The von der Leyen family (German pronunciation: [fɔn deːɐ̯ ˈlaɪən] is a German noble family which made its fortune as silk merchants and silk weaving industrialists.

The family was ennobled in 1786 and one branch raised to Baronial rank by Napoleon in 1813 and by the King of Prussia in 1816.

Heiko von der Leyen, husband of politician Ursula von der Leyen (former German Federal Minister for Defence and current President of the European Commission), belongs to an ennobled (but not the baronial Bloemersheim) branch of the family.

So 2/3.

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Edit:

The [von der Leyen] family built many factory and residential buildings in Krefeld some of which survived World War II bombardments.

I wonder what those factories were used for during World War II

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[Ursula von der Leyen’s grandfather] belonged to a family of wealthy cotton merchants; his father was the cotton merchant Carl Albrecht (1875–1952) and his mother was the American-born Mary Ladson Robertson (1883–1960), who belonged to a prominent planter family from South Carolina. His father was a grandson of Baron Ludwig Knoop, one of the leading industrialists of the Russian Empire in his lifetime.

lmao it gets worse.

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James Henry Ladson (1795–1868) was an American planter and businessman from Charleston, South Carolina. He was the owner of James H. Ladson & Co., a major Charleston firm that was active in the rice and cotton business, and owned over 200 slaves.

Among Ladson’s descendants is Ursula von der Leyen, who briefly lived under the alias Rose Ladson.

“I need a pseudonym, what should I go with? I know, the family name of my slaver ancestors!”

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Ursula von der Leyen, nominee for EU top job, lived in London under alias to escape Baader-Meinhof gang

The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang, was a West German far-left militant group founded in 1970. The RAF described itself as a communist, anti-imperialist, and urban guerrilla group which was engaged in armed resistance against what it considered a fascist state.

Hmm, why did she move to London and take a pseudonym to escape a far-left militant group? You’d only do something like that if you or your family were being specifically targeted, right?

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In 1828, the workers at the von der Leyen factories rebelled against their employers and the 11th Hussar Regiment put down the rebellion. Karl Marx described it as the “first workers’ uprising in German history.”

Interesting trivia.

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In 1976, Albrecht [Ursula’s father, Premier of Lower Saxony] made Hans Puvogel his minister of justice. During his tenure, Puvogel was particularly active in combatting notions of more liberal penal and rehabilitation systems. He had already set out justification for his stance in a 1935-1936 doctoral thesis. There, he wrote of the “inheritance of criminal tendencies”, of “constitutionally predisposed criminals” and “inferior people”, who would have to be “eliminated from the community”. “Only a person of value to the race” would have “a right to exist within the national community”.

And it gets even worse, though indirectly.