Duke Of Wrttemberg Karl Eugen

Notable

Family

Duke of Württemberg, as the eldest son of and successor of Karl Alexander. His mother was Princess Marie Auguste of Thurn and Taxis. He succeeded his father as ruler of Württemberg at the age of 9, but the real power was in the hands of Administrators Carl Rudolf, Duke of Württemberg-Neuenstadt (1737–1738) and Carl Friedrich von Württemberg-Oels (1738–1746). He was an early patron of Friedrich Schiller. He also studied keyboard with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in the 1740s (Bach's "Württemberg" sonatas, published in 1744, were dedicated to Karl Eugen). Karl Eugene married twice, first in Bayreuth on 26 September 1748 to Margravine Elisabeth Friederike Sophie of Brandenburg-Bayreuth with whom he had one daughter, Friederike Wilhelmine Augusta Luise Charlotte, who was born in Stuttgart on 19 February 1750 and died after 13 months in Stuttgart on 12 March 1751. Elisabetha left Karl Eugene in 1756 to return to her parents' court in Bayreuth although they never divorced. In the meantime, Karl Eugene kept a string of mistresses and fathered eleven children by them. The last of these mistresses was Franziska von Hohenheim, whom he raised to the status of Countess and married in Stuttgart on 10 or 11 January 1785. He died on 24 October 1793, aged 65, in Hohenheim. Link to Wikipedia biography