Agnes Hedwig von Anhalt

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Agnes Hedwig von Anhalt

Agnes Hedwig von Anhalt (born March 12, 1573 in Dessau ; † November 3, 1616 in Sønderborg ) Electress of Saxony, later Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg , was the second wife of Elector August of Saxony and then of Duke Johann of Schleswig -Holstein-Sonderburg .

Agnes Hedwig was the daughter of Prince Joachim Ernst von Anhalt and his second wife Eleonore von Württemberg . In 1581, at the age of eight, she became abbess of the imperial abbey of Sankt Cyriakus in Gernrode . In 1586 she left the monastery and was married to the 60-year-old Elector August on January 3, when she was not quite 13 years old. On her wedding night she is said to have asked for the release of Caspar Peucer , who was incarcerated as a Calvinist as a result of the influence of August's first wife, the Danish Princess Anna . Peucer was actually released. The elector died after a few weeks on February 11, 1586. She received Lichtenburg Castle as Wittum , but she never lived there.

Two years later, on February 14, 1588, she married the 43-year-old widowed Duke Johann von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg , the brother of the first wife of her first husband. She brought a dowry of 30,000 Reichstalers into the marriage. She gave birth to nine children in addition to his fourteen children from his first marriage, several of whom were older than her and all of whom had reached adulthood.

She died in 1616, six years before her husband.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans K. Schulze, Reinhold Specht and Günter Wilhelm Vorbrodt: The Gernrode Monastery . Böhlau Verlag , 1965, p. 51.
  2. ^ Karl Adolf Menzel : Modern history of the Germans from the Reformation to the Federal Act , 1832, Volume 4, p. 544
  3. ↑ Ute Essegern: Princesses at the Electoral Saxon Court. Concepts of life and life courses between family, court and politics in the first half of the 17th century , Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2007, p. 111
  4. ↑ The princes of the country. Dukes and Counts of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg , Carsten Porskrog Rasmussen a. a. (ed.). 2008, p. 214
predecessor Office Successor
Anna of Denmark and Norway Electress of Saxony
1586 		Sophie of Brandenburg
personal data
SURNAME Agnes Hedwig von Anhalt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Wife of Elector August of Saxony
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1573
PLACE OF BIRTH Dessau
DATE OF DEATH November 3, 1616
Place of death Sonderburg