Duke Of Wurtemberg Christopher, a Protestant prince of the 16th century, born May 12, 1515, died Dec. 28, 1568. At the time of his birth the duchy of his father Ulric was in a very unsettled condition. In a little more than four years the confederated Swabian cities expelled Ulric from his principality, transferred the dukedom to the house of Austria, and removed Christopher to Vienna. When Solyman besieged that city in 1529, Christopher was well nigh made a Turkish prisoner. But Charles V., fearing him more than his father, resolved to shut him up in a monastery, and for this purpose ordered him in 1532 to Spain. Christopher, finding an opportunity to escape, fled to Bavaria, where his uncle, the reigning duke, together with the landgrave of Hesse, took up his cause and that of his father; and entreaty proving unsuccessful, recourse was had to arms, which, through the secret aid of the French king Francis I., and a sudden sortie on the Austrians at Laufen, May 13, 1534, resulted in the restoration of Ulric to his duchy. Christopher succeeded to the dukedom on the death of his father in 1550, and set himself about establishing the reformed religion in his province.

Instead, however, of seizing the church property, and devoting it to his own use, or dividing it among his nobles, like many Protestant princes of his day, he constituted of it a fund called the "Wiirtemberg church property," out of the proceeds of which were supported all the public schools of the duchy, the university of Tubingen, and a variety of other public establishments. The duke also enlarged the liberties of the people and gave them a code of laws. - See Pfister's Herzog Christoph (Tubingen, 1819).