Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken
Duke of Zweibrücken, Count Palatine of Birkenfeld-Bischweiler (1746–1795)
Charles II August Christian (German: Karl II. August Christian; 29 October 1746 – 1 April 1795) was Duke of Zweibrücken from 1775 to 1795. A member of the Palatine House of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld, a branch of the House of Wittelsbach, he was the elder brother of the first King of Bavaria, Maximilian I, and of Queen Amalia of Saxony.
Biography
Charles was born in Düsseldorf, the oldest of five children of Frederick Michael, Count Palatine of Birkenfeld and Countess Palatine Maria Franziska of Sulzbach. His father converted to his mother's Roman Catholic faith shortly after his birth, he and his siblings being raised in that denomination. He inherited the Duchy of Zweibrücken from his paternal uncle, Duke Christian IV, in 1775. He was heir presumptive to his childless cousin Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria whom, however, he predeceased. He ceded to his younger brother Maximilian Joseph the County of Rappoltstein in 1776, having inherited it when their father died in 1767.
Rejected suitor
He wanted to marry Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, the eighth child of Empress Maria Theresa. He was well known in the Austrian court, and Maria Amalia was also in love with him. However, Maria Theresa deemed him of insufficient rank to marry an archduchess.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken” as duke of Zweibrücken, Count Palatine of Birkenfeld-Bischweiler (1746–1795). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as duke of Zweibrücken, Count Palatine of Birkenfeld-Bischweiler (1746–1795). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
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 Jun 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q64918. VIAF identifies the subject as 22941256. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1746, 1795, 1775 and 1776.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken” 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.