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- BIOGRAPHY
Elisabeth Ursula was born in 1539, the daughter of Ernst 'the Confessor', Herzog von Braunschweig-Lüneburg, and Sophie, Herzogin von Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Her father had brought the Reformation to his duchy, and she was educated in the Lutheran faith.
On 5 June 1558 in Celle she became the second wife of Otto IV, Graf von Holstein-Schaumburg in Schaumburg und Pinneberg, whose first wife Maria von Pommern had died in 1554. He was the son of Jobst I, Graf von Holstein-Schaumburg in Schaumburg und Pinneberg, and Maria, Gräfin von Nassau-Dillenburg. They had three children of whom Maria and Elisabeth would have progeny.
Before their wedding Otto had undertaken the recruitment of a Lutheran chaplain to the court. Already during his first marriage he had committed to doing so, but for family reasons - his brothers Adolf and Anton were successive prince-archbishops of Cologne, both staunch opponents of the Reformation - he had not yet fulfilled it. Anton's death on 18 June 1558 removed that obstacle, and with the appointment of Jakob Sammann as superintendent of Hagen and the introduction of the Mecklenburg Church Order of 1552 into the county as the only valid order of service, he proceeded with the establishment of the Lutheran faith in his land, with the full support of Elisabeth Ursula.
Otto died in 1576, and Elisabeth's stepson Adolf XIII took over the rule of the county. In the years of her widowhood Elisabeth Ursula was zealous in planning the large funerary monument for her husband, his first wife Maria and herself in the city of Hagen's St. Martin's Church (St.Martini-Kirche). She commissioned the Flemish sculptor Robin Arend, who also worked on the castle at Hagen. Maria is shown as a young countess in widow's weeds. The monument was completed in 1581.
Elisabeth Ursula died in Detmold on 3 September 1586, ten years after her husband, and was buried like him in the crypt under the choir of St.Martin's Church. In 1601 her son Ernst succeeded his half-brother Adolf. He had a magnificent new mausoleum built east of St.Martin's Church, and moved the remains of his parents, but not Maria, to it. In the mausoleum he had large tablets installed with inscriptions in Latin extolling the virtues of his parents.
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