Christian II, Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg

He was the second (but eldest surviving) son of Christian I, Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg by his wife Anna of Bentheim-Tecklenburg, daughter of Arnold III, Count of Bentheim-Steinfurt-Tecklenburg-Limburg.

Life[edit]

Christian received an excellent education in his early years and could speak French and Italian fluently. During the years 1608-1609 he studied in Geneva with his cousin John Casimir of Anhalt-Dessau accompanied by two tutors, Markus Friedrick Howell and Peter von Sebottendorf. Shortly after, he began his Grand Tour to France, Italy, and England.


In 1618, at the age of nineteen, Christian recorded the horror of the beginning of the Thirty Years' War; in his diary, he wrote that his duty to fight was "ma fatale destinée." For him, the war began at the Battle of White Mountain (1620), when his father was defeated and banished from the Empire. Christian was taken captive with the two regiments under his command. Nonetheless, he soon obtained the favor of Emperor Ferdinand II, who permitted him to return to Bernburg in 1621.


His uncle Louis of Anhalt-Köthen made him a member of the Fruitbearing Society.


After the death of his father in 1630 Christian succeeded him in Anhalt-Bernburg, which at that time was devastated by war. During the first year of his reign, Bernburg was plundered by troops under the Danish General Heinrich Holk and an epidemic fever killed almost 1,700 inhabitants. In 1636 Schloss Bernburg was almost taken by the marauding troops, but the great courage of the seventy-year-old Hofmarschall Burkhard von Erlach prevented this.


His 24 volumes of diaries are preserved; they provide a valuable source of information about the course of the Thirty Years' War.^[1][2]