Joachim Frederick, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Plön

Who was Joachim Frederick, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Plön?

Joachim Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Plön, also known as Joachim Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein-Plön, was the third Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Plön, a dukedom created by the division of the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg.

He was born in Magdeburg on 9 May 1668, and originally came from an insignificant Plön family branch, a collateral line of Schleswig-Holstein-Nordborg, with its seat at Nordborg Castle on the island of Alsen, itself formed from a division of the inheritance of Plön's first duke, Joachim Ernest in 1671. He was the eldest son of Augustus, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Plön-Norburg and his wife, Elisabeth Charlotte of Anhalt-Harzgerode.

When the incumbent Duke of Plön, John Adolphus, died in 1704, a few days after his son, Adolphus Augustus, was killed in a riding accident, the male Plön line could be continued only through Leopold Augustus, grandson of John Adolphus and son of Adolphus Augustus. Leopold Augustus died as a child of four in 1706, and the underlying entitlement to the inheritance of Plön passed as a result to Joachim Frederick. Joachim Frederick himself had no male heir when he died in Plön on 25 January 1722, deeply in debt. Plön Castle, the ancestral residence of the dukes of Plön, lay empty for seven years and some of its furniture was sold off; the Danish royal house administered the duchy during this period.