Thupten Jigme Norbu

Hohenzollern Family Tree - Prussia's Royal House from Frederick the Great to Kaiser Wilhelm II

The House of Hohenzollern is the German dynasty that ruled Brandenburg from 1415, held the Prussian crown from 1701, and gave Germany its three emperors between 1871 and the fall of the monarchy in 1918. This tree follows the senior Prussian line in one unbroken descent, from Frederick William the Great Elector, through the kings of Prussia and the German Emperors, down to Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, the present head of the house. ## Origins The family takes its name from Hohenzollern Castle on a hill in the Swabian Alb, where a line of counts is recorded from the eleventh century. A Swabian Zollern married into the burgraviate of Nuremberg in 1192, and the Franconian branch that grew from it spent two centuries accumulating lands and credit with the Holy Roman Emperors. The decisive moment came in 1415, when Emperor Sigismund invested Frederick VI of Nuremberg as Elector of Brandenburg in return for his political and financial support. The Duchy of Prussia, a separate inheritance lying outside the Empire, passed to the Brandenburg electors in 1618, and Frederick William, the Great Elector, welded the two into a single functioning state after the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. ## Notable members Frederick I turned the electorate into a kingdom in 1701. His son Frederick William I, the Soldier King, built the army and the treasury that his own son, **Frederick the Great**, used to seize Silesia and to make Prussia a European power, while also composing music, building Sanssouci and corresponding with Voltaire. **Queen Louise** became the emotional centre of Prussian resistance to Napoleon. **Wilhelm I**, with Otto von Bismarck as his minister president, was proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles in 1871. His son **Frederick III** and the liberal English princess he married, Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria, reigned for only ninety nine days. **Wilhelm II**, the last Kaiser, abdicated in 1918 and died in Dutch exile in 1941. ## Significance No other German family shaped the modern state so directly. Hohenzollern rulers created the Prussian civil service, compulsory schooling and the general staff, sponsored the Berlin academies and the Humboldt university model, and then used Prussian power to unify Germany around themselves. The monarchy ended with the revolution of November 1918, but the house continues as a private family: the headship passed from Wilhelm II to his eldest son, then to Louis Ferdinand, and in 1994 to Georg Friedrich, whose own father and uncles are part of the succession story told in this tree. ## Quick facts | Fact | Details | |---|---| | Family name | Hohenzollern | | Place of origin | Hohenzollern Castle, Swabia, southern Germany | | Ruled | Brandenburg from 1415, Prussia from 1618, Germany from 1871 | | Royal title | King in Prussia from 1701, King of Prussia from 1772 | | Imperial title | German Emperor, 1871 to 1918 | | German Emperors | Wilhelm I, Frederick III, Wilhelm II | | Monarchy ended | 9 November 1918 | | Present head of the house | Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, since 1994 | | Principal residences | Berlin City Palace, Sanssouci and Cecilienhof at Potsdam, Charlottenburg | | Branch shown here | The senior Prussian line only, not Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen |

The Jackson Family Tree - Michael Jackson

Kennedy Family Tree - America's Political Dynasty

The Kennedy family is an Irish American political dynasty from Boston, Massachusetts, whose members have included the 35th President of the United States, three United States senators, four congressmen, several ambassadors, and the founders of the Peace Corps and the Special Olympics. Across four documented generations the family moved from a County Wexford farm to the White House, and its name became shorthand in American public life for both political ambition and public service. ## Origins The American line begins with Patrick Kennedy, a farmer's son from Dunganstown, near New Ross in County Wexford, who emigrated to East Boston during the Great Famine. His son, Patrick Joseph "P. J." Kennedy (1858 to 1929), built a livelihood in the liquor and banking trades and served in both houses of the Massachusetts legislature, becoming one of the Democratic ward leaders who ran the city's Irish Catholic politics. On the other side stood John Francis "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald (1863 to 1950), congressman and twice Mayor of Boston. The two families joined in 1914 when P. J.'s son Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. married Honey Fitz's daughter Rose Fitzgerald. Their nine children, raised between Brookline, Bronxville and the compound at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, form the generation the world knows. ## Notable members John F. Kennedy served as President from 1961 until his death in 1963, having previously represented Massachusetts in the House and Senate. His brother Robert F. Kennedy was Attorney General, then Senator from New York, and a candidate for the presidency in 1968. Their youngest brother Edward "Ted" Kennedy sat in the United States Senate for almost 47 years and was one of the most productive legislators of his era. The eldest son, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., was a naval aviator killed on a volunteer mission in 1944. Away from elected office, Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded the Special Olympics, her husband Sargent Shriver created the Peace Corps and Head Start, and Jean Kennedy Smith founded the arts and disability organisation VSA before serving as United States Ambassador to Ireland. The following generations have produced congressmen, a lieutenant governor, ambassadors, documentary filmmakers, human rights advocates and journalists. ## Significance No other American family has combined electoral success, philanthropy and public visibility on this scale for so long. The Kennedys shaped the civil rights era, the space programme, immigration reform, health care legislation and the modern understanding of disability rights, and their private losses were mourned publicly in a way usually reserved for royalty. The Kennedy Library in Boston, the Kennedy Center in Washington and dozens of schools and institutions carry the name. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Family name | Kennedy | | Irish origin | Dunganstown, County Wexford, Ireland | | American home | Boston and Hyannis Port, Massachusetts | | Founding couple | Patrick Joseph Kennedy and Mary Augusta Hickey | | Best known member | John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States | | Generations covered | Four | | Offices held | Presidency, US Senate, US House, ambassadorships, state office | | Institutions founded | Peace Corps, Special Olympics, Best Buddies, Citizens Energy |

Belgian Royal Family Tree - The House of Belgium from Leopold I to Princess Elisabeth

The Belgian royal family, formally the House of Belgium and dynastically a branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, is the reigning family of Belgium, founded when the German prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld accepted the throne of the newly independent kingdom in 1831 and continuing today through King Philippe and his heir, Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant. Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in 1830 and chose a constitutional monarchy. Its National Congress looked abroad for a sovereign who could balance French and British interests, and settled on Leopold, a widowed, well-connected and famously cautious prince who had already turned down the crown of Greece. He took the constitutional oath on 21 July 1831, still the Belgian national day. Seven monarchs have reigned since: Leopold I, Leopold II, Albert I, Leopold III, Baudouin, Albert II and Philippe. ## Origins The dynasty's roots are in the small Thuringian duchy of Saxe-Coburg, whose princes married into half the thrones of nineteenth-century Europe. Leopold I was the uncle of both Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, and his second marriage, to Louise-Marie of Orleans, daughter of the French king Louis Philippe I, tied the new kingdom to Paris as well as London. The crown did not pass in a straight line: Leopold II's only son died at the age of nine, so the succession moved to Leopold II's brother Philippe, Count of Flanders, and then to Philippe's son, Albert I. Every Belgian monarch since 1909 descends from that collateral branch. ## Notable members Leopold II is the most studied and most criticised figure in the family, remembered for the industrial boom and monumental building of his reign and, above all, for his personal rule over the Congo Free State. Albert I and Queen Elisabeth of Bavaria became wartime symbols of Belgian resistance behind the Yser in 1914. Leopold III's surrender in 1940 and his conduct under occupation triggered the political crisis known as the Royal Question and ended in his abdication. Baudouin reigned for 42 years and presided over Congolese independence and Belgium's transformation into a federal state. Daughters of the house carried its blood outward: Charlotte became Empress Carlota of Mexico, Marie-Jose was the last Queen of Italy, and Josephine-Charlotte was Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. ## Significance In a country divided by language, the monarchy has been the one institution claimed by both Flemish and Walloon Belgians, and the king's role in brokering coalition governments remains politically real rather than ceremonial. The family has also changed with the country: equal succession was introduced in 1991, making Princess Elisabeth the first female Duchess of Brabant and the future first queen regnant of the Belgians, and in 2020 a court recognised Delphine of Saxe-Coburg as a daughter of Albert II. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Dynasty | House of Belgium (Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) | | Country | Kingdom of Belgium | | Founder | Leopold I, King of the Belgians (1790-1865) | | Reigning since | 21 July 1831 | | Monarchs to date | Seven, from Leopold I to Philippe | | Current head | King Philippe (born 1960), reigning since 2013 | | Heir apparent | Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant (born 2001) | | Principal residences | Royal Palace of Brussels, Castle of Laeken | | Motto | L'union fait la force / Eendracht maakt macht |