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Leopold, Grand Duke of Baden

Leopold I, Grand Duke of Baden (29 August 1790 – 24 April 1852) succeeded in 1830 as the fourth Grand Duke of Baden.

Although a younger child, Leopold was the first son of Margrave Karl Friederich of Baden by his second wife Luise Karoline Geyer von Geyersberg. Since Luise Karoline was not of equal birth with the Margrave, the marriage was deemed morganatic and the resulting children were incapable of inheriting their father's princely status or the sovereign rights of the Zähringen House of Baden. Luise Karoline and her children were given the titles of count or countess of Hochberg.

Baden gained territory during the Napoleonic Wars. As a result, Margrave Karl Friederich was elevated to the title of Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire (Kurfurst). With the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, he took the title Grand Duke of Baden.

Since there were plenty of descendants from Karl Friederich's first marriage to Karoline of Hesse-Darmstadt, no one expected the Hochberg children of his second wife to be anything except a family of counts with blood ties to the grand ducal family but no dynastic rights. With no prospects of advancement in Baden, Leopold von Hochberg followed a career as an officer in the French army.

Starting in 1817, events resulted in a dramatic change in the situation of the Hochberg children when it became apparent that the Baden male line descended from Karl Friederich's first wife would die out. One by one, the males of the House of Baden died without leaving male descendants. By 1817, there were only two males left, the reigning Grand Duke Karl I and his childless uncle Ludwig. Both of Karl's sons died in infancy. The dynasty faced a serious succession problem.

A series of agreements provided that Baden would be inherited by the Wittelsbach kings of Bavaria at the extinction of the Zähringen male line in Baden. King Maximilian I of Bavaria was married to Grand Duke Karl's oldest sister, Katharina Karoline. The female most closely related to the last male often inherited in such circumstances (sometimes called Semi-Salic succession). As a result, Maximilian had a strong claim to Baden under the normal rules of inheritance and various agreements added weight to his claims. Following the Congress of Vienna, a treaty of April 16, 1816 between Bavaria and Austria secured the Wittelsbach rights to Baden.

To save his dynasty from extinction, Grand Duke Karl needed to find a way to preserve the Zähringen line. Granting succession rights to his half-uncles seemed the ideal solution. Accordingly, in 1817 Karl issued a new succession law under which the children of the Hochberg marriage became princes and princesses of Baden with full dynastic rights. Leopold von Hochberg became His Grand Ducal Highness, Prince Leopold of Baden and second-in-line to the throne after his remaining half-brother, Ludwig.

In 1818, Karl granted a liberal constitution to the people of Baden. This constitution ensured the succession rights of the offspring of Luise Karoline Geyer von Geyersberg. Finally, on July 10, 1819, a few months after Karl's death, the great powers (Great Britain, France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia) joined with Bavaria and Baden in the Treaty of Frankfurt which recognized the succession rights of the former Hochberg morganatic line.

After Grand Duke Karl died on December 8, 1818, his full-uncle (the son of Karl Friederich's first marriage) succeeded as Ludwig I. To further improve the status of his half-brother and heir, Ludwig arranged for the new Prince Leopold to marry his great-niece, Sophie, daughter of former King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden by Grand Duke Karl's sister, Frederica. Since Sophie was a granddaughter of Leopold's oldest half-brother, Karl Ludwig this marriage united the descendants of his father, Grand Duke Karl Friederich's two wives. Sophie's undoubted royal blood would help to offset the stigma of Leopold's morganatic birth.

When Grand Duke Ludwig died on March 30, 1830, he was the last male of the House of Baden not descended from the morganatic marriage of Karl Friederich and Luise Karoline Geyer von Geyersberg. The former morganatic child Leopold von Hochberg, recently raised to princely rank, now succeeded as the fourth Grand Duke of Baden.

On 25 July 1819, Leopold married his (half) great-niece Sophie of Sweden (* 21 May 1801; † 6 July 1865), the eldest daughter of the former King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden and Queen Frederika, who herself was a daughter of Hereditary Grand Duke Karl Ludwig of Baden (Leopold's half-brother).

Sophia and Leopold had the following children.

• Alexandrine (1820-1904), married Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1818-93), childless marriage due to which Ernest's later brother Albert's British issue succeeded in that duchy.
• Ludwig (1822-22)
• Ludwig II (1824-58), reigned as Grand Duke 1852-58, deemed mentally unfit to rule
• Friedrich I (1826-1907), Grand Duke 1858-1907, Regent 1852-58
• Ludwig Wilhelm August von Baden (1829-97), Prince, Prussian General, ancestor of the younger line of princes of Baden and father of Prince Max of Baden, German Chancellor, and later the heir of Grand Duchy
• Karl (1832-1906), married Rosalie von Beust (morganatic)
• Marie (1834-99), married Prince Ernest of Leiningen (1830-1904)
• Cecilie (1839-91), known as Olga Fedorovna, married Grand Duke Michael Nicolaievich of Russia (1832-1902), Governor General in Tbilisi