Auguste von Harrach

Countess Auguste von Harrach zu Rohrau und Thannhausen, Princess of Liegnitz (30 August 1800 – 5 June 1873), was the second spouse of King Frederick William III of Prussia. At the time of their marriage, the Harrach family was still not recognized as equal for dynastic purposes. Later, in 1841, a year after Frederick William's death, they were officially recognized as a mediatized family (a former ruling family within the Holy Roman Empire), with the style of Illustrious Highness, which allowed them to officially have equal status for marriage purposes to those reigning and royal families. Thus, in 1824 when the marriage occurred, it was treated as morganatic, so she was not named Queen, but was given the title Princess von Liegnitz (modern-day Legnica) and Countess von Hohenzollern. Frederick reportedly stated that he did not wish to have another queen after Queen Louise. Early life and ancestry Auguste was the daughter of Austrian Count Ferdinand Joseph von Harrach zu Rohrau und Thannhausen (1763–1841) and Saxon noblewoman Johanna Christiane Rayski von Dubnitz (1767–1830), whose father, Adolf Heinrich Rayski von Dubnitz (1726–1778), was the owner of Kleinstruppen Castle near Dresden. Patrilineally, she descended from Aloys Thomas Raimund, Count Harrach (1669–1742), who served as Viceroy of Naples, and Count Friedrich August von Harrach (1696–1749), Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. Through her mother, Auguste has descended from Saxon and Bohemian nobility, including her grandmother Christiane Sophie von Leyser (1735–1806) who was a direct matrilineal descendant of Lucas Cranach the Elder and Lucas Cranach the Younger. Marriage Auguste met King Frederick William III at a spa in Teplitz in Bohemia in 1822. They married at Charlottenburg Palace on 9 November 1824. As Auguste was a Catholic and considered a non-dynast at the time, the marriage was initially kept a secret. In many quarters the marriage was greeted with great surprise and some initially refused to believe it. The greatest opponents of this marriage were the Mecklenburg-Strelitz cousins, the family of the King's first wife, Queen Louise. Auguste converted to Protestantism in 1826.