Frederick Ferdinand, Duke of Anhalt-Köthen

Frederick Ferdinand, Duke of Anhalt-Köthen (b. Pless, 25 June 1769 - d. Köthen, 23 August 1830), was a German prince member of the House of Ascania, ruler of the Principality of Anhalt-Pless and, since 1818, ruler of the Duchy of Anhalt-Köthen.

He was the second son of Frederick Erdmann, Prince of Anhalt-Pless by his wife Louise Ferdinande, daughter of Henry Ernest, Count of Stolberg-Wernigerode.

Life

In 1786 he joined to the Prussian army, where he obtain the rank of "Generalmajor". From 1792 to 1794, he fight in the military campaigns in the Rhine.

After the death of his father and the resignation of his older brother to his rights (1797), Frederick Ferdinand inherited Pless, but in 1803 he returned to the Prussian army.

In Lindenau bei Heiligenbeil on 20 August 1803 Frederick Ferdinand married firstly with Maria Dorothea Henriette Louise (b. Lindenau, 28 September 1783 - d. Pless, 24 November 1803), daughter of Frederick Karl Louis, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck and by birth Princess of Denmark as a descendant in male line of King Christian III. The union only lasted three months until Louise's death.

After the Battle of Jena, he is at the head of his regiment at Zehdenick by the enemy lines, but then he was forced to withdraw to Bohemia in order to ensure the Austrians to disarm. Soon afterwards he retired and made a trip to Holland and France before his return to Pless. During the War of the Sixth Coalition in 1813, he was Commander of the Silesian contryside.

In Berlin on 20 May 1816 Frederick Ferdinand married secondly with Countess Julie of Brandenburg (b. Neuchatel, 4 January 1793 - d. Vienna, 29 January 1848), illegitimate daughter of King Frederick William II of Prussia.

When the young Duke Louis Augustus of Anhalt-Köthen died without direct heirs in 1818 Frederick Ferdinand, as his closest male relative, succeeded him in the Duchy. Shortly after, he ceded Anhalt-Pless to his brother Henry.

During a trip to Paris in 1825, Frederick Ferdinand and his wife converted to the Catholic Church. His attemps to convert Köthen to the catholic faith found highly resistance. As confessor, the Duke chose the belgan jesuit Peter Jan Beckx.

In Grimschleben near Nienburg he called the clasic architect Gottfried Bandhauer to realized some reforms into his palace. By 1828 he founded a colony in South Ukraine called "Askania-Nova", ubicated in the steppes of Tauri, in the northern peninsula of Crimea.

Under his government, Bandhauer also build (since 1823 until 1828) the "Ferdinandsbau" in the Schloss Köthen, the monastery and hospital of the Brothers of Mercy (German: "Barmherzigen Brüder") in 1829 and the catholic Church of St.Mary (German: "Kirche St. Maria") in 1830, in whose crypt Frederick Ferdinand was buried shortly after.

On his death without issue, he was succeeded by his brother Henry.