Nassau

Nassau, historical region of Germany, and the noble family that provided its hereditary rulers for many centuries. The present-day royal heads of the Netherlands and Luxembourg are descended from this family, called the house of Nassau.

The region of Nassau is located in what is now the western part of the Land (state) of Hesse and the Westerwald Kreis (district) of Rhineland-Palatinate, in western Germany. The Lahn River divides Nassau roughly into two halves: in the south are the Taunus Mountains; in the north lies the Westerwald.

By the 12th century the local counts of Laurenburg had established themselves near the town of Nassau, and Walram (died 1198) was the first of them to assume the title count of Nassau. His grandsons divided the inheritance: Walram II took the southern portion of Nassau, and Otto I took the northern portion.

Walramian Nassau.

Walram II’s son, Adolf of Nassau, was the German king from 1292 to 1298. Adolf’s descendants, however, partitioned their lands, and by the late 18th century the Walramian inheritance was divided between the Nassau-Weilburg and Nassau-Usingen branches. In 1801 Napoleonic France acquired the Walramians’ lands west of the Rhine; in 1803 the branches of Nassau-Weilburg and Nassau-Usingen reunited and received considerable additions of territory in compensation from France. Walramian Nassau entered Napoleon I’s Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, and a cession of territory to the grand duchy of Berg that year was balanced by additions, mainly from Ottonian Nassau. Walramian Nassau was also made a duchy at this time. The extinction of the Usingen line in 1816 made William of Weilburg sole duke of Nassau. By supporting the losing Austrian side in the Seven Weeks’ War (1866), William’s successor, Duke Adolf, lost the duchy to Prussia; thereafter, it formed most of the Wiesbaden district of Prussia’s Hesse-Nassau province.

Ottonian Nassau.

Otto I’s descendants also indulged in partitions and subdivisions, and one branch of the family acquired extensive Dutch territories, becoming known as the Nassau-Dillenburg-Breda branch. Upon the death of the last ruler of this branch in 1544, a cousin, William of Nassau (the future William I the Silent, prince of Orange), inherited the branch’s Dutch principality of Orange, and members of this line were henceforth called princes of Orange-Nassau. William the Silent was the founder of the dynasty of hereditary stadholders who were prominent in the Netherlands in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. When William’s direct male line became extinct upon the death of King William III of England in 1702, the Ottonians’ possessions in both the Netherlands and Nassau passed to Count John William Friso of the Ottonian branch of Nassau-Dietz. The Nassau-Dietz branch eventually reunited the Ottonians’ partitioned German territories in the 18th century.

The Ottonian ruler William VI of Orange lost his German possessions to Napoleon in 1806 but was awarded Luxembourg by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 in compensation. William VI also succeeded to the kingdom of the Netherlands as King William I in that year. His descendants (including female descendants) still reign in the Netherlands today with the princely title of Orange-Nassau. When the Ottonian branch became extinct in the male line with the death of William III in 1890, his daughter, Wilhelmina, became queen of the Netherlands while Luxembourg passed to Duke Adolf of Nassau, a member of the Walramian branch of the house of Nassau. The Walramian line is still the ruling house of the grand duchy of Luxembourg.