Wilhelm Bentinck

Wilhelm Bentinck - painting by Jean-Étienne Liotard , 1750

Wilhelm (also William) Graf (von) Bentinck , Lord of Rhoon and Pendrecht (born November 6, 1704 in Whitehall - London , † October 13, 1774 in The Hague ), was a nobleman and diplomat of Dutch - English origin. For his wedding to Charlotte Sophie Countess of Aldenburg , he was raised to the rank of German Count and came into the possession of the Kniphausen rulership as heir and sovereign , became noble lord of Varel and lord of Doorwerth .

Life

origin

Bentinck came from the Dutch noble family Bentinck from the Duchy of Geldern . The family had been part of the knighthood there since 1377 . He was born in 1704 as the second son of Johann Wilhelm Bentinck , Count of Portland, Lord of Rhoon and Pendrecht (Netherlands). His father was brought up at the court of William of Orange (the future King William III of England ), was close friends with him and prepared William's landing in England in 1687/1688, which then led to the Glorious Revolution . Bentinck's father finally accompanied Wilhelm to England in 1688 and in 1689 became a member of the Privy Council and was raised to the rank of Earl of Portland and thus to the English nobility . Due to extensive land holdings with the Republic of the Seven United Provinces , the family remained closely connected to it. Therefore Bentinck, who as the second son would not inherit the English title, first went back to the Netherlands. There, probably due to his origins and high social position, he quickly rose to the position of President of the Council of the States of Holland and Friesland . His main residence was Zorgvliet Castle near The Hague.

Connection to the Aldenburg house

Around 1730, the German Count Anton II of Aldenburg got into financial difficulties and was forced to borrow from various donors. Bentinck took over the guarantee for the large sum of money borrowed in Holland and was thus the main creditor, so that Anton II felt strongly committed to him. Therefore, he agreed to the apparently wanted by Bentinck marriage to Anton's daughter, Charlotte Sophie (1715-1800). In order to compensate for Bentinck's low position, Emperor Charles VI awarded him . on December 29, 1732 the title of Imperial Count. Bentinck was thus on an equal footing with his future wife and, after the marriage, he and the Aldenburg count daughter could inherit her rule over the Aldenburg possessions of Varel and Kniphausen. Bentinck founded the Aldenburg-Bentinck family on the one hand and also became a member of the German nobility . As a result, he and his wife initially moved back to The Hague, where the couple had their two sons Christian Friedrich (1734–1768) and Johann Albrecht (1737–1775). Because of the great difference between the two characters, however, the marriage was under an unfortunate star from the start. After the death of her father (1738), Charlotte Sophie finally left her family and divorced her husband on April 15, 1740. Bentick's claims to the rule of his former wife remained unaffected and he was to be compensated in the form of an appanage . Since his ex-wife refused to pay him this, as well as the interest payments on the borrowed money from her father, Bentinck sued her before the Reichshofrat with the support of the Danish King Christian V , who at the time had guaranteed the marriage contract between the now warring spouses. With the consent of the emperor, he succeeded in setting up a commission of inquiry under Christian V to determine the debts of the Count's Aldenburg house. This established that Charlotte Sophie had lived beyond her means for years and, in order to be able to at least partially satisfy the claims of the creditors, placed the Aldenburg property, insofar as it was open to the Danish government, under compulsory administration. The dispute between the warring spouses over the Aldenburg German possessions temporarily ended in 1757 with the appointment of the two sons Christian Friedrich Anton Wilhelm and Johann Albert Bentinck to the Aldenburg inheritance.

Further work

Wilhelm Bentinck's house at 7 Lange Voorhout in The Hague. Print by Paulus Constantijn la Fargue, 1751.

In 1747 William IV of Orange was appointed heir to all seven Dutch provinces. In contrast, Dutch townspeople, democrats and republicans, led by the ruling provincial governors , organized themselves in the Patriot Party to prevent the Netherlands from being transformed into an absolutist hereditary monarchy. Bentinck was involved as one of the leaders of the Orangists on the side of Wilhelm IV. When French troops invaded the Netherlands in the course of the War of the Austrian Succession , Bentinck cleverly used the mood of the population, who accused the governors of collaborating with the French occupiers in order to defeat them To pull the side of the orangists, so that Wilhelm IV could finally prevail. At the same time he carried out diplomatic missions against the French in England on behalf of Wilhelm IV in 1747 and represented Dutch interests as a diplomat during the peace treaty of Aachen in 1748. His efforts to renew the barrier treaty with Austria were unsuccessful, however.

In 1749/50 he stayed in Vienna for almost a year in order to find support in the private trials against his former wife, but also to explore Austria's foreign policy intentions towards the naval powers France and England and Austria's stance against Prussia . His notes on these explorations were later published. In addition, Bentinck tried again on behalf of Wilhelm IV to win over Field Marshal Ludwig Ernst von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel , who was in Austrian service, for the Dutch army, which he succeeded in November 1750.

In 1751 Wilhelm IV died unexpectedly and his wife Anna of England took over the rule for the still underage Wilhelm V. Although he had supported the takeover of government by the queen, Bentinck's influence waned noticeably. In addition, Ludwig Ernst von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, whom he brought to the Netherlands, gained more and more power, so that Bentinck withdrew to his Dutch estate, where he finally died in 1774.

progeny

Bentinck had two sons with his wife Charlotte Sophie. The elder, Christian Friedrich (1734–1768), had already been installed in 1757 to end his parents' disputes in the inheritance of the estates in the Netherlands and northwestern Germany and was to succeed Bentinck as Count of Bentinck. But he died before his father. The property passed to the son of Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Friedrich Bentinck (1762-1835) and was administered by custodian until he came of age in 1787. The second son Johann Albrecht (1737–1775) joined the British Navy , became an officer and member of parliament and distinguished himself as the inventor of nautical instruments.

Fonts

• Notes of Count William Bentinck about Maria Theresa. With an introduction to Austrian politics in the years 1749-1755. Edited by Adolf Beer. Vienna. 1871.

literature

• Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 65-66 ( online ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Powicke & Fryde: Handbook of British Chronology. Second Edition, London, 1961, p. 445
2. ^ Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek . Short biography of Willem Bentinck (in Dutch). Page 302.
3. ^ Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek. Short biography of Willem Bentinck (in Dutch). Page 303.
4. ^ Biography of Wilhelm Gustav Friedrich Bentinck. In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg. Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 66-67.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Bentinck in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Wilhelm Bentinck  in the German Digital Library