Emich Carl zu Leiningen

Emich Carl zu Leiningen

Emich Carl Prince of Leiningen (born September 27, 1763 in Dürkheim , † July 4, 1814 in Amorbach ) was second Prince of Leiningen and royal Bavarian lieutenant general and regiment owner .

Life

He was the son of Carl Friedrich Wilhelm zu Leiningen (1724-1807) and Christiane Wilhelmine Countess of Solms-Rödelheim (1736-1803). In 1796 the family was expelled from the Palatinate by the French .

He essentially determined the policy of the Princely House, both towards the French and Austrians and later at the Congress of Vienna .

The Princely House lost all claims to power on the left bank of the Rhine through the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss . As a result of the secularization , these losses were compensated by territorial gains to the detriment of the dissolved Archdiocese of Mainz ( Monastery Amorbach , Miltenberg , Eberbach and Tauberbischofsheim ), to the detriment of the Diocese of Würzburg ( Grünsfeld , Hardheim , Lauda ) and to the detriment of the dissolved Electorate Palatinate ( Boxberg , Mosbach ) . Amorbach was chosen and moved into as the new residence, especially since it also offered new living options with the dissolved monastery. The convent building, which is 118 m long, was built from 1782 to 1794 according to plans by Franz Ignaz Michael Neumann . The times of wandering from one friendly residence to the next came to an end. As a Protestant prince, he ruled over around 90,000 mostly Catholic subjects over 1,600 km². As a result of mediatization , political independence was lost as early as 1806. Title and private property were retained, as was the income from property. Most sovereign rights fell to the Grand Duchy of Baden , the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt and the Kingdom of Bavaria . The Congress of Vienna confirmed this loss.

Marriages

His first marriage was on July 4, 1787 in Ebersdorf with Henriette (born May 9, 1767 in Ebersdorf ; † September 3, 1801 in Coburg ), daughter of Count Heinrich XXIV. Reuss zu Ebersdorf . Their child, Hereditary Prince Friedrich Karl Heinrich Ludwig (1793–1800) died at the age of 7.

He concluded his second marriage on December 21, 1803 with the niece of his first wife, the 17-year-old Princess Victoria of Saxony-Coburg-Saalfeld . There were two children from this marriage:

• Hereditary Prince Carl , who later became the 3rd Prince of Leiningen (1804–1856)
• Princess Feodora zu Leiningen (1807–1872)
  ⚭ 1828 ( Kensington Palace , London) Prince Ernst I zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg .

The second marriage of Emich Carl zu Leiningen ended after just over ten years after his death. His widow married on July 11, 1818 in Kew Palace ( Surrey , England ) Eduard August, Duke of Kent and Strathearn , a younger son of King George III. of Great Britain. The only child from this second marriage was Alexandrina Victoria , who later became Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India. Viktoria was conceived in Amorbach, but was born in Great Britain to secure her inheritance.

Thus Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Emich, who later became the 3rd Prince of Leiningen, was the half-brother of the British Queen Victoria .

buildings

In the most remote part of the Odenwald, Emich Carl zu Leiningen built a large wildlife park. On the slope of the Steinichtal a then fashionable Gothic ruin wall with turrets and bay windows was built. This romantic complex was abandoned by his son Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Emich in 1828. For that originated Castle Waldleiningen . A replica of Abbotsford , the home of the world famous Scottish poet Walter Scott .

literature

• Thomas Gehrlein: The Leiningen house. 900 years of total history with ancestral sequences. German princely houses. Issue 32.Börde Verlag, Werl 2011, ISBN 978-3-9811993-9-0 , p. 25

Web links

• Princely succession of the House of Leiningen
• House Leiningen in Online Gotha by Paul Theroff