Sophie of Brunswick-Lüneburg (30 October 1563 – 14 January 1639) was a member of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg and margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Brandenburg-Kulmbach and Duchess of Krnov by marriage.
Life Sophie was the eldest child of Duke William the Younger of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1535–1592) from his marriage to Dorothea of Denmark, a daughter of King Christian III of Denmark.
On 3 May 1579 she married Margrave George Frederick I of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmach (1539–1603) in Dresden.Adolph Friedrich Riedel: Codex diplomaticus Brandenburgensis: Collection of documents, chronicles and other documentary sources for the history of the Mark Brandenburg and its rulers, Volume 1, F.H. Morin, 1867, p. 243 George Frederick was the last of the older line of Frankish Hohenzollerns and was simultaneously Margrave of the Principality of Ansbach and Kulmbach, Silesian duke of the Duchy of Krnov and guardian administrator of the Duchy of Prussia. As such, he was a powerful figure of his time. His first wife, Elisabeth of Brandenburg-Küstrin, had died in 1578, and like his first, George Frederick's second marriage remained childless, which is why his inheritance needed to be regulated by the House Treaty of Gera. Sophie's childlessness motivated her husband to increased interest in the policy of the wider House of Hohenzollern.Andrea Baresel-Brand: Grave monuments of northern European royal houses in the Age of the Renaissance 1550-1650, volume 9 of Construction + Art, Verlag Ludwig, 2007, p. 145
After her husband died in 1604, Sophie returned to her birth family.Erik Margraf: The marriage sermon of the early modern period, Herbert Utz Verlag, 2007, p. 274 She survived her husband by 36 years. Sophie often stayed in Nuremberg with her sisters Clara, Countess of Schwarzburg, and Sibylle, Duchess of Brunswick-Dannenberg.Franz von Soden: War and moral history of the city of Nuremberg, Bläsing, 1860, pp. 11, 64, 478 She died in Nuremberg in 1639 and was buried in the St. Lorenz Church there.
The Renaissance portal of Wülzburg Castle shows George Frederick's coat of arms next to Sophie's.Daniel Burger: The rural fortresses of the Hohenzollerns in Franconia and Brandenburg in the Age of the Renaissance, Beck's Publishing House, 2000, p. 132
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