Princess Christina II, Princess Abbess of Gandersheim

Christina, Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (8 August 1639 - 30 June 1693) was a princess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Between 1681 and 1693 she served as the Abbess at Gandersheim. She was also a Princess of the Empire (Reichsfürstin). Life Adolf Frederick of Mecklenburg (1588 - 1658) is known to have been the father of at least sixteen legitimate children from his two marriages. Sources differ as to Christina's chronological ranking in the list of her father's children, because not all of them list all the children who died in infancy. According to one source she was her father's eleventh child, and the third by his second marriage. Her mother was Marie Katharina (1616–1665), a daughter of the Duke of Brunswick. At her mother's request, and through the mediation of her second cousin, Anton Ulric of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, from 1665 she acquired a benefice (income) through her appointment as the then youngest canoness of Gandersheim Abbey. Despite her relative youth, on 3 October 1665 Christina was elected deaconess at the abbey, on the recommendation of Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who was the younger of her mother's surviving uncles. Being deaconess lined her up as deputy and likely successor to the Abbess Dorothea Hedwig, another kinswoman.