Public Family Trees/Hohenzollern/Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria
1801 - 1873 · Female · Munich, Bavaria
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Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria
1801 - 1873
Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria was Queen of Prussia as the wife of Frederick William IV, whom she married in 1823 after converting from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism. A daughter of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria, she was the twin sister of Amalie, Queen of Saxony, and her Wittelsbach connections linked the Prussian court to Munich, Dresden and Vienna. The marriage was close but childless. She was active in c…
Born1801
The beginning of Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria's recorded life.
Family
A partnership that connects two branches of the Hohenzollern family.
Legacy
A defining role in the story of the Hohenzollern family.
Died1873
The close of a life whose connections continue through the family record.
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Gen 1 · 1627 - 1667
Louise Henriette of Nassau was Electress of Brandenburg as the first wife of Frederick William, the Great Elector, whom she married in 1646. A daughter of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, and Amalia of Solms-Braunfels, she was raised in the Dutch Republic and brought Netherlandish ideas of land drainage, agriculture and garden design to the sandy country around Berlin. The town of Oranienburg, where she rebuilt a country residence, is named after her family. She wrote hymns in the German Reformed tradition, several of which stayed in use long after her death. Of her children, Frederick I survived to become the first King in Prussia, making her the ancestress of the Prussian royal line. She died in 1667 at the age of thirty nine.
Gen 2 · 1657 - 1713
Frederick I was the first King in Prussia, reigning from 1701 until 1713, having succeeded his father the Great Elector as Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg in 1688. Born at Koenigsberg, he negotiated the Crown Treaty with Emperor Leopold I, promising Prussian troops for the War of the Spanish Succession in exchange for recognition of a royal title, and crowned himself at Koenigsberg on 18 January 1701. His court at Berlin was lavish by Prussian standards. He founded the Academy of Arts and, with his wife Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, the Academy of Sciences, and he built the palace of Charlottenburg. His son Frederick William I and grandson Frederick the Great both reacted against his taste for ceremony and expense.
Gen 3 · 1688 - 1740
Frederick William I, called the Soldier King, was King in Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg from 1713 until 1740. Born in Berlin, the son of Frederick I and Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, he dismantled his father's expensive court, reorganised the administration into the General Directory, introduced compulsory primary schooling and left his heir the best drilled army in Europe together with a full treasury. He was known for his regiment of unusually tall soldiers and for the harsh discipline he imposed on his eldest son, the future Frederick the Great, whose attempt to flee Prussia in 1730 ended in a court martial. With his wife Sophia Dorothea of Hanover he had fourteen children, among them a king of Prussia and a queen of Sweden.
Gen 4 · 1709 - 1758
Wilhelmine of Prussia was Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth and the eldest sister of Frederick the Great, to whom she remained unusually close all her life. Born in Berlin in 1709 to Frederick William I and Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, she married Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, in 1731 after her mother's plan for a marriage into the British royal family collapsed. At Bayreuth she became a notable patron and builder, responsible for the Hermitage and the Margravial Opera House, and she composed music of her own. Her memoirs are the frankest surviving account of life at her father's court and a principal source for her brother's youth. She died in 1758 during the Seven Years' War.
Gen 5 · 1744 - 1797
Frederick William II was King of Prussia from 1786 until 1797, succeeding his uncle Frederick the Great, who had no children. Born in Berlin in 1744, the son of Prince Augustus William and Luise Amalie of Brunswick-Wolfenbuettel, he relaxed his uncle's austere regime, ended the state monopolies on coffee and tobacco, and spent generously on music and architecture. The Brandenburg Gate was built in his reign, and he was a competent cellist to whom Ludwig van Beethoven dedicated the two cello sonatas of his Opus 5. In policy he was less successful, intervening against revolutionary France, accepting the separate peace of Basel in 1795, and taking part in the Second and Third Partitions of Poland. His eldest son succeeded him as Frederick William III.
Gen 6 · 1770 - 1840
Frederick William III was King of Prussia from 1797 until 1840, through the years of Prussia's collapse before Napoleon and its recovery. Born at Potsdam in 1770, he married Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1793, and the couple became unusually popular. His attempt at neutrality ended in the catastrophic defeats at Jena and Auerstedt in 1806 and the Treaty of Tilsit, after which he backed the reforms of Stein, Hardenberg, Scharnhorst and Humboldt that rebuilt the Prussian state, army and university system. He joined the alliance that defeated Napoleon between 1813 and 1815 and gained the Rhineland at the Congress of Vienna. In 1817 he merged the Lutheran and Reformed congregations into the Prussian Union of churches. Two of his sons, Frederick William IV and Wilhelm I, succeeded him in turn.
Gen 8 · 1831 - 1888
Frederick III was German Emperor and King of Prussia for ninety nine days in 1888, the shortest reign in the history of his house. Born at Potsdam in 1831, the only son of Wilhelm I and Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, he studied at Bonn, commanded armies with distinction at Koeniggraetz in 1866 and at Woerth and Sedan in 1870, and was created crown prince of the new empire in 1871. With his wife Victoria, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria, he favoured liberal parliamentary government on the British model, which set him at odds with Otto von Bismarck throughout his father's long reign. He was already seriously unwell when he finally succeeded in March 1888, and he died at Potsdam in June, leaving the throne to his eldest son, Wilhelm II.
Gen 9 · 1859 - 1941
Wilhelm II was the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, reigning from 1888 until his abdication in 1918. Born in Berlin in 1859, the eldest son of Frederick III and Victoria, Princess Royal, he was a grandson of both Wilhelm I and Queen Victoria. He dismissed Otto von Bismarck in 1890 and pursued a personal and assertive foreign policy, building a battle fleet that antagonised Britain and backing Austria-Hungary in the crisis of July 1914. His impulsive speeches and interviews repeatedly embarrassed his own governments, and by the later years of the First World War real authority had passed to the army command. He abdicated in November 1918 and spent the rest of his life at Doorn in the Netherlands, where he died in 1941. With Augusta Victoria he had six sons and one daughter.
Gen 10 · 1883 - 1942
Prince Eitel Friedrich of Prussia was the second son of Wilhelm II and Augusta Victoria. Born at Potsdam in 1883, he was brought up for the army and commanded the First Regiment of Foot Guards in the First World War, serving on both the Western and Eastern fronts and receiving the order Pour le Merite. In 1906 he married Duchess Sophie Charlotte of Oldenburg; the marriage produced no children and was dissolved in 1926. After the fall of the monarchy he held office in veterans' organisations, including the Stahlhelm league of former front line soldiers, and he lived at Potsdam, in the Villa Ingenheim, where he died in 1942.
Gen 11 · 1909 - 1950
Prince Hubertus of Prussia was the third son of Crown Prince Wilhelm and Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Born at Potsdam in 1909, he trained in agriculture and served as a Luftwaffe officer until 1943, when the regime dismissed members of the former ruling houses from the armed forces. He married Princess Maria Anna von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg in 1941 and, after that marriage ended, Princess Magdalene Reuss of Koestritz in 1943. Looking for a new life once the family's Silesian estates were lost, he emigrated to South West Africa, where he took up farming near Windhoek. He died there in 1950 at the age of forty, leaving one daughter.
Gen 12 · 1940 - 2014
Prince Michael of Prussia was the second son of Louis Ferdinand, head of the House of Hohenzollern, and Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna of Russia. Born in Berlin in 1940, he renounced his rights of succession within the house in 1966 in order to marry Jutta Joern, a marriage the Hohenzollern house rules treated as unequal, and he married Brigitte von Dallwitz-Wegner some years later. He worked as a journalist and in publishing and kept away from dynastic affairs. With his elder brother Friedrich Wilhelm renouncing in his turn the following year, the line of succession passed to the children of their younger brother Louis Ferdinand. He died in 2014.
The House of Bernadotte is the royal family of Sweden, founded by the French marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, who was elected Swedish crown prince in 1810 and reigned from 1818 as King Charles XIV John, and it has held the throne in an unbroken line ever since, down to King Carl XVI Gustaf, Crown Princess Victoria and Princess Estelle. ## Origins The dynasty began far from Sweden, in the Gascon town of Pau, where Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was born in 1763 as the son of a provincial lawyer. He rose through the revolutionary French army to become a Marshal of the Empire and Prince of Pontecorvo. In 1810 the Swedish Riksdag, left without an heir after the deposition of Gustav IV Adolf and the accession of the childless Charles XIII, unexpectedly offered the succession to the French marshal. He accepted, converted to Lutheranism, took the name Charles John and in 1818 became king of both Sweden and Norway. His marriage to Desiree Clary, a Marseille merchant's daughter once engaged to Napoleon, produced the dynasty's second king, Oscar I. ## Notable members Oscar I's marriage to Josephine of Leuchtenberg, a granddaughter of the Empress Josephine, brought a descent from Sweden's older royal houses into the line, and Gustaf V's marriage to Victoria of Baden, a great granddaughter of the deposed Gustav IV Adolf, reinforced it. Later generations produced an unusual number of figures known for work outside the court: Prince Eugen, one of Sweden's foremost landscape painters; Gustaf VI Adolf, a working archaeologist and botanist; and Sigvard Bernadotte, an industrial designer. The family's daughters carried the name into the other Scandinavian monarchies and into Belgium: Ingrid became queen of Denmark, Astrid queen of the Belgians and Martha crown princess of Norway, which makes this tree a close relative of the Glucksburg line. ## Significance Under the Bernadottes the Swedish monarchy moved from real political power to a purely ceremonial role, settled by the constitution of 1974. In 1980 Sweden became the first monarchy to adopt full absolute primogeniture, making the infant Crown Princess Victoria heir ahead of her younger brother. Carl XVI Gustaf, who became heir at nine months old and king in 1973, is the longest reigning monarch in Swedish history. Several princes of the house lost their royal titles by marrying commoners and were created Counts of Wisborg by the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, a kinsman through Queen Sophia of Nassau, which is why the Bernadotte name is borne today both by a reigning royal house and by a line of counts. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Family name | House of Bernadotte | | Country | Sweden, and Norway until 1905 | | Founder | Charles XIV John, born Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (1763 to 1844) | | Reigning since | 1818 | | Monarchs | Charles XIV John, Oscar I, Charles XV, Oscar II, Gustaf V, Gustaf VI Adolf, Carl XVI Gustaf | | Current head | King Carl XVI Gustaf, reigning since 1973 | | Heir apparent | Crown Princess Victoria, Duchess of Vastergotland | | Principal residences | Stockholm Palace, Drottningholm Palace, Haga Palace | | Royal motto | "For Sweden, with the times" (Carl XVI Gustaf) |
The House of Bourbon is a European royal dynasty, descended in the male line from the Capetian kings of France, that ruled France from 1589 to 1792 and again from 1814 to 1848, and that still reigns in Spain today under King Felipe VI. Over four centuries its members also held the thrones of Navarre, Naples and Sicily, Parma and Etruria, which makes it one of the most widely established royal houses in European history. ## Origins The family takes its name from the lordship of Bourbon in the Auvergne, centred on Bourbon-l'Archambault. Its royal line descends from Robert, Count of Clermont, a younger son of King Louis IX of France, whose marriage to Beatrice of Burgundy, heiress of Bourbon, carried the name into the Capetian house in 1272. For three centuries afterwards the Bourbons were powerful French princes of the blood rather than kings. That changed with Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendome, whose marriage to Jeanne d'Albret, queen regnant of Navarre, produced Henry of Navarre. When the Valois line died out in 1589, Henry was the senior Capetian heir, and he took the French throne as Henry IV. ## Notable members Henry IV ended the French Wars of Religion and issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598. His son Louis XIII, guided by Cardinal Richelieu, built the centralised state that Louis XIV, the Sun King, carried to its height across a reign of seventy-two years, the longest of any European sovereign, and to the palace of Versailles. Louis XV and then Louis XVI inherited that system, and Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were swept away by the French Revolution in 1792. The dynasty returned with Louis XVIII in 1814 and Charles X in 1824, and in 1830 the crown passed to Louis Philippe I of the cadet House of Orleans, the last king to rule in France. ## The Spanish branch In 1700 the childless Charles II of Spain left his crown to Philip, Duke of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV. Philip became Philip V, the first Bourbon king of Spain, at the cost of the War of the Spanish Succession, which ended with his renunciation of any claim to the French throne. His descendants include the reforming Charles III, Ferdinand VII, Isabella II, Alfonso XII and Alfonso XIII, who left Spain in 1931. The monarchy was restored in 1975 under Juan Carlos I, grandson of Alfonso XIII, who presided over Spain's transition to democracy and abdicated in 2014 in favour of his son Felipe VI. Felipe's elder daughter Leonor, Princess of Asturias, is heir to the throne. ## Significance No other family links the absolute monarchy of Versailles to a working constitutional monarchy in twenty-first century Madrid. Bourbon marriages tied the house to the Habsburgs of Austria and Spain, the dukes of Savoy, the Medici of Florence and the British royal family, so a Bourbon family tree doubles as a map of European dynastic politics from the Reformation to the present day. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Family name | House of Bourbon (Maison de Bourbon, Casa de Borbon) | | Place of origin | Bourbon-l'Archambault, Auvergne, France | | Founder of the line | Robert, Count of Clermont (1256-1317), son of Louis IX | | First king of France | Henry IV, reigned 1589 to 1610 | | Last king to rule France | Louis Philippe I, reigned 1830 to 1848 | | First king of Spain | Philip V, reigned 1700 to 1746 | | Head of the house in Spain | King Felipe VI, since 2014 | | Heir in Spain | Leonor, Princess of Asturias | | Principal seats | Versailles, Fontainebleau, the Louvre, the Royal Palace of Madrid |
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 |
Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria married Frederick William IV of Prussia.
Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria is recorded as Queen of Prussia in the Hohenzollern family tree.
Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria's recorded native place is Munich, Bavaria.
Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria is recorded as Frederick II of Prussia's 6 steps away.
Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria is recorded in the Hohenzollern family tree on My rOoOts, alongside 52 other people.
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