175th Anniversary of the Death of Grand Duke Guillaume I

A portrait of the then King of the Netherlands and simultaneously Grand Duke of Luxembourg, with his title and life dates "1772 – 1843"; to the right: the current Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Henri. Below: the issuing state "LUXEMBOURG" and the year "2018".

In 2018 a retrospective set was issued comprising the Luxembourg €2 commemorative coins of 2016–2018 (LU-16 G2, LU-17 G2, LU-17 G4, LU-18 G3, LU-18 G6) with the 2018 mint marks.

Guillaume I stands at the very beginning of Luxembourg's history as a state: when the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was created at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, he, as King of the Netherlands, was simultaneously installed as the first Grand Duke of the new state. The personal union between the Netherlands and Luxembourg, which he embodied from 1815 until his death in 1843, decisively shaped the country during a politically turbulent period. Guillaume I was born in 1772 in The Hague and descended from the House of Orange-Nassau — a dynasty that shaped the history of the Netherlands for centuries. In Luxembourg itself, he governed the country from a distance; direct administration lay in the hands of local governors, while the Grand Duchy lost a considerable part of its territory to the newly founded Belgium after the Belgian Revolution of 1830. This loss of territory and the resulting political realignment count among the most consequential events of early Luxembourg history.

As monarch of the Netherlands, Guillaume I faced growing domestic opposition: in 1840, under pressure from a liberal constitutional reform, he abdicated in favour of his son Guillaume II — one of the few voluntary abdications in Dutch dynastic history. Despite ruling from afar, Guillaume I is regarded in Luxembourg as a founding figure of the modern Grand Duchy; his reign laid the formal groundwork for the later state independence that Luxembourg finally achieved with the Treaty of London in 1867. On the occasion of his 175th death anniversary, Luxembourg issued a 2-euro commemorative coin in 2018 depicting him alongside the current Grand Duke Henri — a dynastic connecting line spanning the entire history of the Grand Duchy.