Prince Wilhelm of Schaumburg-Lippe

Prince William of Schaumburg-Lippe (; 12 December 1834 – 4 April 1906) was the son of George William, Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe and member of the House of Lippe.

Early life and ancestry

William was born at Bückeburg, Schaumburg-Lippe on 12 December 1834. He was the seventh child, and third son, of George William, Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe, and Princess Ida of Waldeck and Pyrmont. Among his siblings were Prince Adolphus I (reigning Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe) and Princess Adelheid (wife of Friedrich, reigning Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg).

Several trips with his royal parents had pleasantly interrupted the young prince's years of teaching and service. The related princely courts were visited and Prince William (as well as the other princely children) accompanied his parents several times to Náchod and Ratibořice Castle, which Prince Georg Wilhelm had purchased from his relative, Count Oktavio of Lippe-Weissenfeld (1808–1885) in 1842. Prince William was last in Ratibořice with his parents and Princesses Ida and his sister, Elisabeth in the summer and autumn of 1853. Princess Ida traveled back to Bückeburg in August, the others still stayed in Ratibořice and had to postpone their departure because first, his father, George William, Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe himself fell ill with a fever, which soon passed, but then Prince William became seriously ill with rheumatic fever, which degenerated into a malignant nervous fever.

Military career Prince William served as an officer in the Austrian Imperial Army. no issue. Princess Alexandra Karoline of Schaumburg-Lippe (1879–1949), was scheduled to marry King Alexander I of Serbia, but against the wishes of his parents, he married instead Draga Mašin, his mother's lady-in-waiting. In 1901, her name was also linked to Prince George of Greece and Denmark and later in 1905 to Prince Eitel Friedrich of Prussia, but nothing came out of it. She remained single and never married.

Death Prince William and his daughter-in-law, Princess Louise of Denmark, died on 4 April 1906, five hours apart at the family castle in Náchod, Bohemia. His cause of death was from heart trouble while, hers was from meningitis.

His body was, along with the one of his daughter-in-law Louise, interred in the Vojenský Hřbitov (Military Cemetery), Nachod, Bohemia, at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Honours Ascanian duchies: Grand Cross of the House Order of Albert the Bear, 14 January 1856 Knight of the Order of the Gold Lion of the House of Nassau, July 1864 Mecklenburg: Grand Cross of the House Order of the Wendish Crown, with Crown in Ore, 21 March 1868 Austria-Hungary: Knight of the Imperial Order of the Iron Crown, 1st Class, 1875 Grand Cross of the Austrian Imperial Order of Leopold, 1899 Ernestine duchies: Grand Cross of the Saxe-Ernestine House Order, 1882 Knight of the House Order of Fidelity, 1885 Knight of the Order of Berthold the First, 1885 Grand Cross of the Order of the Württemberg Crown, 1886

Ancestry