Reign 1542–1553 Predecessor John Frederick I | Successor John Frederick II Name John Duke | |
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Born 10 May 1521
Coburg ( 1521-05-10 ) Died 8 February 1553(1553-02-08) (aged 31)
Coburg House House of Wettin
Ernestine Line Father John, Elector of Saxony | ||
John Ernest (German: Johann Ernst) (10 May 1521 – 8 February 1553) was a Duke of Saxe-Coburg.
John Ernest was born in Coburg as the third (but second surviving and the youngest) son of John, Elector of Saxony, and his second wife Margaret of Anhalt-Köthen. After the death of his father (1532), his half-brother, John Frederick I, assumed the title of Elector of Saxony; John Ernest took part with him in the rule over the Electorate of Saxony.
In 1542 John Frederick I decided to rule alone, and ceded to John Ernest the Franconian areas of the Wettin family lands (Coburg, Eisfeld, etc.); but it was not until 1547 (after the Battle of Mühlberg) when John Ernest could govern undisturbed in Coburg. He married Catherine, daughter of Philip I, Duke of Brunswick-Grubenhagen, but the marriage was childless. After his death in Coburg, the city fell for a few months to John Frederick — dismissed from the imperial detention — before his death, and then, to his three sons, which governed the Ernestine lands together from 1554 for some years.