Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg

Adolphe I, Grand Duke of Luxembourg (Adolph Wilhelm August Karl Friedrich of Nassau-Weilburg) (24 July 1817 – 17 November 1905) was the last Duke of Nassau, and the fourth Grand Duke of Luxembourg.

He was a son of Wilhelm, Duke of Nassau (1792 - 1839) and his first wife Charlotte Luise Friederike of Saxe-Altenburg. Adolphe's half-sister, Sophia of Nassau, married King Oscar II of Sweden.

Adolph became Duke of Nassau on 30 August 1839, after the death of his father. He supported the Austrian Empire in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. After Austria's defeat, Nassau was annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia.

In 1879, Adolphe's niece Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, the daughter of another of his half-sisters, married her distant relative King William III of the Netherlands. In 1890, their only daughter Wilhelmina succeeded to the Dutch throne, but was excluded from the succession to Luxembourg by the Salic Law. The Grand Duchy, which had been linked to the Netherlands since 1815, passed to the Dutch royal family's distant relative - the dispossessed Duke Adolphe. The Grand Dukes of Luxembourg are still descendants of Adolphe, although through female lines.

On 31 January 1844, Adolph married Grand Duchess Elizabeth Mikhailovna of Russia, niece of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia. She died less than a year afterwards in childbirth with a stillborn daughter.

On 23 April 1851, he remarried Princess Adelheid-Marie of Anhalt-Dessau (25 December 1833-24 November 1916), a daughter of Friedrich, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau. They had five children, of whom only two lived to the age of eighteen and to become prince and princess of Luxembourg.

*Prince William (1852–1912)
*Prince Friedrich (28 September 1854-23 October 1855)
*Princess Marie (14 November 1857-28 December 1857)
*Prince Franz (30 January 1859-2 April 1875 Vienna)
*Princess Hilda Charlotte Wilhelmine (1864 - 1952), married HRH Friedrich II, Grand Duke of Baden.

In 1892, Grand Duke Adolphe conferred the hereditary title Count of Wisborg on his Swedish nephew, Oscar, who had lost his Swedish titles after marrying without his father's approval. Wisborg (also spelt Visborg) was the old castle in the citry of Visby within Prince Oscar's lost Dukedom of Gotland, but the title itself was created in the nobiliy of Luxembourg.

Ancestors