Public Family Trees/Orange-Nassau/Wilhelmina of Prussia
1774 - 1837 · Female · Potsdam, Prussia
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Wilhelmina of Prussia (1774 to 1837) was the first Queen of the Netherlands, as the wife of King William I. A daughter of King Frederick William II of Prussia, she was born in Potsdam and married her first cousin, the future Dutch king, in Berlin in 1791. The couple spent nearly twenty years in exile after the French overran the Dutch Republic, returning in 1813, and she became queen when her husband took the royal t…
Born1774
The beginning of Wilhelmina of Prussia's recorded life.
Family
A partnership that connects two branches of the Orange-Nassau family.
Next Generation
3 children recorded in this branch.
Legacy
A defining role in the story of the Orange-Nassau family.
Died1837
The close of a life whose connections continue through the family record.
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Gen 4 · 1880 - 1962
Wilhelmina (1880 to 1962) was Queen of the Netherlands from 1890 to 1948 and the longest reigning Dutch monarch. The only child of King William III and Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, she came to the throne at the age of ten under her mother's regency and was inaugurated in her own right in 1898. She held the Netherlands to neutrality through the First World War and made the monarchy a byword for stubborn independence. When Germany invaded in May 1940 she escaped to London, where she led the government in exile and spoke to the occupied country over Radio Oranje, becoming the voice of Dutch resistance. She returned in 1945, abdicated in favour of her daughter Juliana in 1948 and died at Het Loo in 1962.
Gen 5 · 1909 - 2004
Juliana (1909 to 2004) was Queen of the Netherlands from 1948 to 1980. The only child of Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Henry, she studied at Leiden University and married Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld in 1937. She spent the Second World War with her young daughters in Canada, where her third daughter Margriet was born, and came home to a country that had grown used to thinking of her as one of its own. Her reign took in Indonesian independence, the North Sea flood of 1953, when her visits to the drowned villages were long remembered, and the social upheavals of the 1960s. Informal and warm in manner, she was known as the citizen queen. She abdicated in favour of her daughter Beatrix in 1980 and died at Soestdijk Palace in 2004.
Gen 6 · b. 1938
Beatrix (born 1938) was Queen of the Netherlands from 1980 until her abdication in 2013. The eldest daughter of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard, she was born at Soestdijk Palace, spent the war years as a child with her family in Canada and read law at Leiden University. Her marriage in 1966 to the German diplomat Claus von Amsberg drew angry protests in Amsterdam, yet the couple became genuinely loved, and she was the mother of King Willem-Alexander, Prince Friso and Prince Constantijn. As queen she was known for an exacting command of her state papers and a formal, hard working style that steadied the monarchy for three decades. She handed the throne to her eldest son on 30 April 2013 and still carries out public duties as Princess Beatrix.
Gen 6 · b. 1939
Princess Irene of the Netherlands (born 1939) is the second daughter of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard and a younger sister of Princess Beatrix. Born at Soestdijk Palace, she set off a constitutional storm in 1964 when her conversion to Roman Catholicism and her marriage to Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma, the Carlist claimant to the Spanish throne, went ahead without the approval of parliament, costing her her place in the line of succession. She spent years at her husband's side in Spanish politics before the marriage ended in 1981. Since then she has worked as a writer and campaigner on nature and the human relationship with it, founding the NatuurCollege foundation in 1995.
Gen 6 · b. 1943
Princess Margriet of the Netherlands (born 1943) is the third daughter of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard. She was born in Ottawa during her family's wartime exile, in a hospital room declared Dutch territory for the occasion so that she would hold her mother's nationality alone, and the tulips Canada receives from the Netherlands every year date from that stay. She married the jurist Pieter van Vollenhoven in 1967 and they have four sons. For decades one of the busiest working members of the royal family, she has been closely identified with the Netherlands Red Cross and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and with equestrian and veterans' causes.
Gen 7 · b. 1967
Willem-Alexander (born 1967) has been King of the Netherlands since 30 April 2013, when his mother Beatrix abdicated in his favour, making him the first Dutch king in more than a century. The eldest son of Beatrix and Prince Claus, he was born in Utrecht, read history at Leiden University and trained with the Royal Netherlands Navy and Air Force, keeping up his flying ever since. Before his accession he chaired the United Nations Secretary-General's advisory board on water and sanitation, a subject he still works on. He married the Argentine born Maxima Zorreguieta in Amsterdam in 2002; their eldest daughter, Catharina-Amalia, Princess of Orange, is heir to the throne.
Gen 7 · 1968 - 2013
Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau (1968 to 2013) was the second son of Queen Beatrix and Prince Claus and a younger brother of King Willem-Alexander. Born in Utrecht, he trained as an aerospace engineer and also studied economics, then built a career in business and finance largely out of the public eye, keeping an interest in engineering and energy throughout his working life. When he married Mabel Wisse Smit in 2004 the government declined to ask parliament to consent to the marriage, so he gave up his place in the line of succession and took the title Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau. The couple had two daughters. He died in The Hague in 2013 at the age of forty-four.
Gen 7 · b. 1969
Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands (born 1969) is the youngest son of Queen Beatrix and Prince Claus and stands fourth in line to the Dutch throne, after his brother the king's three daughters. Born in Utrecht, he read law at Leiden University, took a business degree at INSEAD and worked for the European Commission, the research institute RAND Europe and in management consultancy. Since 2016 he has been special envoy for the Dutch start-up sector, first with StartupDelta and then with Techleap, and he speaks and writes regularly on digital innovation and entrepreneurship. He married Laurentien Brinkhorst in 2001 and they have three children.
Gen 8 · b. 2003
Catharina-Amalia, Princess of Orange (born 2003) is the heir apparent to the Dutch throne and the eldest daughter of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima. Born in The Hague, she took the title Princess of Orange, traditionally held by the heir, when her father became king in 2013. She attended the Sorghvliet gymnasium in The Hague, declined the royal allowance due to her when she turned eighteen because she was still a student, and went on to read politics, psychology, law and economics at the University of Amsterdam after a year abroad. She is the eldest of three sisters, with Princess Alexia and Princess Ariane, and a direct descendant of William I, the first Dutch king.
Gen 8 · b. 2005
Princess Alexia of the Netherlands (born 2005) is the second daughter of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima and stands second in line to the Dutch throne, after her elder sister Catharina-Amalia. Born in Amsterdam, she grew up at Villa Eikenhorst in Wassenaar and later at Huis ten Bosch Palace in The Hague, went to Dutch schools and then completed the international baccalaureate at UWC Atlantic College in Wales, before going on to university study in the United Kingdom. She appears with her parents and sisters at national occasions such as King's Day and the state opening of the Dutch parliamentary year, but holds no official duties of her own.
Gen 8 · b. 2007
Princess Ariane of the Netherlands (born 2007) is the youngest daughter of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima and stands third in line to the Dutch throne. Born in The Hague, she grew up at Villa Eikenhorst in Wassenaar and then at Huis ten Bosch Palace, attended the Sorghvliet gymnasium in The Hague and moved to the UWC Adriatic college in Italy for her international baccalaureate, following the pattern her sisters set of finishing school abroad. She takes part in the royal family's public appearances, among them King's Day and the annual summer and winter photograph sessions, rather than holding duties of her own.
The House of Glücksburg is the reigning royal house of Denmark and Norway and the former royal house of Greece, a branch of the ancient House of Oldenburg whose modern members all descend from King Christian IX of Denmark (1818 to 1906) and his wife Louise of Hesse-Kassel. Through the marriages of their six children, a minor ducal family from the Danish-German borderland became the common ancestor of monarchs in Copenhagen, Oslo and Athens, of a British queen consort, of a Russian empress, and of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. ## Origins The house takes its name from Glücksburg, a small castle town in Schleswig, and belongs to the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg line of the House of Oldenburg, which had held the Danish throne since 1448. Christian IX was a prince of that cadet branch with no expectation of ruling until the childless Frederik VII made the Danish succession an open European question. Christian succeeded him in 1863, and within months his second son was elected King of the Hellenes as George I, planting the family in Greece for 110 years. In 1905 his grandson Prince Carl of Denmark accepted the Norwegian throne as Haakon VII, giving Norway its own dynasty after centuries of union with Denmark and then Sweden. ## Notable members Christian IX was nicknamed the father-in-law of Europe: his daughter Alexandra married Edward VII of the United Kingdom, and his daughter Dagmar became Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia, mother of Nicholas II. The Danish line runs through Christian X, Frederik IX and Queen Margrethe II, a trained archaeologist and illustrator who reigned from 1972 until her abdication in 2024, to her son King Frederik X and Queen Mary. The Norwegian line runs from Haakon VII and Queen Maud through Olav V, an Olympic sailing champion, to King Harald V and Crown Prince Haakon. The Greek line produced Constantine I, Paul, Constantine II and Queen Anne-Marie, Queen SofÃa of Spain, and Prince Andrew's son Philip, consort to Elizabeth II for 73 years. ## Significance No other western dynasty connects as many surviving monarchies in a single documented lineage. Two of Europe's ten reigning royal families, Denmark and Norway, are Glücksburg in the male line, and the house also sits in the ancestry of the British and Spanish royal families. Its history traces the transformation of European monarchy itself: from the dynastic matchmaking of the 1860s, through the loss of the Russian and Greek thrones, to the constitutional, publicly accountable monarchies of modern Scandinavia. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | House name | Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a branch of the House of Oldenburg | | Founding figure of the modern house | Christian IX of Denmark (1818 to 1906) | | Ancestral seat | Glücksburg Castle, Schleswig | | Thrones held | Denmark (1863 to present), Greece (1863 to 1973), Norway (1905 to present) | | Current heads of state | Frederik X of Denmark, Harald V of Norway | | Best-known member abroad | Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921 to 2021) | | Nickname of its founder | The father-in-law of Europe |
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 |
The Rothschilds are a European banking dynasty founded in Frankfurt am Main by Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), whose five sons established banking houses in Frankfurt, Vienna, Naples, London and Paris and together built the most powerful private financial network of the nineteenth century. ## Origins Mayer Amschel Rothschild was born in 1744 in the Judengasse, the walled Jewish street of Frankfurt am Main, where the family took its name from the red shield that had marked an ancestor's house. He began as a dealer in rare coins and medals, became court factor to Crown Prince Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel in 1769, and turned that position into a banking business handling loans, bullion and government paper. With his wife Gutle Schnapper he had ten children who reached adulthood, five sons and five daughters. ## The five houses Mayer Amschel's decisive act was to place his sons in five cities so that the family could move money and news across borders as a single firm. Amschel Mayer stayed in Frankfurt, Salomon went to Vienna, Nathan to London, Carl to Naples and James to Paris. The brothers financed the allied campaigns against Napoleon, then the governments, railways and industries of nineteenth century Europe. The Naples house closed in 1860 with Italian unification, Frankfurt in 1901 for want of an heir, and Vienna in 1938 after the Anschluss. London and Paris survived, and their successors trade today as Rothschild and Co and the Edmond de Rothschild Group. ## Notable members Nathan Mayer Rothschild founded N M Rothschild and Sons and made London the centre of international lending. His son Lionel broke the bar on Jews sitting in Parliament, taking his Commons seat in 1858, and his grandson Nathan Mayer became the first Jewish member of the House of Lords in 1885. James Mayer de Rothschild dominated French finance under three regimes and bought Chateau Lafite, while his son Edmond funded the first Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine. The family also produced naturalists and collectors rather than only bankers: Walter, 2nd Baron Rothschild, the zoologist to whom the Balfour Declaration was addressed in 1917; his brother Charles, the flea specialist who founded British nature conservation; Charles's daughter Dame Miriam Rothschild, a Fellow of the Royal Society; and another daughter, Nica, the patron of Thelonious Monk. Jacob, 4th Baron Rothschild, built RIT Capital Partners and chaired the trustees of the National Gallery. ## Significance The Rothschilds were the first banking family to operate as a genuinely international partnership, and for much of the nineteenth century they were the principal lenders to European states. Their name is attached to railways, mines, hospitals, museums, nature reserves, Bordeaux first growths and a long tradition of Jewish philanthropy. Repeated marriages between first cousins kept capital and control inside the family, which is why the branches of this tree cross back into one another so often. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder | Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) | | Matriarch | Gutle Schnapper (1753-1849) | | Origin | The Judengasse, Frankfurt am Main | | Children of the founder | Ten, five sons and five daughters | | The five houses | Frankfurt, Vienna, Naples, London, Paris | | Motto | Concordia, Integritas, Industria | | Principal firms | N M Rothschild and Sons, de Rothschild Freres, S. M. von Rothschild | | Still active today | Rothschild and Co, Edmond de Rothschild Group | | Known for | Government finance, railways, wine estates, natural history, art collections, philanthropy |
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 |
Wilhelmina of Prussia has 3 recorded children: William II of the Netherlands, Frederick of the Netherlands, Marianne of the Netherlands.
Wilhelmina of Prussia married William I of the Netherlands.
Wilhelmina of Prussia is recorded as Queen consort of the Netherlands in the Orange-Nassau family tree.
Wilhelmina of Prussia's recorded native place is Potsdam, Prussia.
0 ancestors and 21 descendants of Wilhelmina of Prussia are recorded so far, within a tree of 33 people.
Wilhelmina of Prussia is recorded as William I of the Netherlands's Wife.
Wilhelmina of Prussia is recorded in the Orange-Nassau family tree on My rOoOts, alongside 32 other people.
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