The first known ancestor of the Hauke family was Johann Gaspar Hauck, a registrar at the Imperial Chamber Court of the Holy Roman Empire in Wetzlar, who died in 1722 and was buried in his home town.

In 1782, Count Alois von Brühl sold his Polish dignities and estates and returned to Saxony, but Johann Friedrich stayed in Warsaw with his family of seven children by an Alsatian Protestant preacher's daughter, Maria Salomé Schweppenhäuser (1755–1833).

Three of Fryderyk Karol Emanuel Hauke's sons, John Maurice, Ludwik August (1779–1851) and Joseph (1790–1837), entered after 1815 the service of the Czar, who was at the same time King of Congress Poland, achieved very high positions and received titles and rights od Polish nobility in 1826.

The marriage was deemed morganatic, as Julia was not of royal lineage, and her children were disqualified from the line of succession to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Hesse.

The year of her marriage, Julia's brother-in-law, Louis III, Grand Duke of Hesse, made her the Countess of Battenberg in her own right with the style of Illustrious Highness.