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| @Royal House of Prussia |
HRH Princess Marie Cécile Kira Viktoria Louise of Prussia died at her home in Sievershagen. She was 84 years old.
The princess was the third of seven children of the late HI & RH Prince Louis Ferdinand Viktor Eduard Albert Michael Hubertus of Prussia (1907-1994) and HIH Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna of Russia (1909-1967). One of her godparents was her great-aunt, Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Kaiser Wilhelm II's only daughter.
She was born at Gut Cadinen in East Prussia on May 28, 1943. The schloss was once Kaiser Wilhelm II's summer residence. In 1941, Prince Louis Ferdinand, the second son of former Crown Prince Wilhelm, took over the management of the estate. In his memoir, The Rebel Prince, Prince Louis Ferdinand described leaving Berlin. In July 1941, as "air raids on Berlin were to be expected, Kira agreed with me not to return to Berlin. This was quite a sacrifice for her, because she had grown very fond of our little nest in the Menzelstrasse.
"The Schloss at Cadinen had not been lived in since the first years of the last war....The furniture was ghastly from our modern viewpoint of comfort."
The family moved into the second floor as the first floor was a "sort of museum." Finally, Louis Ferdinand took possession of the entire house. Marie Cécile and her sister, Kira, were born at Cadinen and christened in the local church, where their father was asked to play the organ.
The family was "truly attached" to Cadinen. "We considered it our real home in Germany. We did not wish to live anywhere else, " Prince Louis Ferdinand wrote.
Louis Ferdinand was active in the German resistance. The July 20, 1944 plot against Hitler made their lives more difficult in East Prussia, where the military situation was dire. The Russians had broken through the lines in Minsk, and it was only a matter of time before they marched into East Prussia.
After discussing the situation with Field Marshal Georg von Küchler, then living in Königsberg (Kalingrad), who acknowledged the dire military situation and advised Louis Ferdinand to leave Cadinen "as soon as possible."
Marie Cécile's father got his family to Golzaw, in Brandenburg, where, in August 1944, Kira gave birth to a third son, Louis Ferdinand. Following the christening, Louis Ferdinand (Sr.) and Kira returned to Cadinen to bring back more possessions, including winter clothes. Early in 1945, Louis Ferdinand returned to the schloss once more. As the owner, he had to "keep up appearances" until it was too late.
It was nearly too late as the Soviet troops continued to move west. As Louis Ferdinand made his way to Golzow, he learned that his wife and four children had fled their temporary home. His mother, Crown Princess Cecilie, sent a truck and a car to Golzow to rescue the family the same day Louis Ferdinand left Cadinen.
Kira, her children, Louis Ferdinand's younger brother, Prince Hubertus, his wife, and their young daughter packed what they could and headed to Berlin, where they reunited with the Crown Princess.
The original plan was to stay at Cecilienhof in Potsdam, but Kira realized that it was "senseless" to remain, as the "Soviets were bound to get there, too, eventually."
On the recommendation of Crown Prince Wilhelm's former ADC, the family was advised to travel to Bad Kissingen in Bavaria. Louis Ferdinand arrived in time to join the rest of the family.
They spent the eleven months in "cramped quarters": two rooms in the attic of a home owned by friends. In 1947, the family moved to Bremen and purchased a home, Wümmehof, where they "settled down to a normal life again." Unlike their father, Marie Cécile and her siblings grew up far from the grand Prussian palaces. They attended local schools, but were expected to marry well.
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| 6 images Marlene A Eilers Koenig Collection |
In November 959, the princess, then 17 years old, accompanied her parents to Los Angeles, where she would reign as Queen of the Imperial WAIF ball at the Ambassador's Coconut Grove. WAIF-International was founded by actress Jane Russell, and by 1959, it had placed "more than 7,000 homeless children with foster parents since its founding in 1959."
The young princess told the Los Angeles Times that she wanted to visit Hollywood. "Maybe I will see Robert Taylor and Rock Hudson." She also wanted to visit Disneyland.''
This was the "pretty, brown-eyed" young woman's first visit to the United States. She said she enjoyed painting, played the piano, and hoped to be a sculptor. "If I have the talent."
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| Marlene A Eilers Koenig Collection |
She looked forward to "presiding as queen" at the affair. "It all seems very much like a dream." In some ways, she was very much like other seventeen-year-old girls, although she had never watched television.
"In our village, only the poor people have television," she said, adding she was far too busy with her studies at school. She gets up at 6 am and heads off to school "by bike, bus and streetcar," arriving by 7:30. Her studies include English, French, Latin, math, geography, history, biology, chemistry and physics, and she often does homework until 11 pm.
The princess wore a red-and-white checkered Swiss cotton dress that she borrowed from her sister. Marie-Cécile acknowledged that she and her sister, Kira, borrow each other's clothes "all the time."
When asked what she wanted to do after school, she wanted to be "a housewife."
During the ball, she danced with Edd (Kookie) Byrnes. She was unfamiliar with the actor, but she said he was a very "gentlemanly man."
In 1965, Film und Frau magazine interviewed Marie-Cécile. Before her engagement, the princess studied archaeology and history at Freiburg University.
"But that's all over now."
The reporter asked, "Why is it over?"
She responded: "I have given up my studies. I had to give them up. The duke asked me to."
The duke was her fiancé, HH Duke Friedrich August Wilhelm Christian Ernst of Oldenburg (1936-2017), the sixth child of HH Hereditary Grand Duke Nikolaus of Oldenburg and HSH Princess Helene of Waldeck und Pyrmont.
She added: "The Duke is back in Africa now. He flew back a week after our engagement. He works there as an inspector in development aid. He will be returning to Germany in November."
They first met at a children's party at his family's castle. Marie-Cécile was eleven years old then. At the time, Duke Friedrich August's former nanny offered a prophetic comment to the young duke. "That will be your wife one day, my boy."
Marie-Cécile and Friedrich August met again at a hunting party when she was 19. There was a spark between them, according to the princess. It was not June 1965 when they met again in Munich, where Friedrich August suddenly proposed marriage.
"I didn't want to," she said. "I loved my freedom, and I had always intended not to marry before the age of twenty-six. On the other hand, I could understand that a man who was approaching thirty might not want to wait any longer. So we flew to Berlin and told our parents."
The reporter asked the princess: "Would you also marry the duke if he were not a duke, but simply a Mr. Oldenburg?"
"Coolly Prussian to the core", the princess did not hesitate to respond. "No, I wouldn't. That is not a question of snobbery or social prejudice. No, I believe that marriages of this kind do not work out well in the long run. Father always says that everyone should stay in their own stable. I never wanted to understand that in the past, but now I think differently about it."
The princess was 23 when she married HH Duke Friedrich August of Oldenburg in civil and religious ceremonies in December 1965.
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| Marlene A Eilers Koenig Collection |
The night before the civil marriage, the bride's parents held a reception at Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin. Once the property of the Kings of Prussia and German Emperors until 1918, the palace was heavily bombed during the Second World War and rebuilt afterward. The German Senate approved holding the reception there.
They married civilly in West Berlin on December 3rd. Approximately 100 spectators gathered outside the civil hall where the marriage took place. The New York Times noted that most of the crowd were older women, who serenaded the couple with a "pre-World War I ditty": "the Kaiser is a nice man, and he lives in Berlin."
The Lutheran wedding took place the following day at the Kaiser Wilhelm II Memorial Church in West Berlin. According to the Associated Press report, "among the 900 guests were 100 titled noble members of German families."
The princess wore the Prussian Meander Tiara and a "heavy silk wedding gown with an open neck and six-yard train," designed by Uli Richter.
News sources reported that Princess Marie-Cécile's wedding was the first Prussian royal wedding in Berlin since 1913, when her great aunt, Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia, married Prince Ernst August of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick. This is incorrect.
In 1916, Viktoria Luise's brother, Prince Joachim of Prussia, married Princess Marie Auguste of Anhalt at Schloss Bellevue in Berlin. That same year, at Jagdschloss Klein-Glienicke, in Berlin, Prince Friedrich Sigismund of Prussia married Princess Marie-Louise of Schaumburg-Lippe.
The couple lived for several years in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where Duke Friedrich August was an "agricultural adviser for a private firm. In 1969, the couple returned to Germany and moved into Duke Friedrich August's home, Gut Sievershagen. Their only son, Duke Paul, now owns the estate and rents out the manor house and other properties.
https://gutsverwaltung-sievershagen.de/en/home/#about
Duke Paul Wladimir Nikolaus Louis-Ferdinand Peter Max Karl-Emich of Oldenburg (1969) is the eldest of Marie-Cécile's three children. He has two younger sisters, Duchess Rixa Marie-Alix Kira Altburg (1970) and Duchess Bibiane Marie Alexandra Gertrud (1974).
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| Marie-Cécile, Donata, Louis Ferdinand and Kira Marlene A Eilers Koenig Collection |
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| Duke Friedrich August of Oldenburg, Princess Xenia of Prussia, Duchess Marie Cécile of Oldenburg, Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, holding his grandson, Duke Paul of Oldenburg (Marlene A. Eilers Koenig Collection) |
Princess Marie-Cécile's marriage did not work out well in the long run. In November 1989, the couple divorced. Two years later, Duke Friedrich August married his former wife's sister-in-law, Princess Donata (nee Countess Donata zu Castell-Rüdenhausen), the widow of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia. Donata and Louis Ferdinand's son, Prince Georg Friedrich, is the current head of the Imperial House of Germany.
The House of Hohenzollern announced her death on their Instagram page, noting, "For many decades, she was actively involved with the Princess Kira of Prussia Foundation, established by her parents, which supports underprivileged children and young people.
Music and its dissemination were especially important to her. As a founding member and long-time vice-chair of Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Lübeck, she dedicated herself with deep personal commitment to giving young, talented musicians performance opportunities and enabling access to classical music for those who cannot attend concerts themselves. These included appearances in schools, social institutions, retirement homes, and hospices.
"She remained closely connected to her origins and family history, expressing this interest through her participation in historical events and readings."
The princess lived in Sievershagen in East Holstein for many years.
In 2017, at the German Museum of Ceramics in Düsseldorf, she and Dr. Marianna Butenschn, gave a lecture on Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, consort of Nicholas I, based on Dr. Butenschön's book, Die Preussen auf dem Zarenthron (The Prussian on the Russian Throne).
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| The front of a card sent to me from Princess Marie Cécile in 2001 |
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| The front of a thank-you note from the princess following the death of her sister, Princess Xenia, in 1992 |
Princess Marie-Cécile, known as Puppi in the family, is survived by her three children: HH Duke Paul-Wladimir of Oldenburg, HH Duchess Rixa of Oldenburg, HH Duchess Bibiane of Oldenburg, Frau Dorner, and eight grandchildren: TH Duke Kirill, Duke Carlos, Duke Paul, Duchess Maria-Assunta, Duke Louis Ferdinand, and Xenia, Rixa, and Max-Wladimir Dorner. She is also survived by her younger brother, Duke Christian Ludwig of Prussia.
She was a double descendant of Queen Victoria.
Victoria -- Victoria - Wilhelm II - Wilhelm- Louis Ferdinand - Marie-Cécile
Victoria - Alfred - Victoria Melita - Kira - Marie
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