Adolf van Nieuwenaar

Adolf van Nieuwenaar, Count of Limburg and Moers (also: Adolf von Neuenahr) (c. 1545 – 18 October 1589) was a statesman and soldier, who was stadtholder of Overijssel, Guelders and Utrecht for the States-General of the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War.

Nieuwenaar (as he is usually called in historiography) was the son of Count Gumprecht II von Neuenahr-Alpen and Amöna von Daun. After the death of his father in 1556 he was raised at the court of his guardian and uncle, the Protestant Count Hermann of Neuenahr and Moers, who was married to Magdalene, a half-sister of William the Silent, Prince of Orange. In 1570 he married his aunt Walburgis van Nieuwenaer, the widow of Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn who had been executed by the Duke of Alba in 1568. She was the sister of his guardian Hermann. When Count Hermann died childless in December 1578, Niewenaar inherited his lands, including the county of Moers. All these lands are close to the current border between Germany and the Netherlands, and abutted the Duchy of Guelders in the Habsburg Netherlands.

Nieuwenaar encouraged the Prince-elector and Archbishop of Cologne Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg to retain his control of the Electorate of Cologne after he married Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben and converted to Calvinism. In 1583 Pope Gregory XIII excommunicated Gebhard, and the Cathedral chapter chose Ernest of Bavaria as the new Elector. War broke out between the two rivals: it was known as the Cologne War. Gebhart was supported by Nieuwenaar (as his general), his brother, Karl, Truchsess von Waldburg-Trauchburg and the Dutch rebels. Ernest by his brothers, Wilhelm V, Duke of Bavaria, Ferdinand of Bavaria, and eventually by Spain. By 1586, Nieuwenaar was driven out of all his German possessions.

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