The Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in June 1933. Perhaps a little formal, as Victoria Adeleid has a fur stole around her neck, and Carl Eduard is wearing a uniform complete with leather boots. The postcard does not note where the photo was taken, perhaps Bavaria? Garmisch-Partenkirchen? Hinterrris in the Tyrol?
Marlene, there was a documentry about Eduard on Australian television recently. As you know, he was born Prince Charles Edward, the son of Queen Victoria's haemophilic son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany and his wife Princess Helena of Waldeck-Pyrmont. When Saxe-Coburg & Gotha's Dukedom became vacant Queen Victoria decreed that he had to take up the position, and he was moved from his very British upbringing to live in Germany where Wilhelm 11 took him under his wing and ensured that he got a proper German education, and training in the army.
ReplyDeleteSaxe-Coburg-Gotha was an enormous inheritance, I can't remember how many castles and land belonged to it.
He fought with Germany in the First World War, and became persona non grata with George V and the English court.
The program said that he was bitterly disillusioned with communism after the murder of his cousin Empress Alexandra of Russia and her family, and this swung him to supporting the Nazi Party. The program claimed that he was Hitler's favourite Royal, and when he joined the Nazis he was given a senior position with them. I can't recall what it was but I think it he was indirectly involved with the extermination of the mentally ill and disabled, as part of maintaining racial purity. He was arrested by the Americans when the war ended, and I think the Russians jailed him in Buchenwald or some other concentraion camp. It was said that his sister, Princess Alice of Athlone, visited him there and found him searching for food in the rubbish heap.
He died a very disillusioned man, but still an English royal at heart. The program said how different his life would have turned out if Queen Victoria hadn't interfered.
I presume this is the recent British program (I provided some information.)
ReplyDeleteSeveral points: the dukedom did not become vacant, nor did Victoria make a decree. The Coburg succession was male primogeniture. Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, was the younger brother of Duke Ernst II. He did not any legitimate sons to succeed, so the succession would be passing to Albert's male line. In 1863, the Prince of Wales renounced for himself and his descendants the right of succession to Coburg (unless all the other male lines die - and there were other branches who had succession rights.) The next in line was V &A's second son, Alfred, who succeeded uncle Ernst when he died. Alfred and his wife Marie had one son, Alfred, and 4 daughters. Young Alfred lived a profligate life (see my posts on him) and died in 1899 without any issue, including legitimate sons. The next in line was Albert's third son, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, and then his son, Prince Arthur. Neither wanted the job, so they renounce their rights for themselves and their descendants, which meant the next in line was Leopold's son, Charles Edward. He became the heir to Alfred, who died a year later. Alfred's son-in-law, the Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, was named as regent until Carl Eduard reached his majority.
The Duchess of Albany said she tried to raise her son as an English prince and now had to turn him into a German.
Coburg is not very big, but there was a very decent income from forestry, for example, and the property owned in Austria.
Duke Carl Eduard was the president of the German Red Cross until 1945 and president of the Anglo-German Society. He was certainly used by Hitler for his British birth although Hitler didn't realize that Carl Eduard was not close to his British cousins.
Carl Eduard didn't actually fight in the war although he held a commission. You are confusing Carl Eduard with Josias of Waldeck-Pyrmont whose position included overseeing Buchenwald.
I have understood that he was used as a go-between by Hitler to the Enlish Royal Family, especially the Prince of Wales, who (and even more so Mrs Wallis Simpson) was sympathetic to the new Germany. The Duke himself is more uncertain, but his daughter Princess Sibylla of Sweden obviously regarded him as damaged goods, not visiting her family until well after the war (she had herself hid German refugees at Haga).
ReplyDeleteHitler certainly thought that Carl Eduard would be a conduit. Carl Eduard paid a call on the new King Edward VIII after George V's funeral. CE reported back to Hitler that he saw a German-British alliance as an "urgent necessity." Edward preferred von Ribbentrop to von Hoelsch (calling the latter 'oily,') and Hitler preferred CE's more "sensational" reports to von Hoelsch's (who did not like the National Socialists.) But the Duke also provided largely inaccurate reporting, including the reporting of a conversation he had with Duff Cooper. See Zeigler's bio of Edward VIII, page 267
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