Grand Duke of Luxembourg | |
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Groussherzog vu Lëtzebuerg Grand-duc de Luxembourg | |
![]() Arms of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg | |
![]() Standard of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg | |
Style | His Royal Highness |
Type | Head of state |
Residence | Berg Castle, Colmar-Berg |
Seat | Grand Ducal Palace, Luxembourg City |
Constituting instrument | Constitution of Luxembourg |
First holder | William I, King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxembourg |
Succession | Guillaume, Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg |
Website | monarchie |
The Grand Duke of Luxembourg [a] is the head of state of Luxembourg. Luxembourg has been a grand duchy since 15 March 1815, when it was created from territory of the former Duchy of Luxembourg. It was in personal union with the United Kingdom of the Netherlands until 1890 under the House of Orange-Nassau. Luxembourg is the world's only sovereign Grand Duchy and since 1815, there have been nine monarchs, including the incumbent, Henri.
The constitution of Luxembourg defines the grand duke's position:
After a constitutional change (to article 34) in December 2008 resulting from Henri's refusal to assent to a law legalizing euthanasia, laws now no longer require the grand duke's formal assent (implying "approval") [2] but his task of promulgating the law as chief executive remains.
The grand duke does not receive a salary, but the grand ducal family receives annually 300,000 gold francs (€281,000) for grand ducal functions. [3] In 2017, the Luxembourg budget included €10.1 million for the grand duke's household costs. [4]
Succession to the throne was governed by Salic law, as dictated by the Nassau Family Pact, first adopted on 30 June 1783. [1] The right to reign over Luxembourg was until June 2011 passed by agnatic-cognatic primogeniture within the House of Nassau, as stipulated under the 1815 Final Act of the Congress of Vienna and as confirmed by the 1867 Treaty of London. [1] The Nassau Family Pact itself can be amended by the usual legislative process, having been so on 10 July 1907 to exclude the Count of Merenberg branch of the House, which was descended from a morganatic marriage. [5]
An heir apparent may be granted the style 'hereditary grand duke'. The current heir apparent is Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume. In June 2011, agnatic primogeniture was replaced with absolute primogeniture, allowing any legitimate female descendants within the House of Nassau to be included in the line of succession. [6]
The traditional titulatures of the Grand Duke are By the Grace of God, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Duke of Nassau, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Count of Sayn, Königstein, Katzenelnbogen and Diez, Burgrave of Hammerstein, Lord of Mahlberg, Wiesbaden, Idstein, Merenberg, Limburg and Eppstein .
It should, however, be noted that many of the titles are held without regard to the strict rules of Salic inheritance and that most, save for Grand Duke of Luxembourg and Duke of Nassau, are simply not used.
Image | Name | Date of birth | Date of death | Reign | Relationship with predecessor |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | William I Willem Frederik (Prince William VI of Orange) | 24 August 1772 | 12 December 1843 | 15 March 1815 – 7 October 1840 | Francis' third cousin and Anne, Duchess of Luxembourg's direct descendant |
![]() | William II Willem Frederik George Lodewijk | 6 December 1792 | 17 March 1849 | 7 October 1840 – 17 March 1849 | Son of William I |
![]() | William III Willem Alexander Paul Frederik Lodewijk | 17 February 1817 | 23 November 1890 | 17 March 1849 – 23 November 1890 | Son of William II |
Under the 1783 Nassau Family Pact, those territories of the Nassau family in the Holy Roman Empire at the time of the pact (Luxembourg and Nassau) were bound by semi-Salic law, which allowed inheritance by females or through the female line only upon extinction of male members of the dynasty. When William III died leaving only his daughter Wilhelmina as an heir, the crown of the Netherlands, not being bound by the family pact, passed to Wilhelmina. However, the crown of Luxembourg passed to a male of another branch of the House of Nassau: Adolphe, the dispossessed Duke of Nassau and head of the branch of Nassau-Weilburg.
In 1905, Grand Duke Adolphe's younger half-brother, Prince Nikolaus Wilhelm of Nassau, died, having left a son Georg Nikolaus, Count von Merenberg who was, however, the product of a morganatic marriage, and therefore not legally a member of the House of Nassau. In 1907, Adolphe's only son, William IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, obtained passage of a law confirming the right of his eldest daughter, Marie-Adélaïde, to succeed to the throne in virtue of the absence of any remaining dynastic males of the House of Nassau, as originally stipulated in the Nassau Family Pact. She became the grand duchy's first reigning female monarch upon her father's death in 1912, and upon her own abdication in 1919, was succeeded by her younger sister Charlotte, who married Felix of Bourbon-Parma, a prince of the former Duchy of Parma. Charlotte's descendants have since reigned as the continued dynasty of Nassau, and also constitute a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon-Parma.
Name and reign | Portrait | Birth | Family and Marriages | Death | Succession right |
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Adolphe 23 November 1890 – 17 November 1905 | ![]() | 24 July 1817 Wiesbaden (Prussia) | (1) Grand Duchess Elizabeth 31 January 1844 [1 child (stillborn)] (2) Grand Duchess Adelheid-Marie 23 April 1851 [5 children] | 17 November 1905 (88 years) Colmar-Berg | Third cousin of William III |
William IV 17 November 1905 – 25 February 1912 | ![]() | 22 April 1852 Wiesbaden (Prussia) | Grand Duchess Marie Anne [6 children] | 25 February 1912 (59 years) Colmar-Berg | Son of Adolphe |
Marie-Adélaïde 25 February 1912 – 14 January 1919 (abdicated) | ![]() | 14 June 1894 Colmar-Berg | Unmarried [childless] | 24 January 1924 (29 years) Lenggries (Germany) | Daughter of William IV |
Charlotte 14 January 1919 – 12 November 1964 (abdicated) | ![]() | 23 January 1896 Colmar-Berg | Prince Felix 6 November 1919 [6 children] | 9 July 1985 (89 years) Fischbach | Daughter of William IV / Sister of Marie-Adélaïde |
Jean 12 November 1964 – 7 October 2000 (abdicated) | ![]() | 5 January 1921 Colmar-Berg | Grand Duchess Joséphine Charlotte 9 April 1953 [5 children] | 23 April 2019 (98 years) Luxembourg City | Son of Charlotte |
Henri 7 October 2000 – present | ![]() | 16 April 1955 Betzdorf | Grand Duchess Maria Teresa 4/14 February 1981 [5 children] | Living (69 years) | Son of Jean |
The grand ducal family of Luxembourg constitutes the House of Luxembourg-Nassau, headed by the sovereign grand duke, and in which the throne of the grand duchy is hereditary. It consists of heirs and descendants of the House of Nassau-Weilburg, whose sovereign territories passed cognatically from the House of Nassau to the House of Bourbon-Parma, itself a branch of the Spanish royal house which is agnatically a cadet branch of the House of Capet that originated in France, itself a derivative dynasty from the Robertians and the Karlings and the founding house of the Capetian dynasty.
Adolphe was Grand Duke of Luxembourg from 23 November 1890 to his death on 17 November 1905. The first grand duke from the House of Nassau-Weilburg, he succeeded King William III of the Netherlands, ending the personal union between the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Adolphe was Duke of Nassau from 20 August 1839 to 20 September 1866, when the Duchy was annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia.
Jean was the Grand Duke of Luxembourg from 1964 until his abdication in 2000. He was the first Grand Duke of Luxembourg of French agnatic descent.
William IV was Grand Duke of Luxembourg from 17 November 1905 until his death in 1912. He succeeded his father, Adolphe. Like his father, William mostly stayed out of politics despite being vested with considerable power on paper by the Constitution.
Charlotte was Grand Duchess of Luxembourg from 14 January 1919 until her abdication on 12 November 1964. Her reign is the longest of any Luxembourgish monarch since 1815 when the country was elevated to a Grand Duchy.
Prince Félix of Luxembourg, Prince of Bourbon-Parma and Prince of Nassau is the second son of Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Maria Teresa, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. He is currently fourth in the line of succession to the throne of Luxembourg.
A cadet branch consists of the male-line descendants of a monarch's or patriarch's younger sons (cadets). In the ruling dynasties and noble families of much of Europe and Asia, the family's major assets have historically been passed from a father to his firstborn son in what is known as primogeniture; younger sons, the cadets, inherited less wealth and authority to pass on to future generations of descendants.
The Nassau Family Pact was a mutual pact of inheritance and succession made in 1783 by princes of the House of Nassau. It confirmed that Salic Law was to operate in favor of all the agnatic lines of the family, specifically the two senior surviving lines which had originated in the Middle Ages, the Walramian and the Ottonian. The pact chiefly provided that in case of one of these lines becoming extinct, the other would succeed in its hereditary Nassau lands.
Archduchess Marie-Astrid of Austria is the elder daughter and eldest child of Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Princess Joséphine-Charlotte of Belgium, and the wife of Archduke Carl Christian of Austria, grandson of the last Austrian Emperor, Karl I.
Count of Merenberg is a hereditary title of nobility that was bestowed in 1868 by the reigning Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont, George Victor, upon the morganatic wife and male-line descendants of Prince Nikolaus Wilhelm of Nassau (1832–1905), who married Natalia Alexandrovna Pushkina (1836–1913), former wife of Russian general Mikhail Leontievich von Dubelt.
Since 2011, the crown of Luxembourg descends according to absolute primogeniture among Grand Duke Henri's descendants and according to agnatic primogeniture among other dynasts.
Wilhelm was joint sovereign Duke of Nassau, along with his father's cousin Frederick Augustus, reigning from 1816 until 1839. He was also sovereign Prince of Nassau-Weilburg from 1816 until its incorporation into the duchy of Nassau.
The Order of the Gold Lion of the House of Nassau is a chivalric order shared by the two branches of the House of Nassau.
The House of Bourbon-Parma is a cadet branch of the Spanish royal family, whose members once ruled as King of Etruria and as Duke of Parma and Piacenza, Guastalla, and Lucca. The House descended from the French Capetian dynasty in male line. Its name of Bourbon-Parma comes from the main name (Bourbon) and the other (Parma) from the title of Duke of Parma. The title was held by the Spanish Bourbons, as the founder Philip, Duke of Parma was the great-grandson of Ranuccio II Farnese, Duke of Parma. The House of Bourbon-Parma is today the Sovereign House of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (agnatically) and all members of the Grand Ducal Family of Luxembourg are members of the House of Bourbon-Parma with the title of "Princes/Princesses" and the predicate of Royal Highness.
Prince Nikolaus Wilhelm of Nassau was a German prince, military officer and parliamentarian. He was the youngest son of William, Duke of Nassau, and the only son by his second wife Princess Pauline of Württemberg.
Princess Adelheid-Marie of Anhalt-Dessau was a Princess of Anhalt-Dessau and member of the House of Ascania. As the wife of Adolphe of Nassau, she was Duchess of Nassau from 1851 until 1866 and Grand Duchess of Luxembourg from 1890 until 1905.
Clotilde Gräfin von Merenberg is a German psychiatrist and the last patrilineal descendant of the House of Nassau. She is a descendant of Emperor Alexander II of Russia and of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.
Prince Robert of Luxembourg, Prince of Bourbon-Parma, Prince of Nassau, is a member of the Grand Ducal Family of Luxembourg. He is a paternal first cousin of Henri, the reigning grand duke of Luxembourg.