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Germany – German States – Kingdom of Wurttemberg
Karl Eugen (Charles Eugene) – Duke: 12 March 1737 – 24 October 1793
1747 Billon 6 Kreuzer 24mm (2.76 grams)
Reference: KM# 385
CAROLVS: D: G:DVX.WURT:&:T, Carolus facing right.
WURTEMBURG: LANDMUNTZ 1748 .6.K., Crowned arms in scallop shell.
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 Charles Eugene (German: Carl Eugen; 11 February 1728 – 24 October 1793), Duke of Württemberg, was the eldest son, and successor, of Charles Alexander; his mother was Princess Marie Auguste of Thurn and Taxis.
Born in Brussels, he succeeded his father as ruler of Württemberg at the age of 9, but the real power was in the hands of Administrators Carl Rudolf, Duke of Württemberg-Neuenstadt (1737–1738) and Carl Frederick von Württemberg-Oels (1738–1746).
He was educated at the court of Frederick II of Prussia. In the Seven Years’ War against Prussia, Charles Eugene advanced into Saxony. He ruled until his death in 1793, when he was succeeded by his younger brother.
He was an early patron of Friedrich Schiller. He also studied keyboard with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in the 1740s (Bach’s “Württemberg” sonatas, published in 1744, were dedicated to Charles Eugene). In 1761, Charles Eugen founded an Académie des Arts in Stuttgart (now the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart), in 1765 a public library in Ludwigsburg (now the Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart), and he was responsible for the construction of a number of other key palaces and buildings in the area including the New Palace which still stands at the centre of the Schlossplatz, Castle Solitude and Castle Hohenheim.
Charles Eugene married twice, first in Bayreuth on 26 September 1748 to Margravine Elisabeth Fredericka Sophie of Brandenburg-Bayreuth with whom he had one daughter, Friederike Wilhelmine Augusta Luise Charlotte, who was born in Stuttgart on 19 February 1750 and died after 13 months in Stuttgart on 12 March 1751. Elisabetha left Charles Eugene in 1756 to return to her parents’ court in Bayreuth although they never divorced. In the meantime, Charles Eugene kept a string of mistresses and fathered eleven children by them. The last of these mistresses was Franziska von Hohenheim, whom he raised to the status of Countess and married in Stuttgart on 10 or 11 January 1785.
Charles Eugene was known for his interest in agriculture and travel and is considered the inspiration behind today’s Hohenheim university. His original botanical gardens form the basis for today’s Landesarboretum Baden-Württemberg and Botanischer Garten der Universität Hohenheim, which still contain some of the specimens he planted. He also built a large number of palaces and bankrupted his lands through courtly extravagance, accepting huge French government loans in exchange for maintaining large numbers of support troops in Württemberg.
In his early years he ruled with an iron fist. However, he also displayed humanist tendencies. For example, in 1744 he ordered that the corpse of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer – the executed Jewish financial advisor of his father, Charles Alexander – whose decaying corpse had been suspended in an iron cage by Stuttgart’s Prag gallows for six years – be taken down and given a decent burial. He was also well known for his extensive library, his extravagant interest in opera, and interest in large scale horticulture for the feeding of the masses.
Between 1751 and 1759 Karl Eugen was involved in an increasingly bitter struggle with his adviser, the eminent Liberal jurist Johann Jakob Moser who strongly opposed the Duke’s absolutist tendencies. In 1759 Charles Eugene had Moser charged with authoring “a subversive writing” and cast into prison for the next five years. However, in 1764 Moser was released, due in part to the intercession of Friedrich the Great of Prussia, and was rehabilitated and restored to his position, rank and titles.
Charles Eugene died in Hohenheim.
Charles Eugene made the first of his five trips to Paris and the Palace of Versailles in 1748 with his first wife. He used these trips to sightsee and acquire Parisian goods for Ludwigsburg Palace while touring the workshops those goods were manufactured in. From 1776 Etienne Sollicoffre, a banker Charles Eugene had met in Paris, befriended the Duke and acted as the agent of his purchases in the city.
  Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic in western-central Europe. It includes 16 constituent states and covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres (137,847 sq mi) with a largely temperate seasonal climate. Its capital and largest city is Berlin. With 81 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state in the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular migration destination in the world.
Various Germanic tribes have occupied northern Germany since classical antiquity. A region named Germania was documented before 100 CE. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation..
The rise of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states in 1871 into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918-1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic. The establishment of the Third Reich in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After 1945, Germany split into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990, the country was reunified.
 In the 21st century, Germany is a great power and has the world’s fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP, as well as the fifth-largest by PPP. As a global leader in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the world’s third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a developed country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled and productive society. It upholds a social security and universal health care system, environmental protection and a tuition free university education.
Germany was a founding member of the European Union in 1993. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world. Known for its rich cultural history, Germany has been continuously the home of influential artists, philosophers, musicians, sportsmen, entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors.
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