Noble family House of Guelph | Name Augustus Younger, | |
 | ||
Spouse(s) Clara Maria of Pomerania-Barth
Dorothea of Anhalt-Zerbst
Elisabeth Sophie of Mecklenburg Father Henry, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg Mother Ursula of Saxe-Lauenburg Born 10 April 1579
Dannenberg ( 1579-04-10 ) Died 17 September 1666(1666-09-17) (aged 87)
Wolfenbuttel | ||
Augustus of Brunswick-Lüneburg (10 April 1579 – 17 September 1666), called the Younger, was duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. In the estate division of the House of Welf of 1635, he received the Principality of Wolfenbüttel.
Augustus was born in Dannenberg, the seventh child of Henry, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. After complicated negotiations with his family members and an intervention by Emperor Ferdinand II, it was agreed that he should inherit Wolfenbüttel, whose last ruler had died in 1634. Because of the Thirty Years' War, he could not move into his residence until 1644. Augustus instituted a number of government reforms, and founded the Bibliotheca Augusta, a large library, in Wolfenbüttel (now the Herzog August Bibliothek — "HAB").
Under the pseudonym Gustavus Selenus, he wrote a book on chess in 1616, Chess or the King's Game, and on cryptography in 1624: Cryptomenytices et Cryptographiae libri IX. The pseudonym is a cryptic reference to his name, Gustavus anagrams (with U=V) to Augustus, the surname is a play on the Greek goddess of the moon (Selene). The book on cryptography is largely based on earlier work by Trithemius.
Augustus died at Wolfenbüttel and was succeeded by his three sons.
Family
On December 1607 he married Clara Maria of Pomerania-Barth, daughter of Bogislaw XIII, Duke of Pomerania and had two stillborn children. Clara Maria died on February 1623.
On October 1623 he married Dorothea of Anhalt-Zerbst, daughter of Rudolph, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst and had the following children:
Dorothea died on September 1634 and in 1635 Augustus married Duchess Elisabeth Sophie of Mecklenburg, daughter of John Albert II, Duke of Mecklenburg and had two children: