Count of Merenberg
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Count of Merenberg (German: Graf von Merenberg) is the title bestowed upon the wife and the male-line descendants of the morganatic marriage (1868) of Prince Nikolaus Wilhelm of Nassau-Weilburg (1832-1905) and Natalia Alexandrovna Pushkina (1836-1913), former wife without issue of Russian General Mikhail Leontievich von Dubelt.
Nikolaus was a son of Wilhelm, Duke of Nassau and his second wife, Pauline of Württemberg. He was also a younger half-brother of Adolphe, last duke of Nassau, and later Grand Duke of Luxembourg. Natalia was a daughter of Russian novelist Alexander Pushkin and his wife Natalya Goncharova, and therefore, through her father, is a descendant of Peter the Great's African protégé, Abram Petrovich Gannibal as well as the Cossac leader Prince Petro Doroshenko. Natalia was created Countess of Merenberg as she was not allowed to use her husband's titles and rank.
[edit] Members of family
Their surviving children were:
- Countess Sophie of Merenberg (1868-1927). In 1891, she married Grand Duke Michael Mihailovich of Russia (1861-1929). As this marriage was also deemed morganatic, she was not allowed to use her husband's titles and rank. Instead she was created Countess de Torby. Her issue survives, among them the current Marquess of Milford Haven.
- Countess Alexandra of Merenberg (1869-1950). She married don Massimo de Elia (d. 1929).
- Georg Nikolaus, Count of Merenberg (1871-1948). He had two sons (of whom the elder died young), and one daughter from his first marriage (1895) with Princess Olga Alexandrovna Yurievskaya (1873-1925), a morganatic daughter of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. Count Georg Nikolaus' male line went extinct in 1965 with the death of his surviving son Georg Michael Alexander, 3rd Count of Merenberg (1897-1965, married commoners). Georg Nikolaus' issue through female lines survives.
The title is in no current use, as the persons entitled to it have all deceased, some decades ago.
[edit] Prevented succession to Nassau inheritance
When Duke Nikolaus Wilhelm died in 1905, his nephew Grand Duke William IV of Luxembourg (or Guillaume IV) became the last surviving agnate of the House of Nassau. If Nikolaus Wilhelm's children had been deemed dynastic, then his son Georg Nickolaus Count of Merenberg, would have succeeded as Head of the House of Nassau upon William IV's death. Georg Nickolaus would have thus become the reigning Grand Duke of Luxembourg.
However, his morganatic birth was deemed unsurmountable. In 1907, as Head of the House of Nassau, William IV, declared the Counts of Merenberg non-dynastic in regard to the Nassau Family Pact. This excluded the family from succession to Luxembourg's throne.
Instead, Williams IV's daughter Marie-Adélaïde succeeded her father to become Luxembourg's first female monarch in 1912. She was in turn succeeded by her sister Charlotte, whose descendants reign to the present day.
The heads of the house of Merenberg after 1912 were:
- Georg Nikolaus (1912-48)
- Georg Michael Alexander (1948-65)
It is unclear what would have happened to the succession after 1965, had they inherited the Nassau patrimony.
