Georg Wilhelm (Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld)

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Count Palatine and Duke Georg Wilhelm von Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld
Georg Wilhelm's coat of arms

Georg Wilhelm von Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld (born August 6, 1591 in Ansbach , † December 25, 1669 in Birkenfeld ), Count Palatine near the Rhine , Duke in Bavaria , Count of Veldenz and Sponheim, was Count Palatine and Duke of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld .

Life

Georg Wilhelm was the eldest son of the Count Palatine and Duke Karl I of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld (1560–1600) from his marriage to Dorothea (1570–1640), daughter of Duke Wilhelm V of Braunschweig-Lüneburg .

Georg Wilhelm completed the expansion of Birkenfeld Castle, which his father had started and in 1669 laid the foundation stone for the castle chapel there. He was considered an economical and prudent ruler, but due to the Thirty Years' War he could not achieve much. In 1666 he called Günter Heyler to Birkenfeld as court preacher.

He was accepted as a member of the Fruitful Society under the company name Der Andere .

Together with Margrave Wilhelm von Baden , Georg Wilhelm ruled the county of Sponheim from 1616 , where he was able to fend off the counter-reformation efforts of his co-regent with difficulty.

Marriages and offspring

Georg Wilhelm married Dorothea (1586–1625), daughter of Count Otto zu Solms-Sonnenwalde , in his first marriage in Neuenstein in 1616 and had the following children with her:

⚭ 1644 Prince Anton Günther I of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen (1620–1666)
⚭ 1658 Countess Margarete Hedwig von Hohenlohe-Neuenstein (1625–1676)

After the death of his first wife, he married Juliane (1616–1647), daughter of the wild and Rhine Count Johann zu Salm in Grumbach and Rheingrafenstein on November 30, 1641 at Schloss Birkenfeld . However, the marriage was divorced on November 18, 1642, after Juliane gave birth to a child on February 14, 1642, which apparently had fathered before the marriage and whose father was not Georg Wilhelm, but Rhine Count Johann Ludwig von Salm-Dhaun .

On March 8, 1649, he married Countess Anna Elisabeth (1603–1673), daughter of Count Ludwig Eberhard zu Oettingen-Oettingen , at Harburg Castle ; this marriage remained childless.

literature

  • H. Rodewald: Count Palatine Georg Wilhelm v. Birkenfeld and his struggles for Lutheranism in the rear county of Sponheim in the years 1629–1630 , Heuser, 1925
  • Winfried Dotzauer: History of the Nahe-Hunsrück area from the beginnings to the French Revolution , Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001, p. 351
  • Annual report [afterw.] Trier annual reports , 1858, p. 50 digitized

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Burg Birkenfeld ( Memento from July 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Lars G. Svensson: The history of the Bibliotheca Bipontina , Institute for Palatinate History and Folklore, 2002, p. 127
  3. ^ Johann Samuel Publication: General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts , Part 2, Volume 4, Gleditsch, 1828, p. 126 digitized
  4. ↑ Heinrich Rodewald : Castle Birckenfeld. Life and goings-on at a small royal residence 1584–1717. Enke, Birkenfeld [1927], pp. 42-55.
predecessor Office successor
Charles I. Duke of Pfalz-Birkenfeld
1600–1669 		Charles II Otto
personal data
SURNAME Georg Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld, Georg Wilhelm von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Count Palatine and Duke of Pfalz-Birkenfeld
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1591
PLACE OF BIRTH Ansbach
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1669
Place of death Birch field