Grand duke
Grand Duke (French: Grand -duc, Eng. Grand duke, Italian GRANDUCA, Latin magnus dux ) is a title of prince in rank between Duke and King. His country is a Grand Duchy.
In the late Byzantine Empire the title of a Grand Duke than Megas doux existed in the military hierarchy.
Pope Pius V gave in 1569 to the Duke Cosimo I of Florence the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany, was connected with the Royal since 1699 the title of sovereignty. By the early 19th century Tuscany was the first and only Grand Duchy in the world. After the extinction of the Medici in 1737 fell Title and country as a result of a decision of the European powers (later Holy Roman Emperor Franz I. ), to the previous Duke of Lorraine, Francis Stephen. As the husband of the Habsburg heiress Maria Theresa, he was the progenitor of the imperial House of Habsburg- Lorraine. After his death reigned from 1765 intermittently until 1859 Sekundogenitur this dynasty the Grand Duchy of Tuscany before it went up in 1860 in the united Kingdom of Italy.
Only Napoleon allowed in the early 19th century, the spread of the Grand Duke title - especially in his German spheres of influence, where under his leadership built the Rhine Confederation. Taking into account First was the claims of Caroline Bonaparte, Napoleon's sister, only provided that the brother of the emperor, Joachim Murat, since March 15, 1806 Duke of Cleves and Berg, in establishing the Confederation of the Rhine in the summer of 1806, the dignity of Grand Duke should accept of Cleves and Berg. But the Landgrave of Hesse -Darmstadt, the Elector of Baden and the Elector of Würzburg then passed it to accept as sovereign princes this item in the founding of the Confederation of the Rhine. 1810 another worldly Grand Duchy of Frankfurt was for the Prince Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine, the Regensburg Prince-Archbishop Karl Theodor von Dalberg, created. With the fall of Napoleon, the grand duchies of Berg and Frankfurt (1813 ) and Würzburg ( 1814) went under again, the grand duchies of Baden and Hesse passed, however, continued until 1918.
The provisions of the Vienna Congress in 1815 also raised other German princes to Grand Dukes - the former Dukes of Saxe -Weimar- Eisenach, Mecklenburg (Mecklenburg -Schwerin and Mecklenburg- Strelitz ) and Oldenburg (the latter in fact only since 1829). For this rank increases close dynastic ties to the Hohenzollerns in Prussia and to the Romanov in Russia were crucial. All German Grand Dukes led the old Tuscan predicate " Royal Highness ". Sometimes it is said that the rulers of Hesse and Baden were renamed as " Grand Ducal Highness ", but no later than 1900, the former predicate was also common here. The heir to the throne of the Grand Duke has the title " Grand Duke ".
Furthermore, since 1815, led the Emperor of Austria as a (not ruling ) Grand Duke of Tuscany, and ( since 1846 ) as the reigning Grand Duke of the annexed city of Krakow, the King of Prussia when Grand Duke of the Lower Rhine and of Posen, the Elector and Sovereign Landgrave of Hesse -Kassel as Grand Duke of Fulda additional Grand Duke title.
The King of the Netherlands served until 1890 in personal union as Grand Duke of Luxembourg, which also belonged to the German Confederation until 1866. As in the Netherlands in 1890 a female succession occurred, which was legally prohibited in Luxembourg, was awarded the Grand Duchy with a different branch of the House of Nassau ( since 1964 actually Bourbon- Parma) own dynasty.
Luxembourg since 1918, when the monarchies of the German Empire were abolished in the November revolution, the only remaining Grand Duchy in the world.
In English and French and the imperial princes and princesses of Russia, which since the 18th century until the fall of the tsarist regime in 1917 the title " Grand Duke " ( Veliki Kniaz ) or " Grand Duchess " ( Velikaya Kniagina ) were led, somewhat misleading as the " Grand Duke " or" Grand -duc " or as" "means, of course, with the title of" Grand Duchess " or" Grande- Duchesse Imperial Highness. "