Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg
Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck, then Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (1785-1831)
Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (German: Friedrich Wilhelm Paul Leopold; Danish: Frederik Vilhelm Paul Leopold; 4 January 1785 – 17 February 1831) was a German-Danish prince and officer who was the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck from 1816 to 1825, and the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg from 1825 to 1831. Friedrich Wilhelm is the progenitor of the House of Glücksburg.
Friedrich Wilhelm was the only son of Friedrich Karl Ludwig, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck and Countess Friederike of Schlieben, and was a member of the ducal house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck, a junior male branch of the House of Oldenburg. From 1804, he lived in his family's original home in Denmark-Norway, where he made a career as an officer of the Danish army during the Napoleonic Wars. His 1810 marriage to Princess Louise Caroline of Hesse-Kassel meant that Friedrich Wilhelm became the brother-in-law of King Frederick VI of Denmark, as his wife's elder sister was married to the king. At the death of his father in 1816, he inherited the title of Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck as Frederick William IV, and in 1825, upon the extinction of the elder Glücksburg line in 1824, King Frederick VI transferred Glücksburg Castle to his brother-in-law and changed his title to Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.
Duke Friedrich Wilhelm and Duchess Louise Caroline had ten children, of which his eldest son Karl succeeded him as Duke of Glücksburg, and his fourth son became King of Denmark in 1863 as King Christian IX.
Early life
Birth and family
Friedrich Wilhelm was born on 4 January 1785 at the manor house in Lindenau, near the town of Braunsberg in East Prussia, the most northeastern province of the Kingdom of Prussia (today Lipowina in Poland). He was the third and youngest child and only son of Friedrich Karl Ludwig, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck and his wife, Countess Friederike of Schlieben. He was baptized with the names Frederick William Paul Leopold and had his distant relative, Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark (later King Frederick VI), as his godfather.
Prince Friedrich Wilhelm's father was the head of the ducal house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck, a junior male branch of the House of Oldenburg.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg” is duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck, then Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (1785-1831). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Friedrich, Wilhelm and Duke, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q240302. VIAF identifies the subject as 297282661. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1785, 1831, 1816 and 1825.
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This entry incorporates text from “Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.