Charlotta Kettler, Prinzessin von Kurland

Charlotta Sophie von Kurland (September 1, 1651 in Mitau, † 1728) was a princess of Kurland and abbess of Herford Abbey.

life
early years
She came from the Westphalian noble family Kett(e)ler and was a daughter of Duke Jacob Kettler and his wife Luise Charlotte von Brandenburg. Like her siblings, she grew up at the courts of her uncle Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg in Berlin and her aunt, Landgravine Hedwig Sophie von Hessen-Kassel. One reason was the difficult conditions in Kurland during the Northern War. The stay was also used for family marriage and career projects. The plan to marry Sophie Charlotte to Christian Ernst von Bayreuth failed when the Margrave withdrew from the plan. Instead, in 1686, she entered the Reichsstift Herford as a canoness without staying there.

Conflicts about the pen
In her absence she was elected abbess in 1688. With the support of her uncle Friedrich Wilhelm I, she prevailed against the second highest official Sophie Ernestine zur Lippe,[1] who was a sister of Count Simon Heinrich. After that, she initially stayed in the pen. The conflict with her competitor remained virulent until it escalated in 1696 in a dispute over a new office building for the dean. Together with the sexton, she accused the abbess of not taking into account her rights to the management of the monastery. They turned to Elector Friedrich III. of Brandenburg as patrons. In the meantime, he had succeeded his father, the abbess's uncle, to the throne and replaced him as patron of the monastery.[2] In 1698 he had the monastery occupied by the military.

Charlotta Sophie von Kurland fled to Vienna via Regensburg in order to seek a letter of protection from Leopold I at the imperial court and to take care of a trial before the Imperial Councilor against her opponents in the monastery. In particular, it was about support in the conflict with her cousin Friedrich III. of Brandenburg as patron of the monastery. The letter of protection was renewed during the stay. However, she was not supported by the emperor in the conflict. The necessary Brandenburg support in the War of the Spanish Succession played a role in this. The Elector of Brandenburg was critical of the abbess's attempt to exercise her office independently and used the dispute to further expand his position in Herford. He also practiced this policy towards the monasteries in Quedlinburg and Essen. In March 1698, Empress Eleonore Magdalene von Pfalz-Neuburg approached the abbess and the chapter with the request to appoint a coadjutor - i.e. a declared successor candidate. This was Maria Elisabeth von Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Kleeburg,[3] the daughter of the Swedish Imperial Marshal Adolf Johann I von Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Kleeburg, who died in 1689, and niece of the King of Sweden, Karl X Gustav, who died in 1660, and cousin by his son and successor, King Charles XI, who died in 1697. It is assumed that the empress tried to play a role in the conflict between the monastery and the elector.[4] During her stay in Vienna, some Catholic clergymen, such as Cardinal Leopold Karl von Kollonitsch, tried to persuade her to convert to Catholicism. Her brother-in-law and cousin, the Protestant Landgrave Karl von Hessen-Kassel, therefore urged her to leave Vienna.

In exile
Some time after the abbess returned from Vienna in 1703, Brandenburg soldiers again invaded the monastery. This forced the abbess to flee and go into exile. She traveled to Verden in what was then Swedish territory and placed herself under the protection of the Swedish king – a position that her nephew Friedrich von Hessen-Kassel, son of her sister Amalia, held from 1720. She stayed permanently in Verden. From there she traveled to the Netherlands, among other places. In 1721, she had to flee Verden from her creditors for lack of money. She was pursued on the run by agents of the Prussian king, who from 1713 was the son of her cousin, namely Friedrich Wilhelm I. He feared that the abbess would again be supported by the emperor. Her last trip was probably to Kassel.

literature
Teresa Schröder-Stapper: Abbesses and canonesses on the way. The travels of the Herford abbess Charlotte Sophie von Kurland (1651-1728) In: Princesses on the road Travels of princely women in the early modern period. Berlin, Munich 2017, pp. 133–153

Links

• https://bbld.de/000000007804686X
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Charlotte_Sophie_Duches...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Kettler