George III, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau

George III, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau (Dessau, 15 August 1507 – Dessau, 17 October 1553), was a German prince of the House of Ascania and ruler of the principality of Anhalt-Dessau. After 1544 he became the first ruler of the principality of Anhalt-Plötzkau.

George was the third (but second surviving) son of Ernest I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, by his wife Margarete, daughter of Henry I, Duke of Münsterberg-Oels and granddaughter of George of Poděbrady, King of Bohemia.

He was mainly brought up with his brothers John V and Joachim I by his devout mother. After the death of his father in 1516, he inherited Anhalt-Dessau as a co-ruler with his brothers (at first with their mother serving as regent).

With the assistance of his kinsman Adolph, the Bishop of Merseburg, George was elevated to the rank of Canon in that see in 1518, and attended the University of Leipzig, where the theologian Georg Helt of Forchheim became his "highly beloved teacher."

In 1524 Adolph consecrated George as a priest. That he might be better able to refute Lutheran beliefs, he made a thorough study of the Bible, the Church Fathers, and church history. The extreme emotional tensions and qualms of conscience into which his investigations brought him induced a violent illness that left its mark on him for the rest of his life. It was only after his mother's death (28 June 1530) that he made peace with his religious convictions; from the time of the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 both George and his brothers allied themselves with the Lutherans.

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