September 12, 1837: Birth of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine.

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Alexander II of Russia, Alice of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, Austro-Prussian War, German Confederation, Ludwig IV of Hesse and by Rhine, Morganatic Marriage, Nicholas II of Russia, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

Ludwig IV (September 12, 1837 – March 13, 1892) was the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, reigning from June 13, 1877 until his death. Through his own and his children’s marriages he was connected to the British Royal Family, to the Imperial House of Russia and to other reigning dynasties of Europe.

Early life

Ludwig was born at the Prinz-Karl-Palais in Darmstadt, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine in the German Confederation, the first son and child of Prince Charles of Hesse and by Rhine (April 23, 1809 – March 20, 1877) and Princess Elisabeth of Prussia (June 18, 1815 – March 21, 1885), granddaughter of King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia.

Prince Charles’ older brother was Ludwig III (1806-1877), the reigning Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, who had been married to his first wife since 1833. Ludwig III’s first wife was Princess Mathilde Caroline of Bavaria, eldest daughter of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen (1792–1854), the daughter of Friedrich, Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen. Their wedding was the occasion of the first-ever Oktoberfest.

The marriage of Ludwig III of Hesse and by Rhine and Princess Mathilde Caroline of Bavaria, produced no children. Princess Mathilde Caroline died in 1862, and in 1868 the Grand Duke remarried, morganatically, to Magdalene Appel who was created Baroness of Hochstädten. This union also did not produce children either. Also, since the union was morganatic any children would not have had succession rights. Without legitimate children Prince Ludwig was from birth second-in-line to the grand ducal throne, after his father.

First marriage

On July 1, 1862, Ludwig married Princess Alice, a daughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. On the day of the wedding, the Queen issued a royal warrant granting her new son-in-law the style of Royal Highness in the United Kingdom. The Queen also subsequently made Prince Ludwig a knight of the Order of the Garter.

Although an arranged marriage orchestrated by the bride’s father Albert, Prince Consort, the couple did have a brief period of courtship before betrothal and they wed willingly, even after the death of the Prince Consort left Queen Victoria in a protracted state of grief that cast a pall over the nuptials.

Becoming parents in less than a year following their marriage, the young royal couple found themselves strapped financially to maintain the lifestyle expected of their rank. Princess Alice’s interest in social services, scientific development, hands-on child-rearing, charity and intellectual stimulation were not shared by Ludwig, although dutiful and benevolent, was bluff in manner and conventional in his pursuits. The death of the younger of their two sons, Friedrich (Frittie), who was afflicted with hemophilia and suffered a fatal fall from a palace window before his third birthday in 1873, combined with the wearying war relief duties Alice had undertaken in 1870, evoked a crisis of spiritual faith for the princess in which her husband does not appear to have shared.

Military career

During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Ludwig the Hessian cavalry in support of the Austrian side. The Austrians were defeated in the War, and the Hessian grand duchy was in jeopardy of being awarded as the spoils of war to victorious Prussia, which annexed some of Austria’s other allies (Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau). Hesse-Darmstadt appears to have been spared this fate only by a cession of territory and the close dynastic kinship between its ruler and the Emperor of Russia (Alexander II’s consort, Empress Maria Alexandrovna, was the sister of Hesse’s Grand Duke Ludwig III and of Prince Charles).

In the Franco-Prussian War provoked by Bismarck’s manipulation of the Ems telegram in 1870, Hesse and by Rhine this time found itself a winning ally of Prussia’s, and Prince Ludwig was credited with courageous military service, especially at the Battle of Gravelotte, which also afforded him the opportunity of mending the previous war’s grievances with the House of Hohenzollern by fighting on the same side as his brother-in-law and future emperor, Prince Friedrich of Prussia. He had good relationship with Prince Friedrich of Prussia and his wife Victoria, the Princess Royal, all of his lifetime. He also visited him on his deathbed in 1888.

Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine

In March 1877, Ludwig became heir presumptive to the Hessian throne when his father died and, less than three months later, found himself as the reigning grand duke upon the demise of his uncle, Ludwig III.

A year and a half later, however, Grand Duke Ludwig IV was stricken with diphtheria along with most of his immediate family. He recovered; but his four-year-old daughter Marie succumbed, along with his wife of 16 years. From then on, he reigned and raised his five surviving children alone. His daughter Alix married Emperor Nicholas II of Russia two years after his death in 1894.

Second marriage

The marriage of Princess Beatrice, youngest daughter of Queen Victoria was problematic. The Queen was so set against her youngest daughter marrying that she refused to discuss the possibility. Nevertheless, many suitors were put forward, including Louis Napoléon, Prince Imperial, the son of the exiled Emperor Napoleon III of France, and Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, the widower of Beatrice’s older sister Alice.

Grand Duchess Alice having died in 1878, Ludwig IV contracted a morganatic marriage on April 30, 1884 in Darmstadt (on the eve of the wedding of his eldest daughter, for which Queen Victoria and other relatives of his first wife were gathered in the Hessian capital) with Countess Alexandrine Hutten-Czapska (September 13, 1854 – May 8, 1941), daughter of Count Adam Hutten-Czapski and Countess Marianna Rzewuska.

Countess Alexandrine was the former wife of Aleksander von Kolemin, the Russian chargé d’affaires in Darmstadt. But the couple, facing objections from the Grand Duke’s in-laws, separated within a week and the marriage was annulled within three months. As a compensation, she received the title Countess von Romrod on May 13, 1884 and a financial compensation. Alexandrine later married for the third time to Basil von Bacheracht.

Death

Grand Duke Ludwig IV died on March 13, 1892, of a heart attack in the New Palace in Darmstadt and was succeeded by his son, Ernst Ludwig. After his second marriage, he was largely excluded from his first wife’s British royal family, but his funeral was attended by Victoria, the Empress Dowager of Germany, by the Dowager Duchess of Albany, and by the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, by the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, by the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augusterburg and by the Duke and Duchess of Argyll. It was not attended by his other two surviving in-laws, the Prince and Princess of Wales or by Queen Victoria due to her poor health. His remains are buried at Rosenhöhe, the mausoleum for the Grand Ducal House outside of Darmstadt

The House of Bismarck Part I

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German Confederation, German Empire, German mediatisation, High Nobility, Hochadel, Holy Roman Empire, House of Bismarck, Lower Nibility, Niederer Adel, Otto von Bismark, Uradel

The House of Bismarck Part I

The House of Bismarck is a German noble family that rose to prominence in the 19th century, largely through the achievements of the statesman Otto von Bismarck. He was granted a hereditary comital title in 1865, the hereditary title of Prince of Bismarck in 1871, and the non-hereditary title of Duke of Lauenburg in 1890. Several of Otto von Bismarck’s descendants, notably his elder son Herbert, Prince von Bismarck, were also politicians.

Before I delve into the history of the The House of Bismarck I would like address the complex subject of the German Nobility. It will be simplified here.

The German nobility (German: deutscher Adel) and royalty were status groups which until 1919 enjoyed certain privileges relative to other people under the laws and customs in the German-speaking area.

Historically German entities which recognized or conferred nobility included the Holy Roman Empire (962–1806), the German Confederation (1814–1866) and the German Empire (1871–1918). All legal privileges and immunities of the royalty and nobility (appertaining to an individual, a family or any heirs) were officially abolished in 1919 by the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), and nobility is no longer conferred or recognized by the Federal Republic of Germany.

In Germany, nobility and titles pertaining to it were recognised or bestowed upon individuals by emperors, kings and lesser ruling Royals, and were then inherited by the legitimate, male-line descendants of the ennobled person. Families that had been considered noble as early as pre-1400s Germany (i.e., the Uradel or ancient nobility) were usually eventually recognised by a sovereign, confirming their entitlement to whatever legal privileges nobles enjoyed in that sovereign’s realm.

In the evolution of noble titles in Germany two separate classes of nobles developed. Uradel (German for ancient nobility) is a genealogical term introduced in late 18th-century Germany to distinguish those families whose noble rank can be traced to the 14th century or earlier. The term is in juxtaposition of the word Briefadel, a term used for titles of nobility created in the early modern period or modern history by letters patent. Uradel and Briefadel families are generally further divided into the categories adlig (untitled and titled nobility), freiherrlich (baronial), gräflich (comital), and fürstlich (royal, princely and ducal) houses.

The Uradel were further divided into the Hochadel (“upper nobility”, or “high nobility”) and the Niederer Adel (“lower nobility”). here is a definition of each class.

Hochadel

The Hochadel were those noble houses which ruled sovereign states within the Holy Roman Empire and later, in the German Confederation and the German Empire. They were considered Royalty; the heads of these families were entitled to be addressed by some form of “Majesty” or “Highness”. These were the families of kings (Bavaria, Hanover, Prussia, Saxony, and Württemberg), grand dukes (Baden, Hesse and by Rhine, Luxembourg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Oldenburg and Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach), reigning dukes (Anhalt, Brunswick, Schleswig-Holstein, Nassau, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Saxe-Meiningen), and reigning princes (Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Liechtenstein, Lippe, Reuss, Schaumburg-Lippe, Schwarzburg, and Waldeck-Pyrmont).

The Hochadel also included the Empire’s formerly quasi-sovereign families whose domains had been mediatised#(see below) within the German Confederation by 1815, yet preserved the legal right to continue royal intermarriage with still-reigning dynasties (Ebenbürtigkeit). These quasi-sovereign families comprised mostly princely and comital families, but included a few dukes also of Belgian and Dutch origin (Arenberg, Croÿ, Looz-Corswarem). Information on these families constituted the second section of Justus Perthes’ entries on reigning, princely, and ducal families in the Almanach de Gotha.

During the unification of Germany, mainly from 1866 to 1871, the states of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (in 1850), Schleswig-Holstein and Nassau were absorbed into Prussia.

In addition, the ruling families of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen were accorded the dynastic rights of a cadet branch of the Royal House of Prussia after yielding sovereignty to their royal kinsmen. The exiled heirs to Hanover and Nassau eventually regained sovereignty by being allowed to inherit, respectively, the crowns of Brunswick (1914) and Luxembourg (1890).

Niederer Adel

Nobility that held legal privileges until 1918 greater than those enjoyed by commoners, but less than those enjoyed by the Hochadel, were considered part of the lower nobility or Niederer Adel. Most were untitled, only making use of the particle von in their surnames. Higher-ranking noble families of the Niederer Adel bore such hereditary titles as Ritter (knight), Freiherr (or baron) and Graf. Although most German counts belonged officially to the lower nobility, those who were mediatised belonged to the Hochadel, the heads of their families being entitled to be addressed as Erlaucht (“Illustrious Highness”), rather than simply as Hochgeboren (“High-born”).

There were also some German noble families, especially in Austria, Prussia and Bavaria, whose head bore the titles of Fürst (prince) or Herzog (duke); however, never having exercised a degree of sovereignty, they were accounted members of the lower nobility (e.g., Blücher, Pless, Wrede). Bismarck is such an example of a House belonging to the Lower Nobility and never exercised a degree of sovereignty.

# German mediatisation was the major territorial restructuring that took place between 1802 and 1814 in Germany and the surrounding region by means of the mass mediatisation and secularization of a large number of Imperial Estates. Most ecclesiastical principalities, free imperial cities, secular principalities, and other minor self-ruling entities of the Holy Roman Empire lost their independent status and were absorbed into the remaining states. By the end of the mediatisation process, the number of German states had been reduced from almost 300 to just 39. Despite losing sovereignty the former ruling houses of these states were still considered Hochadel under laws adopted by the German Empire.

Survival of Monarchies: Prussia part III

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Baden, Bavaria, Confederation of the Rhine, Congress of Vienna, German Confederation, Germany, Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon, Prussia

After the fall of the Holy Roman Empire the question of German unity became inevitable. But how to unify such a patchwork quilt of nation states? Prior to the end of the empire some states within its boundaries were elevated in rank. Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg became Kingdoms under the influence of Napoleon. Baden became a Grand Duchy and after the Napoleonic wars, Hanover also became a kingdom. The real question was would it be Prussia or Austria to gain the upper hand and unit Germany under their authority?

From 1806 until 1813 the German States formed the Confederation of the Rhine without the inclusion of Austria and Prussia. The Confederation was to be run by common constitutional bodies, but the individual states wanted unlimited sovereignty. This loose confederation suffered some of the same problems the old Holy Roman Empire suffered from and that is there was not a strong central government.

The Holy Roman Emperor had at its head an Emperor. The Confederation, since it was not considered an empire was ruled by Karl Theodor von Dalberg, the former Arch Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire and he carried the of a Prince-Primate of the confederation. This made him President of the College of Kings and presided over the Diet of the Confederation, designed to be a parliament-like body though it never actually assembled. The President of the Council of the Princes was held the Prince oef Nassau-e. At its heart the Confederation was a conservative minded military alliance. As mentioned, this body was under the influence of Napoleon who elevated many of the states to Kingdom status. During its short existence the members of the confederation found themselves more subordinated to Napoleon than they had been to the Habsburgs.

The Confederation of the Rhine collapsed in 1813, with the aftermath of Napoleon’s failed campaign against the Russian Empire. Many of its members changed sides after the Battle of Leipzig, when it became apparent Napoleon would lose the War of the Sixth Coalition. In 1814 the major European powers gathered in Vienna for the Congress of Vienna which redrew the map of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. German unity did not come at this juncture but instead we saw the creation of the German Confederation with both Austria and Prussia included. The Habsburg Emperor of Austria was its nominal head, holding the title of President of the Confederation.

This Confederation, which was basically the old Holy Roman Empire in all but name, lasted until 1866 when Prussia began to consolidate its power among the German states and began the path of unification without Austria. Prior to that, in 1848, there was an attempt to create a more liberal unified German Empire. That is what we will look at in depth next week.