Countess Magdalena of Waldeck

Countess Magdalena of Waldeck (1558 – August 1599) was a daughter of Philip IV of Waldeck-Wildungen (1493–1574) and his wife, Jutta of Isenburg (d. 1564).

Marriages and issue

First marriage

On 2 or 6 February 1576, she married Count Philip Louis I of Hanau-Münzenberg. This marriage has some interesting features for its time. First, it seems to have been a love match. In the medieval view of nobility, Magdalene was ranked lower than Philip. Politically, the marriage could also represent a conscious withdrawal on her groom's part from the politically dominant influence of his guardian, Count John VI of Nassau-Dillenburg,^[1] who would have preferred that Philip Louis marry a member of the Nassau family. Her own family was more oriented toward the Landgraviate of Hesse and the Archbishopric of Cologne.

Magdalena and Philip Louis had four children:

1. Philip Louis II (* November 18, 1576; † 9 August 1612)
2. Juliane (born: 13 October 1577; died: 2 December 1577), buried in the choir of the St. Mary's Church in Hanau
3. William (born: 26 August 1578; died: 14 June 1579), also buried in the choir of St. Mary's Church in Hanau
4. Albert of Hanau-Münzenberg-Schwarzenfels (born: 12 November 1579; died: 19 December 1635)

Second marriage

On 24 November 1581,^[2] she married Count John VII of Nassau-Siegen. Magdalena took up the Calvinist confession of her second husband. She moved with him to Dillenburg, where they took in the two surviving children from her first marriage. This led to Philip Louis II being raised as a Calvinist. When Philip Louis II became Count of the Hanau-Münzenberg in 1595, he made Calvinism the established faith there, the so-called "second Reformation" of the county.

Magdalena and John had the following children:

1. John Ernest (1582–1617)
2. John VIII the Younger (1583–1638)
3. Elizabeth (1584–1661), married Count Christian of Waldeck
4. Adolph (1586–1608)
5. Juliana (1587–1643) married Landgrave Maurice of Hesse-Kassel
6. Anna Maria (1589–1620), married Cont John Adolph of Daun-Falkenstein (1582–1623)
7. John Albert (1590–1593)
8. William (13 August 1592 — 18 July 1642), married to Christine of Erbach
9. Anna Johanna (1594–1636), married John Wolfart of Brederode (1599–1655)
10. Frederick Louis (1595–1600)
11. Magdalena (1596–1661)
12. John Frederick (born: 1597)

References

• Reinhard Dietrich: Die Landesverfassung in dem Hanauischen, in the series Hanauer Geschichtsblätter, issue 34, Hanau, 1996, ISBN 3-9801933-6-5.
• Jacob Christoph Carl Hoffmeister: Historisch-genealogisches Handbuch über alle Grafen und Fürsten von Waldeck und Pyrmont seit 1228, Kassel, 1883.
• Gerhard Menk: Philipp Ludwig I. von Hanau-Münzenberg (1553-1580). Bildungsgeschichte und Politik eines Reichsgrafen in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, in: Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte, vol. 32, 1982, p. 127–163.
• Georg Schmidt: Der Wetterauer Grafenverein, in the series Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Hessen, vol. 52, Marburg, 1989, ISBN 3-7708-0928-9.
• Reinhard Suchier: Genealogie des Hanauer Grafenhauses, in: Festschrift des Hanauer Geschichtsvereins zu seiner fünfzigjährigen Jubelfeier am 27. August 1894, Hanau, 1894.
• Johann Adolf Theodor Ludwig Varnhagen: Grundlage der Waldeckischen Landes- und Regentengeschichte, Arolsen, 1853.
• Ernst J. Zimmermann: Hanau Stadt und Land, 3rd ed., Hanau, 1919, reprinted 1978.
• This page is a translation of its German equivalent.

Footnotes

1. ^ vgl. Menk, S. 154f u. G. Schmidt, S. 548
2. ^ Varnhagen, vol. 2, p. 71.