Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Prince and Princess Eitel Friedrich ask for justice

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 March 13, 1922


Prince and Princess Eitel Friedrich of Prussia have asked the German government's Special Ministry to "bring to justice those circulating lies about them."

This request, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune, follows reports that Princess Eitel Friedrich, the wife of the second son of the former Kaiser, was named as a "co-respondent in the Baron von Plettenberg divorce suit.   The reports claim that the Princess admitted to "being intimate with the baron."

The German ministry, which handles affairs for the former ruling family, was authorized to make a statement on behalf of the Prince and Princess.

"Prince Eitel Friedrich has heard reports of his wife's testimony in the Plettenburg divorce suit which were published in London and America.  He says these reports are coarse lies and that Princess Sophie testified in the exact negative to what these reports allege."

Prince Eitel Friedrich's secretary in Potsdam also released a statement.  "I am empowered in the name of the House of Hohenzollern to brand the reports published  in London and America as common swindles."

Baroness von Plettenberg stated "Princess Eitel Friedrich was one of many witnesses named in my suit against my husband, but the Princess was not named as co-respondent.  Furthermore, I cannot say."
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These comments contrast to what is now being reported in the Berlin press, which had ignored the trial until today.  The New York Times reports that the "Princess Eitel scandal burst like a bomb with a delayed fuse in Berlin this morning."  

This is due to a report in a tabloid newspaper, the New Berlin Twelve O'clock Gazette, which featured "the alleged confession of Princess Eitel Friedrich's misconduct in the Plettenberg divorce case."

The article is based on reports in the London and American newspapers.  The Gazette's editor added:  "Regardless of whether the Plettenburgs will be divorced or not,  the public disclosure of these marital intimacies of Prince and Princess of Prince and Princess Eitel should, according to close circles to the Prince, lead to the divorce of the Prine and Princess Eitel. For years he has tried to keep the Princess's marital infidelities as a secret as possible.  The former Kaiser did his best to see that no blemish rested on the Hohenzollern family name, gave orders at the time that Baron von Plettenberg should consider himself as having resigned from the army.  But now that the Princess's marital infidelities  have been dragged before the forum of a court, the circles who see in Prince Eitel Friedrich the center of a monarchial movement can see no other possibility than divorce because otherwise, the monarchial idea would receive too strong a blow."

Another newspaper, run by one of the Socialist parties, noted that Prince Eitel Friedrich "forms the centre, the focal point, of monarchial conspiracies after his elder brother, the Crown Prince, has publicly moved away from them.  If now it is true Eitel Friedrich, this noble scion, has for years known of his wife's friendly relations with Plettenburg without divorcing hr for that reason, that, to be sure throws a special light on the moral ideal of those circles which even today people still dare to hold up as a moral pattern to the German people."

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