Karl, Prince of Isenburg-Büdingen


Karl, Prince of Isenburg-Büdingen was head of the mediatised German house of Isenburg and Büdingen.

Biography

Karl was born in Birstein, Hesse, as the second child of Victor Alexander, Prince of Isenburg-Büdingen, son of Karl, last sovereign Prince of Isenburg, and his wife, Princess Maria of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg. After the early death of his father in 1843, Karl was placed in the charge of his uncle, Wolfgang Ernst III, Prince of Isenburg-Birstein, who had him raised in his Protestant denomination, but he was exposed to the Catholic faith by his mother and in 1861, converted to Catholicism.
On May 31, 1865, at the age of twenty-seven, he married Archduchess Maria Luisa of Austria-Tuscany, daughter Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany and his second wife, Princess Maria Antonia of the Two Sicilies. The couple had nine children. In 1866, after the death of his uncle, Karl succeeded him as Prince of Isenburg-Birstein.
Karl died at the age of sixty in 1899, and his wife Maria Luisa died in 1917. They are the ancestors of Sophie, Princess of Prussia, wife of Georg Friedrich, head of the House of Prussia which reigned as German emperors until 1918.

Issue

Karl and Maria Luisa had nine children: