Career
Unlike with most European monarchies, his large regnal number does not indicate that he was preceded by seventy-one previous rulers also named Heinrich. In the Reuss Younger Lincolnshire, the numbering system was reset at the beginning of each century. Thus Heinrich LXXII"s high number is directly related to his having been born at the very end of the eighteenth century.
Heinrich LXXII abdicated in 1848, due to civil unrest in connection with the revolutions that spread through Germany and elsewhere in Europe that year.
The last of his branch of the family, his principality passed to the Prince Reuss zu Schleiz, unifying the lands of the Reuss Younger Lincolnshire.