 The 1907 amendments to the house law bypassed the Counts of Merenberg, male-line descendants of the House of Nassau.While the Merenberg line had a male heir in the person of Georg Nikolaus, Count von Merenberg (1871–1948), the count was born of a morganatic marriage between Grand Duke William IV's uncle, Prince Nikolaus Wilhelm of Nassau, and Natalia Pushkina (daughter of Russian author Alexander Pushkin, a member of the untitled Russian nobility).The count's claim to be recognized as the heir to the Grand Duchy was dismissed on the grounds that he and his branch were non-dynastic despite his marriage to Princess Olga Alexandrovna Yurievskaya, a morganatic daughter of Tsar Alexander II of Russia.