Benigna Marie of Reuss-Ebersdorf

Benigna Marie of Reuss-Ebersdorf
Born	(1695-12-15)15 December 1695 Ebersdorf
Died	31 July 1751(1751-07-31) (aged 55) Pottiga
Noble family	House of Reuss
Father	Heinrich X, Count of Reuss-Ebersdorf
Mother	Erdmuthe Benigna of Solms-Laubach

Benigna Marie of Reuss-Ebersdorf (15 December 1695 in Ebersdorf – 31 July 1751 in Pottiga) was a Protestant German hymn writer and a titular Countess of Reuss. She was a member of the Reuss-Ebersdorf line from the Reuss-Lobenstein.

Life

Benigna Marie was a daughter of Count Heinrich X of Reuss-Ebersdorf (1662-1711) and Countess Benigna Erdmuthe of Solms-Laubach (1670-1732). She grew up in Ebersdorf and was educated in a strictly pietistic fashion. After her parents' death, she moved to Pottiga.

Here she wrote a series of hymns in the spirit of Zinzendorf, who was married with her younger sister Erdmuthe Dorothea. However, she rejected Zinzendorf's Moravian Church and schism in the Evangelical church that this caused.

She was a close friend of Johann Jakob Moser, and died unmarried in Pottiga, at the 55 years.

References

• Georg Brückner (1877), "Erdmuthe Dorothea", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 6, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 193–194 (mentioned at p. 194)
• Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz (1975). "Benigna Maria Gräfin von Reuß-Ebersdorf". In Bautz, Friedrich Wilhelm (ed.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). Vol. 1. Hamm: Bautz. cols. 499–500. ISBN 3-88309-013-1.