Good morning Gutt, Hoping to be able to clarify a bit ...
Nassau castle at 10 miles SE of the city Koblence was built around 1125. The town by the same name grew in its shadow. The family of counts took the name Nassau around 1159/1160.
In 1255 the family was split into 2 lines,
the elder brother was Walram, the younger Otto
They continued to split up during the following centuries, sometimes a line would die out and they would be reunited.
Walram s son was Adolf, count of Nassau, in 1292 he was elected king of Germany,
his opponent was Albrecht of Habsburg. Adolf made a treaty with England against France. He never interfered with their war, but he took sudsidaries from both of them. In 1298 he was dethroned and killed in a battle.
The younger line, Otto s descendants, in 1530 inherited the principality Orange near Avignon in France. In 1544 Wilhelm I of Nassau-Dillenburg became Fuerst/prince of Orange. He founded the actual , house of Orange-Nassau ,
that since 1815 provides the monarchs of the Netherlands.
In 1652 the counts of Nassau-Diez, those of Nassau-Dillenburg and of Nassau-Siegen were made Fuerst (princes). They were a set of cousins descending from 4 brothers (out of their father s 25 children out of three matrimonies.
The youngest of the 4 brothers Johann Ludwig, born in 1590, became the first Fuerst/prince (Fuerst von Nassau-Hadamar) in 1590, his elder brother Ernst Casimir was dead by then, so his son Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Casimir was made prince in 1652 (Fuerst von Nassau-Dietz) later royal line of the Nether-
lands), as well as brother Georg, so his son Ludwig Heinrich was made Fuerst of Nassau-Dillenburg; and brother Johann had passed by in 1623 as well: two of his grandsons were made Fuerst/prince in 1652 and 1664.
In 1806 Friedrich Wilhelm of the Weilburg-line, a descendant of the elder Walram-line, was made Herzog/duke. His grandson Adolf in 1866 lost his German territory to Prussia, but he became the first Grossherzog/grandduke of Luxemburg. As his son Wilhelm had five daughters, Charlotte inherited the title in 1919, married prince Felix of Bourbon-Parma and thus continued the house of Luxemburg.
The book of Wilhelm Zierer, Europas Fuerstenhaeuser, vgs-Verlagsgesellschaft, Koeln 1995 on p. 200/201 lists the ranking of the princes/Fuersten of the Austrian and the German Kaiserreich/Empire:
I.
Austrian Kaiser - German Kaiser (emperors)
II.
Koenige (kings) of
Preussen (Prussia), Bayern (Bavaria), Sachsen (Saxony), Wuerttemberg
III.
Grossherzoege (granddukes) of
Baden, Hessen, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Sachasen-Weimar, Mecklenburg-Strelitz,
Oldenburg
IV.
Herzoege (dukes) of
Braunschweig, Sachsen-Meiningen, Sachsen-Altenburg, Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha,
Anhalt
V.
Fuersten (princes) of
Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Waldeck, Reuss (elder line),
Reuss (younger line), Schaumburg-Lippe, Lippe
The Fuersten/prines in Austria:
Arenberg, Lobkowitz, Salm-Salm, SAlm-Kyrburg, Dietrichstein, Auersperg, Fuerstenberg, SChwarzenberg, Thurn-Taxis
If the list-managers let me I would continue with the next set of Fuersten/
princes ...
take care
Falk Liebezeit
Diepholz
"Wilfried Petersen" <Wilfried.Petersen@t-online.de> schrieb: