Count of Oldenburg Conrad I of Oldenburg

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• Reference Number: 37043

Conrad — Ingeborg of Brunswick. (daughter of Gerard Iv of Holstein-Plön) [Group Sheet]

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• Reference Number: 37039

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Count Christian V of Oldenburg (died 1423) was the ruling count of Oldenburg from 1398 until his death in 1423. He was born sometime before 1347 to Count Conrad I of Oldenburg and Ingeborg of Brunswick. He married Agnes of Honstein, and through his son and successor Count Dietrich of Oldenburg, descends the Danish Royal houses of Oldenburg and Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. Through the dynastic marriages of his descendants he is an ancestor of many European Royal houses.

Christian — Agnes of Honstein. [Group Sheet]

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• Reference Number: 37048

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• Reference Number: 37049

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• Reference Number: 37050

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• Name: Theoderic the Lucky, Theoderic of Oldenburg
• Reference Number: 37029

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Derrick or Dietrich of Oldenburg, Latin-based anglicization also Theoderic of Oldenburg (c. 1398-February 14, 1440), nicknamed Theoderic the Lucky or the Fortunate (Teudericus Fortunatus), was a feudal lord in northern Germany, holding the counties of Delmenhorst and Oldenburg. He was called "Fortunatus" as he was able to secure Delmenhorst for his branch of the Oldenburgs.

Dietrich is the father of Christian I of Denmark, a male-line ancestor to the present-day Danish throne under Margaret II of Denmark as well as the last czar of imperial Russia, Nicolas II.

Dietrich of Oldenburg was the son of Count Christian V of Oldenburg (who became count in about 1398 and died in 1423) and his wife, Countess Agnes of Honstein. His grandfather, Count Conrad I of Oldenburg (d. ca. 1368) had left his lands divided between his father and his uncle Conrad II.

Dietrich’s father, Christian V, managed to gain the upper hand when Conrad II's son Maurice IV died in 1420. After this, most of the Oldenburg family patrimony was under the power of Dietrich’s branch. However, the house had several minor branches who had estates and claims, as was usual in any medieval fief.

Dietrich of Oldenburg was the grandson of Ingeborg of Itzehoe, a Holstein princess who had married count Conrad I of Oldenburg. After the death in 1350 of her only brother, Count Gerhard V of Holstein-Itzehoe-Plön, Ingeborg and her issue were the heirs of her own grandmother Ingeborg of Sweden (d. ca. 1290, first wife of Gerhard II of Plön-Itzehoe), the eldest daughter of King Valdemar of Sweden and Queen Sophia, who herself was the eldest daughter of the sonless King Eric IV of Denmark and his wife Jutta of Saxony. Since other legitimate descent from King Valdemar apparently was extinct by this time, Dietrich was considered the heir general of Kings Valdemar I of Sweden and Eric IV of Denmark.

Dietrich succeeded his father as head of the House of Oldenburg in 1423.

He had firstly, as a child, married (for reasons of succession and uniting the hereditary fiefs) a distant cousin, Countess Adelheid of Oldenburg-Delmenhorst (who is said to have died already in 1404), daughter of Oldenburg Count Otto IV of Delmenhorst, and in 1423 he married for a second time, Helvig of Schauenburg (born in about 1398-1400, died 1436), widow of Prince Balthasar of Mecklenburg and daughter of the murdered Duke Gerhard VI of Schleswig-Holstein and his wife Elisabeth of Brunswick, thus sister of the reigning Duke Adolf VIII. All his legitimate children were born of the second wife.

His second marriage strengthened this interest in Scandinavian monarchies, since Helvig was a descendant of King Eric V of Denmark, King Haakon V of Norway and King Magnus I of Sweden.

At this time, all Scandinavia lived under the Kalmar Union erected by Queen Margaret I of Denmark. In 1387 she had lost her own heir Olav IV of Norway, the new heirs now being Eric of Pomerania, and his sister Catherine who was married with a prince of the Palatinate and Bavaria.

Count Theodoric of Oldenburg is said to have been a rival claimant to the crowns of Sweden and Denmark during the reign of Eric VII/ Eric XIII, whose succession was through Christopher I of Denmark, the younger brother of the murdered Eric IV, and through Magnus I of Sweden, younger brother of the deposed King Valdemar.

Count Theodoric had three surviving sons and one daughter:
Christian (1426-1481), who succeeded him as Count of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, and became later King Christian I of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, as well as Duke of Schleswig and Holstein.
Maurice (1428-1464); when his elder brother became king, he was given the County of Delmenhorst.
Gerhard (1430-1500); when his eldest brother had become king, he was given the county of Oldenburg, and from his other brother's heirs he also inherited Delmenhorst in about 1483. The third son got his name from usages of the mother's Holstein clan.
Adelheid (1425-1475), first married count Ernest III of Hohnstein (d. 1454) and then in 1474 Count Gerhard VI of Mansfeld (d. 1492).

Dietrich — Hedwig of Schleswig. Hedwig (daughter of Gerhard VI of Holstein-Rendsburg and Catherine Elisabeth of Brunswick) was born 1398; died 1436. [Group Sheet]

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• Reference Number: 37028

Notes:

Christian I (February 1426 - 21 May 1481) was a Danish monarch, king of Denmark (1448-1481), Norway (1450-1481) and Sweden (1457-1464), under the Kalmar Union. In Sweden his short tenure as monarch was preceded by regents, Jöns Bengtsson Oxenstierna and Erik Axelsson Tott and succeeded by regent Kettil Karlsson Vasa. Also Duke of Schleswig and Holstein 1460-81.

He was born in February 1426 in Oldenburg. His father was Count Dietrich of Oldenburg (died 1440) whom he succeeded as Count of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst. His mother was his father's second wife, Hedwig of Schleswig and Holstein (Helvig of Schauenburg) (died 1436). Christian had two brothers, Count Moritz V of Delmenhorst (1428-1464) and Count Gerhard VI of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst (1430-1500), and one sister Adelheid.

Christian married Dorothea of Brandenburg (1430 - 25 November 1495), the widow of his predecessor King Christopher (of Bavaria) and thus dowager queen, on 28 October 1449 in Copenhagen.

King Christopher of Denmark, Sweden and Norway died in January 1448. His death resulted in the break-up of the union of the three kingdoms, as Denmark and Sweden went their separate ways. On 1 September 1448, count Christian of Oldenburg was elected to the vacant Danish throne, as king Christian I. He was a cognatic descendant of King Eric V of Denmark through his second daughter Richeza. The throne was first offered by the Statsraad to the most prominent feudal lord of Danish dominions, Duke Adolf VIII of Schleswig-Holstein, but (being relatively old and childless) he declined and recommended his nephew.

Meanwhile, Sweden had on 20 June 1448 elected Charles Knutsson as king. Norway was now faced with the choice between a union with Sweden or Denmark, or electing a separate king. The latter option was quickly discarded, and a power-struggle ensued between the supporters of Christian of Denmark and Charles of Sweden. The Norwegian Council of the Realm was divided. In February 1449, a part of the Council declared in favour of Charles as king, but on 15 June the same year, a different group of councellors paid homage to Christian. On 20 November, Charles was crowned king of Norway in Trondheim. However, the Swedish nobility now took steps to avoid war with Denmark. In June 1450, the Swedish Council of the Realm forced Charles to renounce his claim on Norway to king Christian. The question of the Norwegian succession had thereby been decided between Denmark and Sweden, and the Norwegian Council was left with only one candidate for the throne. In the summer of 1450, Christian sailed to Norway with a large fleet, and on 2 August he was crowned king of Norway in Trondheim. On 29 August, a union treaty between Denmark and Norway was signed in Bergen. Norway had of old been a hereditary monarchy, but this had become less and less a reality, as at the last royal successions, hereditary claims had been bypassed for political reasons. It was now explicitly stated that Norway, as well as Denmark, was an elective monarchy. The treaty stipulated that Denmark and Norway should have the same king in perpetuity, and that he would be elected among the legitimate sons of the previous king, if such existed.

Charles Knutsson became increasingly unpopular as king of Sweden, and was driven into exile in 1457. Christian achieved his aim of being elected as king of Sweden, thus re-establishing the Kalmar Union. He received the power from temporary Swedish regents archbishop Jöns Bengtsson Oxenstierna and lord Erik Axelsson Tott. However, Sweden being volatile and split by factions (benefits of union being against nationalistic benefits), his reign there ended in 1464 when bishop Kettil Karlsson Vasa was installed as the next regent. Charles Knutsson was recalled as King of Sweden, although he was later exiled a second time, recalled again and died during his third term as king. Christian's final attempt at regaining Sweden ended in a total military failure at Brunkeberg (outside Stockholm) October 1471 where he was defeated by the Swedish regent Sten Sture the Elder who was supported by the Danish-Swedish nobleman's clan the Thott family. Christian maintained his claim to the Swedish kingdom up to his death in 1481.

In 1460 King Christian also became Duke of Schleswig, a Danish fief, and Count of Holstein, a Saxe-Lauenburgian subfief within the Holy Roman Empire. Christian inherited Holstein and Schleswig after a short "interregnum" as the eldest son of the sister of late Duke Adolf VIII, Duke of Schleswig (Southern Jutland) and Count of Holstein, of the Schauenburg fürst clan, who died 4 December 1459, without children. There would have been several genealogically senior claimants of Holstein, such as the Counts of Holstein-Pinneberg, but Christian was nephew of the incumbent, the closest relative to that very branch which had lived longest and acquired most fiefs.
Christian's succession was confirmed by the Estates of the Realm (nobility and representatives) of these duchies in Ribe 5 March 1460 (Treaty of Ribe). In 1474 Lauenburg's liege lord Emperor Frederick III elevated Christian I as Count of Holstein to Duke of Holstein, thus becoming an immediate imperial vassal (see imperial immediacy).

Dorothea and Christian had five children:
Olaf (29 September 1450-1451)
Knud (1451-1455)
John (1455-1513), King of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Duke of Schleswig and Holstein
Margarete of Denmark (1456-1486), 13 years old married to the 17 years old King James III of Scotland
Frederick (1471-1533), Duke of Schleswig and Holstein, in Gottorp, later also King of Denmark and Norway

Buried:
Roskilde Cathedral

Died:
Copenhagen Castle

Christian — Dorothea. [Group Sheet]

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• Reference Number: 37031

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• Reference Number: 37032

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• Reference Number: 37033