Frederick William, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1675-1713)
Frederick William (28 March 1675 – 31 July 1713) was the reigning duke of Mecklenburg in the Mecklenburg-Schwerin portion of the duchy of Mecklenburg from 1692 until 1713.
Frederick William was the eldest son of Prince Frederick, Duke of Mecklenburg-Grabow, and Christine Wilhelmine of Hesse-Homburg (1653–1722). He was a nephew of the childless Duke Christian Ludwig I of Mecklenburg. Frederick William succeeded his uncle on 21 June 1692 as regent of the Schwerin portion of the duchy of Mecklenburg. After the extinction of the Mecklenburg-Güstrow line of the dynasty with the death of Duke Gustav Adolph in 1695, Frederick William became embroiled in a violent succession dispute with his uncle Adolf Frederick II that escalated quickly. It brought the country to the brink of civil war and was settled only through the intervention of foreign powers. The king of Denmark and Norway, Frederick IV, gave up the inheritance request for the Mecklenburg-Güstrow principality in exchange for the Duke's support for Denmark-Norway in the Great Northern War. The dispute was ended in 1701 by the Hamburg Compromise. Mecklenburg was again split into two parts with limited autonomy. The two sub-principalities, Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Mecklenburg-Schwerin, existed until 1918.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 10, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q552274. VIAF identifies the subject as 29913624. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1675, 1713, 1692 and 1653.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frederick William, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin” 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.