1)The Danish Nobility Yearbooks ( Danmarks Adels Aarbog) (DAÅ)

I had easy access to those at the Dutch "Hoge Raad van Adel" in the Hague.

At 88 lines/11 inches they form an ancestry list of 10 meters length!

As I only took the branches which form part of my daughter's lineage, the female branches of the 4/5 most recent ancestors of the present count could, in principle, lead to an equally long list.

Some interesting points:

In his 1585 genealogy the learned Henrik Rantzau mentions another Henrik Rantzau married to Abela Sehested. The only Henrik I could find who is in the same generation (as he should be) with Breide Rantzau (ID 16), as indicated in the genealogy, is my ID 232. About him little is known in the 1930 DAÅ. In the meantime it has been pointed out to me that I was wrong; it should be my ID 1234!

An Abele Sehested I found in the old Sehested genealogy in DAÅ. She lived as mentioned there in the Plön convent, apparently as a widow.

The only direct male descendants of the learned Henrik Rantzau are the Danish counts.

They became Danish as a matter of chance; most likely because Frantz married Anna Rosenkrantz in 1584.

She had Regitze Christoffersdatter Løvenbalk, the daughter of king Christoffer II, among her ancestors thus providing a link to the second source.

At this marriage Henrik must have collected the information for his Genealogy, first published in 1585. A list of the attendants survived the ages.

2) For these Royal Branches I am indebted to B.C Tompsett in Hull. Especially the more exotic lines of these are highly doubtful, so I keep them in a special file.

They make interesting reading, though, and increase the list of ancestors by another 2 meters!

They include, among others:

* Gorm the Old, whose son christianized the Danes.

* Berengaria, a Portuguese princess who married King Valdemar II Sejr of Denmark. She is said to descend from the Maurish Kings of Sevilla, the Abbasides, who claimed Mohammed as their forefather. This eventually, of course, leads to Abraham and to Adam and Eve! A genealogist dream come true!

* Charlemagne.

* Rollo, of Normandy, and so to William the Conqueror.

* The Nordic Deities, as given in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.

Other data I acquired at various archives and libraries in Denmark, Germany, Great Britain and elsewhere.

The British Library has more than 150 books about, or by a Rantzau.

In Germany, Augsburg, I found a "sammelband" containing coloured prints (which gave me the idea for the indexpage) in the local library.

Also the archives in Kiel and Schleswig have been very coöperative, as has the Landescentralbibliotek in Flensburg.

I spent a week at the Kongelige Bibliotek in Copenhagen. They did not have a Black Diamond then!

On a very rainy day, in the Aalborg Archive for Emigrants, I found, in the Danish Nobility Yearbook from 1930, the complete Rantzau genealogy.

I was looking for Jens Pedersen Ørsted's family-in-law or people in the Roerslev-Asperup neighborhood, not necessarily family who, according to the family's rumours, emigrated to the USA with other Danish Mormons around 1865. I have not found them yet! (cousins to Kirstine Madsdatter, born 11/2/1842, in Roerslev, Funen, Denmark.) In the Fynen State Archive I am now researching cousins of her which might be implicated.

I have my own copy of that 1930 genealogy now, presented to me by count Carl Iver Rantzau as an appreciation for my effort of researching his family.

Dr Wiebke Steinmetz, who wrote her thesis about Henrik Rantzau, gave me some good hints.

It is a pity I can not mention all who have contributed; but I am very grateful.

The link to my daughter's lineage is also given there, on page 6.

I also made a more simple Ancestor Chart for my daughter, showing which of those ancestors (in red) I chose to show their descendants who form my family.