Margaret of East Frisia

Margarethe was a daughter of Count Edzard I of East Frisia and Elisabeth of Rietberg. She had six siblings, three brothers and three sisters, four of whom had already died by the time of their father's death in 1528.^[1]

In 1521, she travelled in the company of her relative Margarethe of Rietberg, the widow of Duke Frederick III of Brunswick-Calenberg-Göttingen, to the Diet of Worms. There she met Philip IV of Waldeck-Wildungen and became engaged to him while still in Worms. The couple married in Emden on 17 February 1523. As her dowry, Margarethe's parents paid the comparatively large sum of 8,000 Rhenish guilders.^[2] The marriage produced nine children, including Margaretha von Waldeck (1533–1554), whose fate, according to the Hessian teacher and local historian Eckhard Sander, served as the basis for the fairy tale of Snow White.^[3]

Margarethe died in childbirth in 1537 following the birth of her daughter Esther. She was buried in the Church of Niederwildungen.^[4]

On the 17 February 1523 in Emden, she married Philipp IV of Waldeck-Wildungen (born: 1493; died: 30 November 1574), a son of Count Henry VIII of Waldeck-Wildungen and Anastasia of Runkel. They had the following children:

• Ernst (born: 1523 or 1524; died: 1527)
• Elizabeth (born: 10 December 1525; died: 30 March 1543 at Waldeck Castle), married in 1542 with Count Reinhard of Isenburg (died: 28 February 1568)
• Samuel (born: 2 May 1528 at Waldeck Castle; died: 6 January 1570 at Friedrichstein Castle in Bad Wildungen), married on 8 October 1554 with Anna Maria (1538–1583), daughter of Count Henry XXXII of Schwarzburg-Blankenburg.
• Daniel, Count of Waldeck-Wildungen (born: 1 August 1530; died: 7 June 1577 in Waldeck); he succeeded Philip as the ruling Count of Waldeck-Wildungen and married on 11 November 1568 with Barbara of Hesse (1536–1597), daughter of Landgrave Philip I of Hesse and widow of Duke George I of Württemberg-Montbéliard
• Henry IX, Count of Waldeck-Wildungen (born: 10 December 1531; died: 3 October 1577 in Werbe (now part of Waldeck)), married on 19 December 1563 with Anna of Viermund (died: 17 April 1599)
• Margaret (born: 1533; died: 1554 in Brussels)
• Frederick (born: 1534; died: 1557 in St. Quentin)
• Anastasia (born: 1536; died: 1561 in Heidelberg)
• Esther (born: 1537 in Bad Wildungen; died: probably in 1537)

• House of Cirksena
• County of East Frisia
• List of counts of East Frisia