page_title: Lippe-Biesterfeld
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Lippe-Biesterfeld / History
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Biesterfeld
context_page_description: Lippe-Biesterfeld was a comital cadet line of the House of Lippe.
  The comital branch of Lippe-Biesterfeld ascended the throne of the Principality of Lippe in 1905, after the extinction of the ruling main branch, when count Leopold of Lippe-Biesterfeld became Leopold IV, Prince of Lippe. He continued to rule until the German Revolution of 1918. In 1916, he created his younger brother, count Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, a prince. Through the latter's son, Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, the prince consort of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, it also became a title of the Dutch Royal House, created in 1937.
context_section_description: The branch of Lippe-Biesterfeld was founded by count Jobst Herman (1625–1678), youngest son of count Simon VII of Lippe-Detmold. He received Biesterfeld with parts of the former county of Schwalenberg, as a paragium. From the Lippe-Biesterfeld branch the line of Lippe-Weissenfeld was separated in 1734. Both, Biesterfeld and Weissenfeld were so-called paragiums (non-sovereign estates of a cadet-branch) of the ruling House of Lippe. Jobst Herman built the manor of Biesterfeld around 1660. Frederick Charles Augustus, Count of Lippe, moved the comital brewery from Schwalenberg to Biesterfeld in 1740. However, both the lands of Lippe-Biesterfeld and Lippe-Weissenfeld were ceded and sold to the princely line of Lippe(-Detmold) on 24 May 1762. Frederick Charles Augustus preferred to live in a hunting lodge in the Sachsenwald forest, near Hamburg, named after him, Friedrichsruh, the current home of the princes Bismarck.
  Frederick William (1737-1803), the eldest surviving son of count Frederick Charles Augustus, married Elisabeth Johanna, Edle von Meinertzhagen (1752-1811) who inherited a small manor house at Oberkassel, Bonn, where the couple moved in 1770, and which was to become the home to the Lippe-Biesterfeld family for the following 209 years. Beethoven is said to have been the piano teacher of the couple's children. 
  The Head of the Lippe-Biesterfeld family was given the style Illustrious Highness (German: Erlaucht) at Detmold on 27 August and 1 October 1844.
  When, in 1895, the mentally ill Prince Alexander ascended the throne of the Principality of Lippe, Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe was appointed to act as regent of Lippe, according to a then secretly kept decree of the predecessor Prince Woldemar. Alexander was the last male of the Lippe-Detmold line; the next senior lines of the House of Lippe were the Counts of Lippe-Biesterfeld, followed by the Counts of Lippe-Weissenfeld, and then by the most junior line the Princes of Schaumburg-Lippe. Shortly after becoming a member state of the German Empire in 1871, the Lippe-Detmold line died out on 20 July 1895. This resulted in an inheritance dispute between the neighboring principality of Schaumburg-Lippe and the Lippe-Biesterfeld line. 
  Ernest, Count of Lippe-Biesterfeld, hitherto living at Oberkassel, became regent of the principality from 1897 until his death in 1904. The dispute was only resolved by the Imperial Court in Leipzig in 1905, with the lands passing to the Lippe-Biesterfeld line who, until this point, had no territorial sovereignty. Ernest's son Prince Leopold IV (1871–1949) was the first and only count of Lippe-Biesterfeld to become ruling prince of Lippe, residing at Detmold Castle.
  Prince Bernhard of Lippe (1872–1934), the younger brother of Leopold IV and father of prince consort Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, was born at Oberkassel and grew up there. Later he acquired the estate of Reckenwalde in East Brandenburg (today Wojnowo, Poland), where his son grew up. A first cousin of the prince-consort, Prince Ernst August of Lippe (1917–1990), sold the house at Oberkassel in 1979, after he had acquired Syburg castle at Bergen, Middle Franconia, in 1970. 
  The current head of the House of Lippe is Stephan, Prince of Lippe (born 24 May 1959), a grandson of Leopold IV, and present owner of Detmold Castle. He is also a first cousin once removed of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (1911–2004), the prince consort of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands (1909–2004).
caption: Biesterfeld estate in 1764
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2006:11:02 14:39:16", "Image ExifOffset": "156", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "294", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3542", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "700", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "439"}