RANTZAU Ancestors:

The data for the diagram have been found at two sources;

1)The Danish Nobility Yearbooks ( Danmarks Adels Aarbog) (DAÅ)

I had easy access to those at the Dutch "Hoge Raad van Adel" in the Hague.

At 88 lines/11 inches they form an ancestry list of 10 meters length!

As I only took the branches which form part of my daughter's linage, the female branches of the 4/5 more recent ancestors of the present count could, in principle, lead to an equally long list.

Some interesting points:

In his 1585 genealogy the learned Henrik Rantzau mentions another Henrik Rantzau married to Abela Sehested. The only Henrik I could find who is in the same generation with Breide Rantzau (ID 16), as indicated in the genealogy, is my ID 232. About him little is known in the 1930 DAÅ. An Abele Sehested I found in the old Sehested genealogy in DAÅ. She lived as mentioned there in the Plön convent, apparently as a widow.

The only direct male decendants of the learned Henrik Rantzau are the Danish counts.

They became Danish as a matter of chance; Henrik divided his possesions in his will, and Frantz happened to draw the Danish lot, which included eg Rantzausholm (Brahetrolleborg).

He immediatly started to increase this by marrying Anna Rosenkrantz, adding the present Family Castle of Rosenvold.

In this way he also provided the second source, as she had Regitze Christoffersdatter Løvenbalk, the daughter of king Christoffer II, among her ancestors.

2) For these Royal Branches I am indebted to B.C Tompsett in Hull. Especially the more exotic lines of these are highly doubtfull, so I keep them in a special file.

They make interesting reading, though, and increase the list of ancestors by another 2 meters!

They include, among others:

* Gorm the Old, whose son christianized the Danes.

* Berengaria, a Portugese princess who married King Valdemar II Sejr of Denmark. She is said to decend from the Maurish Kings of Sevilla, the Abbasides, who claimed Mohammed as their forefather. This eventually, of course, leads to Abraham and to Adam and Eve! A genealogist's dream come true!

* Charlemagne.

* Rollo, of Normandy, and so to William the Conqueror.

* The Nordic Deities, as given in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.

Other data I aquired at various archives and libraries in Denmark, Germany, Great Britain and elsewhere.

The British Library has more than 150 books about, or by a Rantzau.

In Germany, Augsburg, I found a "sammelband" containing coloured prints (which gave me the idea for the homepage) in the local library.

Also the archives in Kiel and Schleswig have been very coöperative, as has the Landesbibliotek in Flensburg.

I spent a week at the Kongelige Bibliotek in Copenhagen. They did not have a Black Diamond then!

The Rantzau genealogy from 1930 in the Danish Nobility Yearbook I found in the Aalborg Archive for Emigrants, on a very rainy day, looking for Jens Peder Ørsted's sister-in-law who, according to the family's rumours, emigrated to the USA with other Danish Mormons around 1865. I have not found her yet! (Kirstine Madsdatter, born 11/2/1842, in Roerslev, Funen, Denmark.) I have my own copy now, presented to me by count Carl Iver Rantzau.

Dr Wiebke Steinmetz, who wrote her thesis about Henrik Rantzau, gave me some good hints.

It is a pity I can not mention all who have contributed; but I am very grateful.

The link to my daughter's linage is given here too.