Countess Magdalena of Waldeck

Countess Magdalena of Waldeck
Countess of Hanau-Münzenberg
Spouse(s)	Philip Louis I, Count of Hanau-Münzenberg John VII, Count of Nassau
Noble family	House of Waldeck
Father	Philip IV, Count of Waldeck
Mother	Jutta of Isenburg
Born	1558
Died	August 1599

Countess Magdalena of Waldeck (9 September 1558 – August 1599) was a daughter of Philip IV of Waldeck-Wildungen (1493–1574) and his wife, Jutta of Isenburg (d. 1564).

On 2 or 6 February 1576, she married Count Philip Louis I of Hanau-Münzenberg. This marriage has some interesting features for its time. First, it seems to have been a love match. In the medieval view of nobility, Magdalene was ranked lower than Philip. Politically, the marriage could also represent a conscious withdrawal on her groom's part from the politically dominant influence of his guardian, Count John VI of Nassau-Dillenburg, who would have preferred that Philip Louis marry a member of the Nassau family. Her own family was more oriented toward the Landgraviate of Hesse and the Archbishopric of Cologne.

Magdalena and Philip Louis had four children:

On 24 November 1581, she married Count John VII of Nassau-Siegen. Magdalena took up the Calvinist confession of her second husband. She moved with him to Dillenburg, where they took in the two surviving children from her first marriage. This led to Philip Louis II being raised as a Calvinist. When Philip Louis II became Count of the Hanau-Münzenberg in 1595, he made Calvinism the established faith there, the so-called "second Reformation" of the county.

Magdalena and John had twelve children:

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