Princess Dorothea Sophie of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg
Princess Dorothea of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg | |
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Elisabeth Sophie, Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen Prince Christian Ludwig | |
House | Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg |
Father | Philip, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg |
Mother | Sophie Hedwig of Saxe-Lauenburg |
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Princess Dorothea of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (28 September 1636 – 6 August 1689), was
Biography
Dorothea was born in
Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg
In 1653, Dorothea married Christian Louis, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, brother-in-law of King Frederick III of Denmark. They lived at Celle Castle. Her husband was considered hot-tempered and a drunkard. The marriage was childless. In 1665, her first spouse died, and she moved to Herzberg Castle as a widow's seat while her brother-in-law George William followed him as the reigning Duke of Luneburg in Celle.
Electress of Brandenburg
On 14 June 1668, she married again, at age 31, this time
Dorothea was a self-confident, brave and enterprising woman. She accompanied her husband on all his campaigns, slept on the battlefields and, as an equal, had a great influence on his politics. He discussed all his plans for the state with her. In that respect she resembled his first wife
In 1670, she also received an area outside the gates of the then cities of Berlin and Cölln as a gift from her husband. From 1674, a new suburb was planned there, later named after her: Dorotheenstadt.[2] She had the site parceled out, leased and made substantial profits from the building plots. Dorothea is said to have planted the first tree for the new avenue called Unter den Linden in 1680, an avenue lined with linden trees within her settlement, which had become a kind of artificial island by digging a small canal that complemented the baroque city fortifications (the Berlin Fortress). The tree-lined promenade would later become the magnificent boulevard of Berlin. After the Edict of Potsdam, Huguenots, among others, settled in Dorotheenstadt. She founded a shipyard and a paper mill.[3]
In 1673, the Elector acquired the small Caputh Palace near Potsdam for her, where she had a rural manor house expanded and furnished into her pleasure palace. Today it is a museum of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg, whose exhibition provides information about the life and work of Dorothea. While she herself liked to reside in this small palace, she built a very representative palace complex in Schwedt for her sons.
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Caputh Palace
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Schwedt Palace
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Wildenbruch Castle
In 1676, she became the commander of her own regiment, and in 1678 and 1692 equipped two fleets for the
The suspicion that Dorothea worked towards a division of Brandenburg-Prussia in order to secure an income for her sons or even to cobble together states of their own for them;[4] this is regarded as refuted by historical scholarship, but spoiled her reputation for a long time. This negative perception is based on the fact that some publicists do not base their critical judgments on Dorothea on the primary sources, but on the centuries-old legends that are mainly based on publications after her death, especially by Karl Ludwig von Pöllnitz. Posthumously, the impression was wrongly given that she wanted to make an agreement with France, accepted a division of the country and thus called into question the rise of Prussia to become a great power. There is no question, however, that the Elector's eldest son and successor Frederick I of Prussia harbored at least corresponding fears about his stepmother.[5]
She survived her husband by a year and died in the spa town of Karlsbad in the then Kingdom of Bohemia. She is buried in Berlin Cathedral.
Issue
From her second marriage, Dorothea had the following children:
- Philip William (1669–1711),
- Marie Amalie (1670–1739) married:
- Charles of Mecklenburg-Güstrow, son of Gustav Adolph, Duke of Mecklenburg-Güstrow
- Maurice William, Duke of Saxe-Zeitz, son of Maurice, Duke of Saxe-Zeitz
- Albert Frederick (1672–1731),
- Charles Philip (1673–1695),
- Elisabeth Sofie (1674–1748), who married Christian Ernst of Brandenburg-Bayreuth(6 August 1644 – 20 May 1712) on 30 March 1703.
- Dorothea (1675–1676),
- Christian Ludwig (1677–1734), recipient of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos.
Ancestry
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See also
References
- ^ Adolf Laminski: Das Glaubensbekenntnis der Kurfürstin Dorothea von Brandenburg aus dem Jahre 1669. (The creed of Electress Dorothea von Brandenburg from 1669), in: Uwe Czubatynski (editor): Kirchenbibliotheken als Forschungsaufgabe (Church libraries as a research task), publisher: Degener, Neustadt an der Aisch 1992, ISBN 3-7686-2055-7, p. 79–84.
- ^ Biographie, Deutsche. "Dorothea - Deutsche Biographie". www.deutsche-biographie.de (in German). Retrieved 2 August 2018.
- ^ Harald Bodenschatz: Die alte und neue City: Dorotheenstadt und Friedrichstadt (The old and new city: Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichstadt), [1]
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 67–68, see final lines.
His concluding years were troubled by differences between his wife and her step-son, Frederick; and influenced by Dorothea he bequeathed portions of Brandenburg to her four sons, a bequest which was annulled under his successor.
. - ^ Heinrich Jobst Graf von Wintzingerode: Die märkische Amazone Kurfürstin Dorothea von Brandenburg (The Brandenburg Amazon Electress Dorothea of Brandenburg), Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-932313-48-6, p. 41