History
The Order of the Oak Crown was instituted by the Grand Duke-King William II, in 1841. At that time, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Kingdom of the Netherlands were in personal union; although the Order was technically a Luxembourgian award, it was often used by William II and his successor, Grand Duke-King William III, as a house order to reward Dutch subjects, beyond the control of the Dutch government.
William II conferred the order on fewer than 30 recipients. His successor, William III, liked the ability to confer this Order on his sole discretion, and awarded 300 decorations on the day of his coronation alone. In the following years hundreds of additional awards of the Order were made. Indeed, there were so many recipients in the Netherlands itself that the Order was widely regarded as a Dutch decoration.
The Order of the Oak Crown ceased to be awarded to Dutch subjects in 1890, when Queen Wilhelmina, as the only remaining member of the House of Orange-Nassau, succeeded her father as the Queen of the Netherlands. Since the Erneuter Erbverein, the house-treaty between the two branches of the House of Nassau, which followed the Salic Law, did not allow women to succeed the throne, the throne of Luxembourg went to a German relative of the queen, Adolphe, Duke of Nassau, with the title of Grand Duke. The Order of the Oak Crown remained a Luxembourgian award; the Netherlands established the Order of Orange-Nassau instead.
Since the accession of Grand Duke Adolphe, the Order has been primarily an award for Luxembourgers, though it has occasionally been conferred upon foreigners, mainly on members of foreign Royal families or notable foreigners of Luxembourger descent.
The Grand Duke of Luxembourg is the Grand Master of the Order.
Read more about this topic: Order Of The Oak Crown
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“These anyway might think it was important
That human history should not be shortened.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)