anna. The Prussian ambassador noted that she had large blue eyes, fair hair with a slight tinge of red, a wide mouth and a notably strong body. Unlike many other members of the House of Habsburg, neither Maria Theresa's parents nor her grandparents were related to each other. Maria Theresa was a reserved child who enjoyed singing and archery, she was barred from horse riding by her father, but she would learn the basics for the sake of her Hungarian coronation ceremony. The imperial family staged opera productions conducted by Charles VI, in which she relished participating, her education was overseen by Jesuits. Contemporaries thought her Latin to be quite good, but in all else, the Jesuits did not educate her well, her spelling and punctuation were unconventional and she lacked the formal manner and speech which had characterised her Habsburg predecessors. Maria Theresa developed a close relationship with Countess Marie Karoline von Fuchs-Mollard
Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
The Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was a subdivision of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, whose history was characterised by numerous divisions and reunifications. Various dynastic lines of the House of Welf ruled Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806; as a result of the Congress of Vienna, its successor state, the Duchy of Brunswick, was created in 1815. After Otto the Child, grandchild of Henry the Lion, had been given the former allodial seat of his family by Emperor Frederick II on 21 August 1235 as an imperial enfeoffment under the name of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the dukedom was divided in 1267/1269 by his sons. Albert I was given the regions around Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Einbeck-Grubenhagen and Göttingen-Oberwald, he thus founded the Old House of Brunswick and laid the basis for what became the Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. His brother John founded the Old House of Lüneburg; the town of Brunswick remained under joint rule.
The area of Brunswick was further subdivided in the succeeding decades. For example, the lines of Grubenhagen and Göttingen were split for a while. In a similar way, in 1432 the estates between the Deister hills and the Leine river, gained in the meantime from the Middle House of Brunswick, split away to form the Principality of Calenberg. There were further divisions. In the meanwhile the dukes became weary of the constant disputes with the citizens of the town of Brunswick and, in 1432, moved their Residenz to the water castle of Wolfenbüttel, which lay in a marshy depression of the river Oker about 12 kilometres south of Brunswick; the castle built here for the Brunswick-Lüneburg dukes - together with the ducal chancery, the consistory, the courts and the archives - became the nerve centre of a giant region, from which the Wolfenbüttel-Brunswick part of the overall dukedom was ruled. For a long time it governed the principalities of Calenberg-Göttingen and Grubenhagen, the Prince-Bishopric of Halberstadt, large parts of the Prince-Bishopric of Hildesheim, the counties of Hohnstein and Regenstein, the baronies of Klettenberg and Lohra and parts of Hoya on the Lower Weser.
The importance of this court was signified by the number of craftsmen needed. Hundreds of timber-framed buildings were built for the court, for its citizens and for ducal facilities randomly designed to ducal requirements and for fire protection. In the heyday of the town's development its districts were named after various dukes: the Auguststadt in the west, the Juliusstadt in the east and the Heinrichstadt. Following the twelfth division of the duchy in 1495, whereby the Principality of Brunswick-Calenberg-Göttingen was re-divided into its component territories, Duke Henry the Elder was given the land of Brunswick, to which the name of the new Residenz at Wolfenbüttel was added. From on the name of the principality became "Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel"; the reigns of dukes Henry the Younger and Henry Julius followed, under whose lordship the Residenz of Wolfenbüttel was expanded and the principality gained a Germany-wide standing. In 1500 Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel became part of the Lower Saxon Circle within the Holy Roman Empire.
From 1519 to 1523 the principality went to war with the principalities of Hildesheim and Lüneburg in the Hildesheim Diocesan Feud which, despite a resounding defeat in the Battle of Soltau resulted in large territorial gains accruing to Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. In the Thirty Years War Wolfenbüttel was the strongest fortress in North Germany, but survived the war damaged; the Wolfenbüttel line died out during the war. In 1571 the castle and village of Calvörde became part of the principality thanks to Duke Julius of Brunswick. In 1635 Duke Augustus the Younger, from the collateral line of Lüneburg-Dannenberg, took over the reins of power in the principality and founded the New House of Brunswick. Under his rule Wolfenbüttel reached its cultural zenith. One of his greatest achievements was the building of the Wolfenbüttel Library, the largest in Europe in its day. In 1671 an old pipe dream of the House of Welf dukes came true when the joint armies of the different dynastic lines were able to capture the town of Brunswick and add it to their domain.
In 1735 when the dynastic line died out another collateral line emerged: the Brunswick-Bevern line founded in 1666. In 1753/1754 the residence of the dukes of Wolfenbüttel returned to Brunswick, to the newly built Brunswick Palace; the town thus lost the independence. In the process, the duke followed the trend and did not interfere with anything, including work on the new castle, begun in 1718 by Hermann Korb on the Grauer Hof, still not finished; the effect on Wolfenbüttel was catastrophic, as can be seen from the timber-framed houses built on. 4,000 townsfolk followed the ducal family and Wolfenbüttel's population sank from 12,000 to 7,000. Only the archives, the ecclesiastical office and the library remained as a link to earlier times. From Brunswick there were jibes that Wolfenbüttel had deteriorated into a "widows' residence"; the extensive gardens in front of the three town gates were leased to the former gardeners as an emphyteusis. As a consequence jam factories were established which were characteristic of Wolfenbüttel until the 20th century.
In front of the Herzogtor the number of gardens grew, until they reached the Lechlum Wood. Its southern edge was graced by the little Lustschloss
Frederick Francis of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
In progress Frederick Francis of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was Frederick the Great's brother-in-law. His name is listed on the Equestrian statue of Frederick the Great Francis was the youngest of 13 children of Ferdinand Albert II, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Antoinette Amalie. On 14 October 1758, the Austrians, commanded by Daun, surprised the Prussians with a pre-dawn assault on the sleeping camp. James Keith, Frederick's friend and an able general, had organized a defense of the village while Frederick could withdraw from Hochkirch; this successful action repulsed the Austrian advance, giving Frederick hope that the situation could be won. After Keith himself was shot and killed, Frederick still thought the battle could be retrieved and returned to the rear echelons to take command. Finding his infantry milling about in the village after Keith was killed, Frederick ordered the infantry to advance, sending reinforcements commanded by his brother-in-law with them; as Francis approached the village, Austrian cannon-fire sheared his head off his shoulders.
His troops, demoralized by this sight, faltered
Germany
Germany the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north and the Czech Republic to the east and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to the west. Germany includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,386 square kilometres, has a temperate seasonal climate. With 83 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous state of Europe after Russia, the most populous state lying in Europe, as well as the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is a decentralized country, its capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while Frankfurt serves as its financial capital and has the country's busiest airport. Germany's largest urban area is the Ruhr, with its main centres of Essen; the country's other major cities are Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Bremen and Nuremberg. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity.
A region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation. After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation was formed in 1815; the German revolutions of 1848–49 resulted in the Frankfurt Parliament establishing major democratic rights. In 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the revolution of 1918–19, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic; the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to the establishment of a dictatorship, the annexation of Austria, World War II, the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, Austria was re-established as an independent country and two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American and French occupation zones, East Germany, formed from the Soviet occupation zone.
Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990. Today, the sovereign state of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic led by a chancellor, it is a great power with a strong economy. As a global leader in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the world's third-largest exporter and importer of goods; as a developed country with a high standard of living, it upholds a social security and universal health care system, environmental protection, a tuition-free university education. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the European Union in 1993, it is part of the Schengen Area and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G7, the G20, the OECD. Known for its rich cultural history, Germany has been continuously the home of influential and successful artists, musicians, film people, entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors.
Germany has a large number of World Heritage sites and is among the top tourism destinations in the world. The English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine; the German term Deutschland diutisciu land is derived from deutsch, descended from Old High German diutisc "popular" used to distinguish the language of the common people from Latin and its Romance descendants. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz "popular", derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- "people", from which the word Teutons originates; the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a coal mine in Schöningen between 1994 and 1998 where eight 380,000-year-old wooden javelins of 1.82 to 2.25 m length were unearthed. The Neander Valley was the location where the first non-modern human fossil was discovered.
The Neanderthal 1 fossils are known to be 40,000 years old. Evidence of modern humans dated, has been found in caves in the Swabian Jura near Ulm; the finds included 42,000-year-old bird bone and mammoth ivory flutes which are the oldest musical instruments found, the 40,000-year-old Ice Age Lion Man, the oldest uncontested figurative art discovered, the 35,000-year-old Venus of Hohle Fels, the oldest uncontested human figurative art discovered. The Nebra sky disk is a bronze artefact created during the European Bronze Age attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, it is part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme. The Germanic tribes are thought to date from the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From southern Scandinavia and north Germany, they expanded south and west from the 1st century BC, coming into contact with the Celtic tribes of Gaul as well
Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern was queen of Denmark and Norway between 1752 and 1766, second consort of king Frederick V of Denmark and Norway, mother of the prince-regent Hereditary Prince Frederick of Denmark and Norway and herself de facto regent 1772–1784. King Christian VIII of Denmark descends from her. Born as daughter of Ferdinand Albert II, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Antoinette of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, she held the rank of a Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel with the style Princess. Juliana Maria was given the simple but strict upbringing usual at many of the smaller princely German courts; as a child, she appears to have stuttered. The marriage between Juliana Maria and Frederick was arranged by Count Moltke, who thought it best that the king remarried as soon as possible, in an attempt of stabilizing his behavior. In 1751-52 the king had a wish to marry Moltke's own daughter, maid-of-honor Catharine Sophie Wilhelmine Moltke, a match Moltke did not wish and prevented by having her married.
The king was unwilling to remarry a foreign princess, unless it was with an English princess, none of whom were available at the time. However, after having seen the portrait of Juliana Maria, after having made some additional investigations and met with satisfying answers, he expressed himself willing to marry her. On 8 July 1752 at Frederiksborg Palace, Juliana Maria married King Frederick V of Denmark, just over six months after the death of his first wife Louise of Great Britain, was crowned the same day, she was given a household headed by queen Louise's old chamberlain Carl Juel and head lady-in-waiting Christiane Henriette Louise Juel. The wedding was celebrated by a number of court festivities on the royal palaces around North Zealand during the following summer months, but "among the common men the mood was more still, as this seems to them to be so sudden after the mourning of queen Louise". Queen Juliana Maria was described as shy and somewhat stuttering when first introduced to the Danish royal court as its new queen.
Juliana Maria was described as good-looking and sensible, but the marriage was not popular in Denmark, where it was considered to have taken place too soon after the death of her predecessor, the popular queen Louise, it was a difficult task for her to replace her popular predecessor. Despite the constant infidelity of King Frederick V, she was regarded to have illustrated an ideal of a spousal duty, accepting his infidelity without complaint and nursing him during his illnesses, such as during his illness in 1760 and his final illness in 1765-66, which ended in his death, she nursed him in parallel with his long-term-mistress Charlotte Amalie Winge. She noted each day of his progressing illness in her diary, upon his death, she referred to him as "le meilleur des rois", she had several stepchildren by marriage. She did exchange visits with them, referred to her stepchildren as "My daughters", "My son", "My children" and "The Good Children", her diaries are full with notations of how she spent time with them.
On 4 August 1760, for example, she noted "The dear crown prince visited Hirschholm for the first time after his illness", on 8 October 1766, she accompanied her stepdaughter Sophia Magdalena of Denmark when she departed for Sweden for her wedding to the Swedish crown prince: "The queen and I left for Kronborg, to which Sophie Magdalene and the rest of the family had arrived the previous day, eleven o'clock, the good child embarked and sailed across the water, the king, the queen and the family returned to Fredensborg". Her relationship with her mother-in-law Queen Dowager Sophie Magdalene, was a close one, the two queens visited each other and spent time together. While she had no influence upon the upbringing of her stepchildren, she was given much freedom in the education of her own son, had two Danes in succession, J. Schielderup Sneedorff and Guldberg, appointed governors responsible for the tutelage of her son, Hereditary Prince Frederick, who thereby became the first Danish prince in generations to speak the Danish language as his mother tongue.
Her selection of Tyge Rothe, J. S. Sneedorff and O. H. Guldberg were to have great significance on: her son's tutors were all members of the Danish patriotic movement, Guldberg is known to have influenced her to a point where she became the leader of this court fraction during her time as queen dowager. While she lacked all influence in politics, as her own son progressed in age, she came to the conclusion that he would be more suitable as ruler than her stepson, the crown prince. Juliana Maria was not mentioned much during her years as queen consort, it was noted that she lived a quiet life devoting herself to domestic duties and family life and considered honorable and virtuous but insignificant. While Frederick V was notorious for his drunken parties and debauched life style, these parties did not take place at court, the court life of Juliana Maria was by contrast described as correct, her diary as queen describe a number of days dominated by a quiet family life exchanging visits with members of the royal family, illustrated by one line: "Everything was as yesterday."
She did her best to accustom herself to Denmark and make herself popular as queen, although she never mastered the Danish language, s
Dorothea of Anhalt-Zerbst
Dorothea von Anhalt-Zerbst was a member of the House of Askanier and a princess of Anhalt-Zerbst and by marriage Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Dorothea was the daughter of Prince Rudolf of Anhalt-Zerbst from his first marriage to Dorothea Hedwig, daughter of the Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. On 26 October 1623 she married in Zerbst with Duke August the Younger of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel; this was August's second marriage. His first marriage had remained childless, like that of his brother Julius Ernest. With the birth of her sons, Dorothea thus became the ancestress of the "New House of Brunswick", which became extinct in 1873; the family tree of the Duchess, as of 1617, can still be found in the library in Wolfenbüttel. From her marriage with Augustus, Dorothy had the following children: Henry August Rudolph August, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttelmarried firstly, in 1650 Countess Christiane Elisabeth of Barby married secondly, in 1681 Rosine Elisabeth Menthe Sibylle Ursula married in 1663 Duke Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Glücksburg Klara Auguste married in 1653 Duke Frederick of Württemberg-Neuenstadt Anton Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttelmarried in 1656 princess Elisabeth Juliane of Schleswig-Holstein-Norburg Anhalt Askanier William Havemann: History of the territories Brunswick and Lüneburg, Dieterich, 1855, p. 712 Edward Vehse: History of the courts of the House of Brunswick in Germany and England, Hoffmann und Campe, 1853, p. 164
