Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg

Adolphe I, Grand Duke of Luxembourg (Adolf Wilhelm August Karl Friedrich) (Biebrich, 24 July 1817 – Hohenburg Castle, 17 November 1905) was the last Duke of Nassau, and the fourth Grand Duke of Luxembourg.

Biography

He was a son of William, Duke of Nassau (1792–1839) and his first wife Princess Louise of Saxe-Hildburghausen. Adolphe's half-sister, Sophia of Nassau, married King Oscar II of Sweden.

Adolph became Duke of Nassau on 20 August/30 August 1839, after the death of his father. He supported the Austrian Empire in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. After Austria's defeat, Nassau was annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia and he lost his throne on 20 September 1866.

In 1879, Adolphe's niece Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, the daughter of another of his half-sisters, married her distant relative King William III of the Netherlands. In 1890, their only daughter Wilhelmina succeeded on his death without surviving male issue to the Dutch throne, but was excluded from the succession to Luxembourg by the Salic Law. The Grand Duchy, which had been linked to the Netherlands since 1815, passed to the Dutch royal family's distant relative - the dispossessed Duke Adolphe - on 23 November 1890, in accordance with the Nassau Family Pact. The Grand Dukes of Luxembourg are still descendants of Adolphe, although cognatically, since the very independence of the Grand-Duchy required an alteration of the succession laws at the absence of male heirs.

On 31 January 1844, Adolphe married firstly in St. Petersburg Grand Duchess Elizabeth Mikhailovna of Russia, niece of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia. She died less than a year afterwards in childbirth with a stillborn daughter. She was aged 19 then. Adolphe built the Russian Orthodox Church of Saint Elizabeth 1847 to 1855 as her funeral church.

On 23 April 1851, he remarried in Dessau Princess Adelheid-Marie of Anhalt-Dessau (Dessau, 25 December 1833 – Schloss Königstein, 24 November 1916), a daughter of Friedrich, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau. They had five children, of whom only two lived to the age of eighteen and to become prince and princess of Luxembourg:

• William IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg (1852–1912)
• Prince Friedrich Paul Wilhelm of Nassau (Biebrich, 23 September 1854 – Biebrich, 23 October 1855)
• Princess Marie Bathildis of Nassau (Biebrich, 14 November 1857 – Biebrich, 28 December 1857)
• Prince Franz Joseph Wilhelm of Nassau (Biebrich, 30 January 1859 – Vienna, 2 April 1875)
• Princess Hilda Charlotte Wilhelmine (1864–1952), married HRH Friedrich II, Grand Duke of Baden.

In 1892, Grand Duke Adolphe conferred the hereditary title Count of Wisborg on his Swedish nephew, Oscar, who had lost his Swedish titles after marrying without his father's approval. Wisborg (also spelled Visborg) was the old castle in the city of Visby within Prince Oscar's lost Dukedom of Gotland, but the title itself was created in the nobility of Luxembourg.

Adelsverein

On April 20, 1842, the Adelsverein, Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas, was organized in the Grand Duke's castle at Biebrich on the Rhine. He was named the Protector of the organization. The Verein was responsible for the large emigration of Germans to Texas in the 19th Century, and on January 9, 1843, established the 4,428 acre Nassau Plantation in Fayette County, Texas and named it after the Grand Duke.^[1][2]

Titles an styles

• 24 July 1817 – 20 August 1839: His Highness The Hereditary Prince of Nassau^[3]
• 20 August 1839 – 20 September 1866: His Highness The Duke of Nassau^[3]
• 20 September 1866 – 23 November 1890: His Highness Adolphe, Duke of Nassau
• 23 November 1890 – 17 November 1905: His Royal Highness The Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Duke of Nassau^[4]

Ancestors

References

External links

• Grand-Ducal House of Luxembourg and Ducal House of Nassau
• Ducal House of Nassau
• Imperial House of Russia
• Ducal House of Anhalt-Dessau