Ludwig II (Palatine of Zweibrucken)

Ludwig was the eldest son of the Palatinate and Duke Alexander Zweibruckensky (1462-1514), born in a marriage to Margarita Hohenlohe-Neuenstein (1480-1522), daughter of Count Kraft VI von Hohenlohe-in-Neuenstein. Since at the time of the death of his father he did not reach adulthood, until 1519 Ludwig was under the care of his mother and the guardian councils organized by her. When the city of Annweiler refused to pay tribute to his mother in 1519, Ludwig besieged him, and after negotiations on February 6, 1519, the city was surrendered to him. In 1522, he fought in the Netherlands on the side of the imperial army.

The reign of Ludwig was during the period of the Reformation . In his youth, he was influenced by Johann Bader. In 1521, at the Reichstag in Worms, he witnessed a speech by Martin Luther , whose follower was considered Ludwig II. The support of the forces of the Reformation on his part was not very consistent, nevertheless in 1523 he invited Johann Schwebel to Zweibrucken as court chaplain, whose activities largely contributed to the fact that the duchy largely avoided the consequences of the peasant war in Germany . On the other hand, Ludwig II failed to overcome the resistance of the monasteries of Hornbach and Wörschweiler. In 1529, he gave Swiss theologians the opportunity to come to the Marburg dispute , giving them a way through their duchy, bypassing the bishoprics of Speyer, Mainz and Worms.

Ludwig died at the age of only 30 from consumption . His grave is in Alexanderkirche in Zweibrucken . Due to the fact that Crown Prince Wolfgang did not come of age, the duchy at first ruled as regent the younger brother of Ludwig Ruprecht von Palatinate-Veldenz .

Ludwig II married on September 10, 1525, in Kassel, to Elizabeth of Hesse (1503-1563), daughter of the Landgraf Wilhelm of Hesse-Kasselsky . The wedding had to be postponed for some time due to the start of a peasant war. In a marriage with Elizabeth, Ludwig II had two children:

• Wolfgang (1526-1569), Palatinate and Duke of the Palatinate-Zweibrucken; in 1545 he married Princess Anna of Hesse (1529–1591)
• Christina (1528-1534)

• Maximilian V. Sattler: Lehrbuch der bayerischen Geschichte: mit 50 Stamm- u. Regententafeln , Lindauer, 1868, S. 403
• JP Gelbert: Magister Johann Bader's Leben und Schriften, Nicolaus Thomae und seine Briefe: Ein Beitrag zur Reformationsgeschichte der Städte Landau, Bergzabern und der linksrheinischen Pfalz , Gottschick-Witter, 1868, S. 139 ff.
• Johann Georg Lehmann: Vollständige Geschichte des Herzogtums Zweibrücken und seiner Fürsten , Kaiser, 1867, S. 258 ff.

• Die Genealogie der Wittelsbacher