Her life started well enough, born the first child of Moritz, Elector of Saxony and Agnes of Hessen. A younger brother, Albert, born a year later, died at only about five months old. When she was almost nine, her father died and her mother remarried two years later, only to die six months later again, so she was placed in the care of her uncle, August, Elector of Saxony.

She grew up unstable, awkward and with little affection. However, when on 18 November 1560 Countess Katharine of Nassau-Dillenburg married the Count of Schwarzburg, Anna was invited to attend. This invitation had been given to allow her to meet Katharine's widower-brother, the twenty-seven-year-old Prince of Orange. As she never could be pursuaded to do what she did not want to do, it depended upon whether or not Anna would like him. Everyone was relieved when she was impressed with the handsome, worldly and very rich prince.

However, the Spanish king, who was also Lord of the Low Countries, objected to a marriage between Anna and the prince as it would connect him too closely with the Protestant German princes. To receive the king's approval, the Prince had to return to The Low Countries. In quick succession he received three letters from the love-sick Anna.

Being occupied with politics he allowed his younger brother, Ludwig, to write answers which the prince then copied and sent to Anna.

The Spanish King Philip II could not prevent the marriage taking place on 24 August 1561 in Leipzig, but was certain that the German princes would use the occasion to plot against him. The only thing the king insisted upon was that Anna should become a Catholic upon arrival in The Low Countries; but sadly Anna's grandfather, the Landgraf of Hessen, also objected for religious reasons.

However, the passionate seventeen-year-old Anna was soon pregnant and, on 31 October 1562, gave birth to her first child, also named Anna. While still in The Low Countries, in Brussels, a son was born on 8 December 1564. However, little over two years later this child, Maurits August Philips, died.

Her marriage to this important prince turned out to be difficult for Anna as he was too pre-occupied with matters of State, made all the more difficult with the emergence of the Protestant religion in The Netherlands and the dictatorial behaviour of the Lord of The Netherlands, the Spanish King Philip II.

When the news reached them that the Duke of Alva was on his way to The Netherlands with an army, the Prince of Orange decided to leave for Germany with his family. They went to live with the Prince's relatives at Dillenburg and here, on 14 November 1567, a son was born and named after Anna's father.

In August 1568 the Prince departed for The Netherlands, leaving Anna who was again pregnant in the care of his mother and sister-in-law. However, as Anna indulged in the use of alcohol, these two ladies reproached her and as a result, Anna left Dillenburg on 20 October 1568, taking her children and about sixty attendants with her and moved to Cologne.

As she had no financial resources, she wrote to her uncle, Elector August of Saxony, asking him to send someone with whom she could discuss her problems. Erich Volckmar von Berlepsch arrived 1 January 1569 and spent four days with her.

She had told him that the reason for her departure from Dillenburg had been the plague from which several people had died. As well she was now much closer to her husband. Apart from these reasons, her husband's relatives had cared little for her and at last she had to bring her financial plight into the open. She owed money as well as her staff's salaries. As von Berlepsch was of the opinion that she had too many staff, she reduced them to twenty-four. On 10 April 1569 her daughter Emilia was born.

In 1570 Jan Rubens became attached to Anna's household as a financial advisor. In May 1570 she left to visit her uncle, the Landgraf of Hessen, leaving her children in the care of Rubens's wife but taking Jan Rubens with her. During this journey, on 2 June 1570 at Ebersbach, Anna seduced Jan Rubens. In all they slept together twelve, thirteen or fourteen times. After her visit to Kassel she moved her household to the castle of Siegen. However, when gossip reached her husband and brother-in-law, Count Johann VI of Nassau-Dillenburg, the latter imprisoned Rubens in Dillenburg Castle. Indignantly she rejected the accusations but had to admit them when Count Johann VI gave her a letter from Jan Rubens in which he had confessed.

Her husband, who was at Dillenburg at that time, then removed the children to Dillenburg and they never saw their mother again. However, on 22 August 1571 and still in Castle Siegen, she gave birth to a daughter fathered by Jan Rubens, the child receiving the made-up name of Christina von Dietz. On 1 October 1572 Anna and her illegitimate child were moved to Castle Beilstein, and here the first serious signs of madness became apparent. Furiously she would attack her staff who had been ordered to keep all knives out of her reach. In January 1575 Count Johann VI removed Christina von Dietz to Dillenburg where she grew up happily with her half-brother, half-sisters and numerous cousins, unaware of her parentage until she was sixteen years old. After her marriage was dissolved and the Prince had taken a new wife, her uncle the Elector of Saxony removed her to Saxony. She arrived at the Castle Dresden on 22 December 1576, but here her madness worsened and two men were attached to her female staff to protect them against Anna's violent outbursts. Almost a year later she died on 18 December 1577 only thirty-three years of age. 

Source: Leo van de Pas