Ludwig Von Siegen - Early Life

Early Life

Siegen came from an aristocratic family, and may have been born in the family castle at Sechten near Cologne, not in Utrecht, as traditionally believed, as he was baptised in Cologne on May 2, 1609. His father was then living in Holland however, apparently because of his Calvinist beliefs. Sechten was in Hesse-Kassel, and his father Johann became an advisor to the Landgrave Maurice, who in 1620 appointed him chancellor of the Collegium Mauritaneum, a school for young aristocrats which Siegen attended from 1621 to 1626. Then he studied law at the Hohe Schule in Herborn. His father moved to Holland to again in 1627, when the new Landgrave William V dissolved the Collegium Mauritaneum.

Little is known about Siegen's life between 1629 and 1639, when he asked William V's widow, now Regent for her son William VI, for a position. He may have seen active military service in these missing years in the middle of the Thirty Years War. He was appointed kammerjunker, which as the Landgrave was a minor, may have been effectively a tutorial position, as well as head of the personal guard of the ruler.

By 1641 he had decided to convert to Catholicism, which in the atmosphere of the Thirty Years War would not have been compatible with his position in the strictly Calvinistic court of Hesse-Kassel. After some friction at court, he therefore repeated his father's move to Holland, although for the opposite reason. He moved to Amsterdam in 1641 and announced his conversion there, remaining in contact with his former employers and sending them works of art he produced, sometimes commissioned by them.