Simon Henry Adolph, Count of Lippe-Detmold


Simon Henry Adolph, Count of Lippe-Detmold was a ruler of the county of Lippe.

Life

He was the son of Frederick Adolphus, Count of Lippe-Detmold and his wife Johanna Elisabeth of Nassau-Dillenburg. His five siblings all died young, of his seven step-siblings, only three sisters lived into adulthood:
His Grand Tour under the supervision of the Lord Chamberlain in 1710 took him to the University of Utrecht and to the courts of England and France. During the Austro-Turkish War of 1716–1718, he took part in the campaign of Prince Eugene of Savoy in Hungary and Belgrade, and later returned via Vienna to Detmold, where he took up government 1718.
Simon Henry Adolph is famous for the fact that in 1720 Emperor Charles VI offered to raise him to Imperial Prince for a mere 4400 talers, but Simon Henry Adolph found himself unable to raise the money. A chronic shortage of money forced him to sell the Dutch lordships of Vianen and Ameide in 1725, and to pledge Sternberg Castle to the Electorate of Hanover in 1733.
Historians judge that he loved pomp and circumstance as much as his father did. Although he was constantly in financial difficulties, he wasted money on parties as if he had an inexhaustible source of money, or so an expert on Lippe history says 200 years later. Mayor Möller of Lippstadt voiced quite a different opinion on 1784, praising Simon Henry Adolph for improving the state of the principality's economy and eradicating the high debt, some of which were caused by the Thirty Years' War, and some by his charitable generosity, and some by his providing care and a suitable education to all branches of his family, not by taxation and oppression of his subjects, but by borrowing and selling off his Dutch possessions in 1725, and by mortgaging Sternberg in 1733. According to Möller, Simon Henry Adolph brought balance to the state's financial situation with his frugal policies, and he used extraordinary care to ensure the welfare of his country, vigorously promoted religion, morality, justice and prosperity for all his subjects.

Marriage and issue

On 16 October 1719 Simon Henry Adolph married princess Johanna Wilhelmina, daughter of Prince George August of Nassau-Idstein. Of her eleven children, four died young and three daughters remained unmarried: