Christopher Delphicus zu Dohna

Count and Burgrave Christopher Delphicus zu Dohna zu Carwinden (German: Graf und Burggraf Christoph Delphicus zu Dohna zu Carwinden; Swedish: greve Kristofer Delphicus af Dohna) (June 4, 1628 – May 21, 1668) was a soldier and diplomat who emigrated from Prussia to Sweden, becoming a Swedish Field Marshal.

Life

Dohna was born in Delft, Dutch Republic, to a noble family with close family ties to the Calvinist Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, the Stadtholder of the Netherlands. His father, Christopher von Dohna, had been one of the men who helped Frederick V, Elector Palatine to obtain the Kingdom of Bohemia, a major cause of the Thirty Years War. Young Dohna was a maternal nephew of Amalia of Solms-Braunfels, the Prince of Orange's wife. In 1647 Amalia's son William II, Prince of Orange, a cousin and childhood companion of Dohna who was two years older, became stadtholder of the Netherlands.

In 1652, Dohna arrived in Sweden where he became a favourite of Queen Christina of Sweden. He became Colonel of the Royal Guard in 1653 and was promoted Major General in 1654. He took part in the Northern Wars of 1655–1660 and in the war against Bremen of 1665–1666, when he was further promoted Field Marshal. He was a member of the Swedish delegation to The Hague in 1667 and took part in the peace negotiations between England and the Netherlands at Breda. In 1668, he negotiated the Triple Alliance between these countries and Sweden, but during this mission he died, while in London.

In 1658 Dohna married Countess Anna Oxenstierna (1620–90), a distant cousin of the royal family of Sweden. She is notable in her own right because she was to be a gateway ancestor through whom the blood of the highest nobility of medieval and early modern Sweden, as well as of late medieval Norway, would pass to King Carl XVI Gustaf the current monarch of Sweden, as well as to King Harald V, the current monarch of Norway, and many other non-Swedes.

Dohna was ennobled in Sweden, and his son's line remained there.

Sources

• The article Dohna, Christoff Delphicus zu in Nationalencyklopedin (1991).