Karl Leopold (Mecklenburg)

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Duke Karl Leopold

Karl Leopold, Duke of Mecklenburg [-Schwerin] (born November 26, 1678 in Grabow ; † November 28, 1747 in Dömitz ) was (ruling) Duke of Mecklenburg in the Mecklenburg-Schwerin region .

Origin and life 1678 to 1713

Karl Leopold was born the second son of Duke Friedrich zu Mecklenburg (1638–1688) and Christine Wilhelmine von Hessen-Homburg (1653–1722) and was a nephew of the childless reigning Duke Christian Ludwig I (1623–1692). Karl Leopold's older brother Friedrich Wilhelm (I) (1675-1713) succeeded his uncle on June 21, 1692 as Duke. With the Hamburg Treaty of 1701 , Friedrich Wilhelm managed to end the quarrels within the Mecklenburg ducal house. The two principal principalities of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Mecklenburg-Schwerin , which existed until 1918, were formed and the right of succession to the firstborn was introduced. Karl Leopold was awarded an allowance of 15,000 Reichstalers and the income from the Doberan office. He made several journeys to France, England, the Netherlands and the German territories and then lived for a long time in Hamburg.

Karl Leopold took part in the campaigns of the Swedish King Karl XII. part. Since the man from Mecklenburg admired the Swedish king not only as an absolute power politician, but also imitated his clothes, gestures and speech, Karl Leopold quickly acquired the reputation of an eccentric. Prince Eugene disrespectfully described him as "the monkey Karl XII." However, the Swedish king respected the Mecklenburg man as a man with courage and understanding. In the summer of 1713, Karl Leopold succeeded his late brother Friedrich Wilhelm (I) as the (ruling) duke in the Mecklenburg-Schwerin region.

The conflict with the estates 1713-1717

Karl Leopold tried to enforce sovereign, absolutist sovereignty with great severity against the knighthood and against Rostock, allied with them. He asked the estates to grant him additional taxes in order to build up a standing army, then forced the Rostock council to renounce his privileges and ruthlessly enforced his tax claims against the knighthood. Mecklenburg-Schwerin was a staging area and theater of war during the Northern War, and with the help of a standing army, Karl Leopold intended to end the stay of foreign troops in Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

The basis of his tax claims was the “Consumption and Tax Regulations” that his brother Friedrich Wilhelm had enacted in 1708 to overcome the consequences of the Thirty Years' War (1618 to 1648) and the Northern War (1700 to 1721). In addition to the taxation of the knighthood and the clergy, the “Consumption and Tax Code” included the abolition of the peasants' bondage dependence on their landlords. The peasants' serfdom was to be converted into lease, and forced labor was to be replaced by cash benefits. This created a sharp contrast between the duke and the estates.

The chief negotiator of the estates was Count Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff (1649–1726), himself a member of the Mecklenburg knighthood and long-time chief minister of the Elector of Hanover. Due to the personal union between the Electorate of Hanover and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which had existed since 1714, the conflict between the Mecklenburg sovereign and the estates took on European dimensions. Karl Leopold's allies in the struggle against knighthood were the citizens of the small towns, who wanted to maintain their guild privileges and limit the commercial activities of the knighthood.

In 1716, Karl Leopold married Katharina Ivanovna, a half-niece of Russian Tsar Peter I, in Danzig . His marriage contract was supplemented by an alliance agreement that allowed Russia to station troops in northern Germany. Karl Leopold needed the Russian troops to end the conflict with the knighthood, and in the winter of 1716/17 40,000 Russian soldiers - for the first time on German soil - set up their quarters in the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Count Bernstorff suffered considerable damage on his Russian-occupied lands and therefore presented the lawsuits of the Mecklenburg estates against their sovereigns in Vienna and London.

The execution of the Reich from 1717 to 1728

As a result of the complaints of the Mecklenburg estates before the head of the empire, on the one hand against Karl Leopold's violations of the law, on the other hand against his autocratic aspirations, Emperor Karl VI. 1717 the execution of the Reich against the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The director of the Lower Saxony Reich Circle, Elector Georg Ludwig von Hanover , was charged with carrying out the execution of the Reich . This enabled Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff to combine the interests of the Mecklenburg knighthood with the influence of a foreign power.

The execution of the Reich execution took place in the spring of 1719. Karl Leopold's power wavered, but he still had considerable influence over citizens, peasants and clergy. The latter have been on the side of the duke again since 1718, after he had withdrawn their tax liability. Karl Leopold moved his seat of government to Dömitz, soon afterwards left the country and went to Danzig outside the imperial borders. The government in Mecklenburg-Schwerin was taken over by the Elector of Hanover and the King in Prussia. After the death of George I (1727) the execution of the Reich was lifted.

Although the emperor had the power to execute the execution of the empire, he lacked the power and the means to remove the foreign troops from Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The Elector of Hanover and the King in Prussia pressed for payment of the costs they had incurred in the execution of the Reich. Since the conflict initially failed to settle, Karl Leopold was finally deposed in 1728 by the Reichshofrat in Vienna in favor of his brother Christian Ludwig II .

Mecklenburg-Schwerin after the Reich execution

The long-term consequences of the execution of the Reich resulted in the pledging of eight offices to the elector of Hanover and four offices to the Prussian king. The political and administrative fragmentation of the country was thereby exacerbated, the power of the duke was considerably restricted and the population was additionally burdened. The pledging of the four offices to Prussia did not end until 1787.

Karl Leopold rejected every compromise proposal from Charles VI. from. The embittered man failed in an attempt in 1733 with the help of a contingent of citizens and farmers, but also with Prussian support, to regain rule in Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Politically sidelined, quarreling with his fate and living in constant conflict with the “whole world” , Karl Leopold finally died on November 28, 1747 in Dömitz.

Karl Leopold's brother and successor Christian Ludwig II. (1683–1756) concluded in 1755 with the estates the state constitutional inheritance settlement . This comparison of inheritance led to the consolidation of the power of the Mecklenburg knighthood and preserved the backwardness of the country until the end of the monarchy in Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1918).

Married life

In 1708, Karl Leopold married Sophie Hedwig von Nassau-Dietz (1690–1734), daughter of Heinrich Casimir II von Nassau-Dietz (1657–1696) and sister of the Orange heir Johann Wilhelm Friso (1687–1711), but this marriage was already over Divorced in 1710.

On June 7, 1710, Karl Leopold was quietly married in Doberan with Christine Dorothea von Lepel ( morganatic ). This was a daughter of the ducal court master of Mecklenburg, later Prince-Bishop Eutinschen court marshal Klaus Friedrich von Lepel († January 1, 1706) from his third marriage to Leveke von Plessen (September 21, 1664; † February 5, 1732). This second marriage was not a happy one for the Duke. Christine soon left him and went back to her mother in Lübeck. On October 2, 1711, the marriage was divorced. Christine Dorothea von Lepel remarried with the Mecklenburg junior chamberlain, Hans Christoph von Bibow, and is said to have died in 1728.

In 1716, Karl Leopold and Katharina Ivanovna of Russia (1691–1733) married in Danzig. Katharina Ivanovna was a daughter of Tsar Ivan V. The couple had a daughter Anna Leopoldowna , who was regent of the Russian Empire in 1740/41 for their underage son Ivan VI. has been. The marriage was unhappy, and the quarrelsome duke was often rude, and at times even brutal, with his wife. In 1722 Katharina Ivanovna left her husband with her daughter and returned to Russia forever.

literature

Web links

Commons : Karl Leopold (Mecklenburg)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

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  1. ↑ Pecar, Andreas: Proceedings: Constitution and reality of life. The regional constitutional comparison of inheritance from 1755 in its time, Rostock April 22, 2005 - April 23, 2005
  2. ↑ Further Siegrid Westphal : The marriage matter of Duke Karl Leopold of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Sophia Hedwig of Nassau-Dietz before the Reichshofrat. In: marriage. Standard. 20 (2009), No. 3, pp. 45-52.
  3. ^ Friedrich Wigger : Family tables of the Grand Ducal House of Meklenburg . In: Yearbooks of the Association for Mecklenburg History and Archeology 50 (1885), p. 111ff ( digitized version )
predecessor Office successor
Friedrich Wilhelm (I.) Duke of Mecklenburg [-Schwerin]
1713–1728 		Christian Ludwig II.
personal data
SURNAME Karl Leopold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1678
PLACE OF BIRTH Grabow
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1747
Place of death Doemitz