Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt Christian Ludwig (24 May 1677 – 3 September 1734), a member of the House of Hohenzollern, was a Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt and a military officer of the Prussian Army. The margravial title was given to princes of the Prussian Royal House and did not express a territorial status. He is best known as the recipient of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Brandenburg concertos". Born in Berlin, Christian Ludwig was the youngest son of the "Great Elector" Frederick William (1620–1688), ruler of Brandenburg-Prussia, and his second wife Princess Sophia Dorothea of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (1636–1689). Like his elder brothers, he
Brandenburg-Schwedt Brandenburg-Schwedt Brandenburg-Schwedt was a secundogeniture of the Hohenzollern margraves of Brandenburg, established by Prince Philip William who took his residence at Schwedt Castle in 1689. By appanage, they administered the manors of Schwedt and Vierraden on the Oder river (Uckermark and Neumark) as well as Wildenbruch in Pomerania (present-day Swobnica, Poland). Though prosperous, the cadet branch never obtained Imperial immediacy. Because of a lack of money in the late days of the disastrous Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), the "Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg in about 1640 mortgaged the Schwedt region to the Baltic German noble Gustav Adolf von (Varrensback,