Antoinette of Saxe-Altenburg, Duchess of Anhalt
by Scott Mehl  © Unofficial Royalty 2018 Princess Antoinette of Saxe-Altenburg was the wife of Friedrich I, Duke of Anhalt. She was born Princess Antoinette Charlotte Marie Josephine Karoline Frida…
Unofficial Royalty
by Scott Mehl © Unofficial Royalty 2018

Princess Antoinette of Saxe-Altenburg was the wife of Friedrich I, Duke of Anhalt. She was born Princess Antoinette Charlotte Marie Josephine Karoline Frida on April 17, 1838, in Bamberg, Kingdom of Bavaria, now in Bavaria, Germany, to Prince Eduard of Saxe-Altenburg and his first wife, Princess Amalie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Antoinette had three full siblings:

Princess Therese (1836-1914) – married Prince August of Sweden, no issue

Prince Ludwig (1839-1844) – died in childhood

Prince Johann (1841-1844) – died in childhood

Antoinette also had two half-siblings from her father’s second marriage to Princess Luise Caroline Reuss of Greiz:

Prince Albert (1843-1902) – married (1) Princess Marie of Prussia, had issue; (2) Duchess Helene of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, no issue

Princess Marie Gasparine (1845-1930) – married Karl Günther, Prince of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, no issue

In Altenburg on April 22, 1854, Antoinette married the future Friedrich I, Duke of Anhalt. He was the son of Leopold IV Friedrich, Duke of Anhalt and Princess Friederike of Prussia. The couple had six children:

Leopold, Hereditary Prince of Anhalt (1855-1886) – married Princess Elisabeth of Hesse-Kassel, had issue

Friedrich II, Duke of Anhalt (1856-1918) – married Princess Marie of Baden, no issue

Princess Elisabeth (1857-1933) – married Adolf Friedrich V, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had issue

Eduard, Duke of Anhalt (1861-1918) – married Princess Luise of Saxe-Altenburg, had issue

Prince Aribert of Anhalt (1866-1891) – married Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, no issue, marriage dissolved

Princess Alexandra (1868-1958) – married Sizzo, Prince of Schwarzburg, had issue

At the age of 70, four years after the death of her husband, Antoinette, The Dowager Duchess of Anhalt died in Berchtesgaden, Kingdom of Bavaria, now in the German state of Bavaria, on October 13, 1908, and was buried in the Ducal Mausoleum (link in German) in Dessau, Duchy of Anhalt, now in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. In 1958, the remains of members of the House of Anhalt were removed from the Ducal Mausoleum secretly by night for political reasons (Dessau was then in Communist East Germany) and reburied in the Ziebigker Cemetery in Dessau in a common grave, marked only by a simple wooden cross. In 2019, Antoinette’s remains were moved a second time and reinterred in the Marienkirche (link in German) in Dessau, the traditional burial site of the Dukes of Anhalt-Dessau dating back to the 15th century. The Marienkirche was destroyed during World War II and has since been rebuilt.

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