Public Family Trees/Habsburg/Ferdinand II of Habsburg
1578 - 1637 · Male · Graz, Styria
Son of Charles II of Inner Austria
11
Generation
12
Ancestors
18
Descendants
1
Children
0
Marriages
Ferdinand II of Habsburg
1578 - 1637
Ferdinand II, son of Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria and Maria Anna of Bavaria, was educated by the Jesuits at Ingolstadt and ruled Inner Austria from 1590 before becoming King of Bohemia and Hungary and, in 1619, Holy Roman Emperor. His determination to restore Catholicism in his lands provoked the Bohemian revolt of 1618 that opened the Thirty Years' War; his victory at the White Mountain in 1620 broke the Boh…
Legacy
A defining role in the story of the Habsburg family.
Died1637
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Gen 1 · 1218 - 1291
Rudolf I of Habsburg was the first member of his family to be elected King of the Romans, ruling the German kingdom from 1273 until 1291. Born into a comital family with scattered lands in the Aargau, Swabia and Alsace, he was chosen by the prince-electors partly because he seemed a modest, unthreatening figure after the long interregnum that followed the collapse of Hohenstaufen power. He proved otherwise. After defeating Ottokar II of Bohemia on the Marchfeld in 1278 he took possession of Austria and Styria and, in 1282, granted them to his sons, shifting the family's centre of gravity from the Swiss lands to the Danube. Married to Gertrude of Hohenberg, he was the father of Albert I and the ancestor of every later Habsburg ruler.
Gen 2 · 1255 - 1308
Albert I was the eldest son of Rudolf I of Habsburg and Gertrude of Hohenberg, and the second Habsburg to wear the German crown. He governed Austria and Styria as duke from 1282, imposing firm and often resented rule on the Austrian nobility, and was passed over for the kingship in 1292 in favour of Adolf of Nassau. He pressed his claim, was elected King of the Romans in 1298, and spent his reign consolidating royal rights, curbing the Rhineland princes and attempting, without success, to bring Bohemia into the family's grasp. Married to Elizabeth of Gorizia-Tyrol, he was the father of Frederick the Fair, Leopold I and Albert II, through whom the Austrian line continued.
Gen 3 · 1298 - 1358
Albert II, known as Albert the Wise, was a son of King Albert I and ruled the Habsburg hereditary lands as Duke of Austria and Styria from 1330. A careful and conciliatory ruler after decades of family conflict, he restored the dynasty's finances, issued a body of territorial law for Austria, and in 1335 secured Carinthia and Carniola for the Habsburgs, a decisive addition that anchored their power in the south-eastern Alps. He kept Austria largely out of the wars between the Empire and the papacy in his day. By his marriage to Joanna of Pfirt he had four sons who survived him, among them Rudolf IV, the founder of the University of Vienna, and Leopold III, from whom all later Habsburg emperors descend.
Gen 4 · 1351 - 1386
Leopold III was a younger son of Duke Albert II of Austria and Joanna of Pfirt, and the founder of the Leopoldian line of the Habsburgs. Under the Treaty of Neuberg in 1379 he divided the family lands with his elder brother Albert III, taking Inner Austria, that is Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, together with Tyrol and the family's older possessions in Swabia and Alsace. He pushed Habsburg influence westward into the Swiss and south German territories, acquiring Trieste in 1382 and giving the dynasty its first Adriatic port. His campaigns against the Swiss Confederation ended with the Habsburg defeat at Sempach in 1386. Married to Viridis Visconti of Milan, he was the father of Ernest the Iron.
Gen 5 · 1377 - 1424
Ernest, called Ernest the Iron, was a son of Duke Leopold III and Viridis Visconti, and ruled Inner Austria, the Styrian, Carinthian and Carniolan lands, from Graz. He was the last Habsburg to be enthroned in the old Carinthian ceremony at the Prince's Stone in 1414, and he was among the first of the family to use the title Archduke of Austria consistently, a rank the dynasty asserted to place itself above the ordinary princes of the Empire. He spent much of his rule defending the southern frontier and containing his brothers' rival claims. By his second wife, Cymburgis of Masovia, he was the father of Frederick III, the first Habsburg to hold the imperial title without interruption in the family thereafter.
Gen 6 · 1415 - 1493
Frederick III, son of Ernest the Iron and Cymburgis of Masovia, reigned as German king from 1440 and as Holy Roman Emperor from 1452, the longest tenure of any emperor and the last imperial coronation performed by a pope in Rome. Slow, patient and famously unhurried, he lost ground in Hungary and Bohemia during his lifetime but secured the imperial dignity permanently for his house and elevated Austria to an archduchy in law. He is remembered for the enigmatic device AEIOU that he inscribed on his buildings and possessions. His greatest achievement was diplomatic: the marriage he arranged in 1477 between his son Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy, which brought the Burgundian inheritance to the Habsburgs.
Gen 7 · 1459 - 1519
Maximilian I, the only surviving son of Emperor Frederick III and Eleanor of Portugal, transformed the Habsburgs from an Alpine dynasty into the leading power of Europe. His marriage in 1477 to Mary of Burgundy, heiress of Charles the Bold, brought him the wealthy Low Countries and Franche-Comte, which he defended against France for the rest of his life. German king from 1486 and emperor from 1508, he reformed imperial administration and the army, and was a lavish patron of art and printing. Above all he was a matchmaker: the marriages he arranged for his son Philip the Handsome and his grandchildren with the ruling houses of Spain, Bohemia and Hungary delivered Spain and central Europe to his descendants.
Gen 8 · 1478 - 1506
Philip the Handsome, son of Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy, ruled the Burgundian Netherlands from 1482 and became the first Habsburg king in Spain. His marriage in 1496 to Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, was intended only as an anti-French alliance, but the deaths of Joanna's brother and elder sister made her heiress of Castile, and in 1506 Philip was proclaimed king alongside her as Philip I. His Spanish reign lasted a matter of months before his death at Burgos in the same year, at the age of twenty-eight. Through his sons Charles V and Ferdinand I, he stands at the point where the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg lines both begin.
Gen 9 · 1500 - 1558
Charles V, eldest son of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile, ruled the largest collection of territories any European sovereign had yet held: the Burgundian Netherlands from 1506, Spain with Naples, Sicily and the American possessions from 1516 as Charles I, the Austrian hereditary lands from 1519, and the Holy Roman Empire from his election in the same year. His reign was defined by wars with France over Italy, by the Ottoman advance on Vienna and the Mediterranean, and by the Protestant Reformation, which he confronted at the Diet of Worms in 1521 and failed to reverse. Exhausted, he abdicated between 1555 and 1556, dividing his inheritance between his son Philip II and his brother Ferdinand I, and retired to the monastery of Yuste.
Gen 10 · 1527 - 1598
Philip II, son of Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, ruled Spain, the Netherlands, Naples, Sicily, Milan and the Spanish empire in the Americas and the Philippines from 1556, and added Portugal and its possessions in 1580, briefly uniting the whole Iberian peninsula under one crown. Working from the vast monastery-palace of El Escorial that he built outside Madrid, he governed through paper and councils in an age of Spanish cultural ascendancy. His reign saw the naval victory over the Ottomans at Lepanto in 1571, the long revolt of the Dutch provinces, and the failure of the Armada sent against England in 1588. He married four times, and by his last wife, Anna of Austria, was the father of Philip III.
Gen 13 · 1605 - 1665
Philip IV ruled Spain from 1621 to 1665, through the years in which Spanish military power was broken and Spanish art reached its height. Guided for two decades by the Count-Duke of Olivares, he committed Spain to the Thirty Years' War, and the reign brought the loss of Portugal in 1640, revolt in Catalonia, recognition of Dutch independence at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and the surrender of border territories to France at the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. He was the most discerning royal patron of his century, employing Diego Velazquez as court painter for more than thirty years. Son of Philip III, he married first Elisabeth of France and then his niece Mariana of Austria, and was the father of Charles II.
The House of Stuart was the royal dynasty that ruled Scotland from 1371 and both Scotland and England from 1603 until 1714, giving Britain fourteen monarchs from Robert II to Queen Anne as well as the Jacobite claimants who carried its cause into exile. Spelled Stewart in Scotland and Stuart after Mary, Queen of Scots adopted the French form, the family holds the unusual distinction of having united two crowns by inheritance rather than conquest, and of ending in a disputed succession that reshaped the British constitution. ## Origins The family took its name from its office. The Stewarts were hereditary High Stewards of Scotland, a post granted in the twelfth century to a Breton house settled in Renfrewshire. In 1315 Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward, married Marjorie Bruce, daughter of King Robert the Bruce. Their son became Robert II in 1371 when the direct Bruce line failed, and the stewardship turned into a crown. For more than two centuries afterwards the Stewarts ruled Scotland alone, through a run of reigns cut short by battle, captivity and long royal minorities that left the nobility unusually powerful. ## Notable members James IV, the most cultivated of the Scottish kings, married Margaret Tudor in 1503 and so planted the claim that would carry his descendants to the English throne. His granddaughter Mary, Queen of Scots became queen at six days old, reigned briefly and turbulently, and was deposed in 1567 and executed in England twenty years later. Her son, James VI of Scotland, inherited the English crown in 1603 as James I and became the first monarch to rule both kingdoms. His son Charles I lost the Civil Wars and his throne; Charles II returned at the Restoration in 1660; James II and VII was deposed in the Revolution of 1688, after which his daughters Mary II and Anne reigned in his place. In exile his son James Francis Edward Stuart and grandson Charles Edward Stuart, remembered as Bonnie Prince Charlie, led the Jacobite attempts to recover the throne, ending with the rising of 1745. ## Significance No other British dynasty changed the shape of the state so much. The Stuarts brought Scotland and England under one sovereign, presided over the King James Bible and the theatre of Shakespeare's late career, lost a king to Parliament, and provoked the settlements of 1689 and 1701 that made the monarchy answerable to Parliament and Protestant by statute. When Queen Anne died childless in 1714, the crown passed under the Act of Settlement to the descendants of her cousin Sophia of Hanover, granddaughter of James VI and I, so every British monarch since is still a Stuart descendant. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder | Robert II, King of Scots from 1371 | | Ruled | Scotland 1371 to 1714; England and Ireland 1603 to 1714 | | Origin | Renfrewshire, Scotland | | Union of the Crowns | 1603, under James VI of Scotland and I of England | | Last reigning monarch | Anne, Queen of Great Britain, died 1714 | | Jacobite claimants | James Francis Edward, Charles Edward and Henry Benedict Stuart | | Succeeded by | The House of Hanover, through Sophia of Hanover |
The House of Medici was a Florentine banking family and political dynasty that rose from mercantile wealth in the late fourteenth century to dominate the Republic of Florence, produced two popes and two queens of France, and ruled as hereditary Grand Dukes of Tuscany for nearly two centuries before the direct male line died out in 1737. ## Origins The family's fortune began with Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, who founded the Medici Bank around 1397 and built it into one of the most trusted financial institutions in Europe through close ties to the papacy. His son Cosimo de' Medici turned that wealth into political dominance of Florence without ever holding a formal princely title, ruling through alliance, patronage, and public opinion for three decades. Cosimo's descendants, especially his grandson Lorenzo de' Medici, known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, consolidated the family's grip on the city while becoming the era's foremost patrons of Renaissance art and humanist scholarship. ## Notable Members Lorenzo the Magnificent's sons included Giovanni, who became Pope Leo X, the first Medici pope, and whose cousin Giulio later reigned as Pope Clement VII. Lorenzo's granddaughter Catherine de' Medici became queen of France and, as regent, steered the country through the Wars of Religion; a later Medici, Marie de' Medici, likewise became queen of France as the second wife of Henry IV. When the senior line failed with the assassination of Alessandro de' Medici in 1537, the family's junior branch, descended from Cosimo the Elder's brother, provided Cosimo I de' Medici, who was crowned the first Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1569. His descendants, including the scientific patrons Cosimo II and Ferdinando II, ruled Tuscany until Gian Gastone de' Medici, the last Grand Duke, died without an heir in 1737. His sister, Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, outlived him as the family's final member. ## Significance Beyond their political rule, the Medici reshaped European culture through unmatched patronage: they backed Brunelleschi, Donatello, Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Galileo Galilei, and financed the buildings, art, and institutions that still define Florence today. Anna Maria Luisa's 1737 Patto di Famiglia bequeathed the family's entire art collection to the Tuscan state on the condition it never leave Florence, directly founding the holdings of the Uffizi Gallery and Pitti Palace. | Fact | Details | |---|---| | Founded | c. 1397, Florence (Medici Bank) | | Founder | Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici | | Seat | Florence; later the Grand Duchy of Tuscany | | Peak title | Grand Duke of Tuscany (from 1569) | | Popes produced | Leo X (1513-1521), Clement VII (1523-1534) | | Queens of France | Catherine de' Medici, Marie de' Medici | | Dynasty ended | 1737 (Gian Gastone); 1743 (Anna Maria Luisa) | | Lasting legacy | Uffizi Gallery and Pitti Palace collections |
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 |
Ferdinand II of Habsburg's recorded parent is Charles II of Inner Austria.
Ferdinand II of Habsburg has 1 recorded child: Ferdinand III of Habsburg.
Ferdinand II of Habsburg is recorded as Holy Roman Emperor in the Habsburg family tree.
Ferdinand II of Habsburg's recorded native place is Graz, Styria.
12 ancestors and 18 descendants of Ferdinand II of Habsburg are recorded so far, within a tree of 40 people.
Ferdinand II of Habsburg is recorded in the Habsburg family tree on My rOoOts, alongside 39 other people.
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