A Prince Among Stones (30 page)

When the liberally minded and tolerant Maximilian died at the early age of fifty-three, he was succeeded by his son the ‘mad King’ Ludwig II, then eighteen years old, who opposed the high nobility marrying outside their caste. Once former King Ludwig I had died in 1868, Leopold no longer had royal support. Wilhelm appealed to the new king who on 1 December 1869 conferred on Amalia the personal title of Baroness Wollrabe von Wallrab. Perhaps in acknowledgement of the circumstances of Amalia’s birth, the king then granted her the more elevated title of Countess of Loewenstein-Scharffeneck in the Bavarian nobility, on 15 January 1875, with the same coat of arms as the first counts of Loewenstein-Wertheim. The choice of this name, the title of the senior branch of this family that had become extinct in 1633, may have been recognition that Amalia’s status was more elevated than those other Loewenstein wives disqualified from taking their husband’s rank.
3

As the house laws remained unregistered there were no legal grounds for preventing Leopold’s family from enjoying the princely titles, even if the king was unwilling to consent to their use at his own court. Nonetheless, Leopold’s status and that of his wife was for some time undetermined; the
Almanach de Gotha
records his religious conversion from the 1862 edition onwards without mention of his marriage, but then the 1868 and 1869 editions note that he had married ‘morganatically’, the latter word being dropped from the 1870 edition but without mention of his wife. Then, in 1871, Leopold is included along with the fact of his marriage to Amalia, with her title of Baroness Wollrabe von Wallrab, while the first four of their five children are listed in the
Almanach
as Princes and Princesses of Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg. All subsequent editions merely mention his marriage and the identity of his wife, without listing either their children or including the word ‘morganatic’.

Leopold and Amalia had five children, two sons and three daughters, two of whom made religious profession while the eldest never married. Their elder son, Friedrich, died unmarried at the age of twenty-eight, leaving only their younger son, Maximilian, to marry and leave descendants. Maximilian was unwilling to accept what he considered an unjust humiliation over his title and quarrelled with his uncle Wilhelm. Faced with Wilhelm’s intransigence, Maximilian insisted on his right to use the princely title, angering his uncle and making reconciliation even more difficult.

Although he was a difficult man Maximilian had great charm and intelligence: even while serving as an officer in the army, he translated Caesar’s
Gallic Wars
, reflecting the quality of his classical education and that he shared the sophisticated tastes of Kings Ludwig I and Maximilian II. Maximilian’s uncle Wilhelm died in 1887 but his son and heir, Ernst, married to a Prussian countess, was no less determined to resist his nephew’s demands, particularly as to have done otherwise might have encouraged other morganatic descendants to demand similar treatment and perhaps a greater share of the family inheritance.

In 1895 Maximilian married a considerable heiress, the Hon. Constance Worms, whose father, Baron Henry de Worms (a grandson of Nathan Meyer Rothschild), had a few months earlier been created Lord Pirbright (the second Jew, after his cousin Lord Rothschild, to be created a British peer).
4
Constance’s mother, Baroness Fanny von Todesco, was also from an ennobled Jewish family, with connections to many of the leading banking families of Europe. Henry de Worms had had a successful career in the law, as a barrister, and for fifteen years as a MP, serving as a junior minister in the government of Lord Salisbury and being appointed a privy councillor in 1888. Maximilian proved to be a less than devoted husband and he and Constance were divorced in 1912, having had two daughters and three sons; she wished to remarry and three years later Maximilian himself remarried, this time to a German noblewoman, Baroness Adelheid von Berlinchingen, but had no further children.

In 1919 a new German law converted all titles to names, requiring that everyone bearing a noble title adopt their father’s title as part of their name; thus Maximilian’s became Herr Maximilian Prinz von Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, the title he had in any case legally inherited under the original patent, while also remaining Count of Loewenstein-Scharffeneck. Maximilian and Constance had five children, two daughters and three sons; the eldest, Sophie, married Count Arbeno von Attems, of an ancient family long established in the border region between Austria and modern Italy and now part of the latter (her grandson is the present Lord Aylmer). The next daughter, Françoise, married an Austrian and moved to the United States before the Second World War. Maximilian’s eldest son Johann, born in Munich, married twice but had no issue; the youngest, Hubertus, whose rank as a Prince of Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg was recognised by the then head of the house after the Second World War, died in 1984, leaving three daughters. Hubertus not only served in the German Bundestag but also played an important role in the Allied Denazification commission following the end of the Second World War.

Leopold (1903–74),
5
Maximilian’s second son and Rupert’s father, had no great inheritance and, soon after his marriage on 6 July 1932 to Bianca Fischler, Countess von Treuberg (1913–84), with the Nazis newly come to power, left Germany for Spain, where Rupert, their only son, was born in August 1933. Bianca Fischler was the daughter of Ernest Fischler, Count von Treuberg (1874–1950), a Bavarian royal chamberlain, and Henriette (Hette) von Kaufmann-Asser (1880–1944), whose grandfather, a leading banker, had in 1870 received the title of hereditary knight (
Ritter
) from the King of Prussia and whose father was an art collector and adviser to the German finance minister. Henriette’s brothers had distinguished careers: Heinrich (1882–1954) having served in the Foreign Office became German Ambassador to Argentina until his dismissal in September 1933, while Wilhelm (1888–1959) was a leading German film producer married to Henny Porten, one of the most renowned German screen actresses whose career survived the move from silent to speaking roles, until the film careers of both were boycotted when the Nazis came to power.

Hette herself was at the centre of a notable intellectual circle which included the composer Richard Strauss and painter Arnold Böcklin, but after the birth of their third child she and her husband divorced, largely because of her dedication to the pacifist movement. Her salon made her one of the most influential figures in contemporary German society with extraordinary social connections as well as ties with the highest level of government (and close friendship with the Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht). After the war her salon again became a magnet for leading intellectuals and politicians, until she fled rising anti-Semitism in Germany for exile in Switzerland. Her daughter Bianca, Rupert’s mother, divorced Leopold in 1947 and remarried Peter Rosoff, whom she had met when he was posted to the US Embassy as a Colonel; Leopold also remarried, to Diana Gollancz, the daughter of the renowned publisher Sir Victor Gollancz.

1
The Rosenberg branch only required ancient nobility, an easier standard to meet and their laws were registered.

2
This line became extinct with Friedrich’s granddaughter in 1916.

3
An unusual footnote in the 1871 Almanach de Gotha refers to the uncertain circumstances of her birth; a surprising assertion bearing in mind her official birth records were never a matter of dispute. This note serves to support the belief that her parentage was more elevated than the official record suggested.

4
Lord Pirbright (1840–1903) converted to the Anglican faith after his divorce from Fanny von Todesco, and is buried, with his second wife, in the church of St Mark’s, Wyke. His splendid funeral monument, itself a Grade II listed building, includes mention of his children and grandchildren.

5
Whose memoir about his second wife, Diana,
A Time to Live
, A Time to Die, was published in 1970. He also translated into English Eduard Morike’s amusing novella,
Mozart’s Journey to Prague
(first published in German in 1856), Adelbert von Chamisso’s Faustian tale,
Peter Schlemihl
, and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s study on
Ethics
, among other works.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments are due to the following people. Without their help, I would not have got this far:

My wife Josephine and my children, the Rev. Father Rudolf OP, the Rev. Konrad and Dora, who all supplied thoughtful comments and helpful ideas. I hope Konrad will feel he was successful in his worthwhile endeavours to have the book shorn of its more questionable comments.

I discussed the book with some of my great friends who have known me well over the last sixty years, especially John Bellingham, Michael Dormer and Lord Moyne.

Philip Dodd, for his encouragement and assistance in setting down these memories.

Guy Sainty and Don Victor Franco de Baux for their invaluable advice on the genealogy and ancestry of my family.

For their support and organisation: Dee Anstice, Jules Kopec, Pandora Millen, Jim Pfenninger and Sally Renny.

For their help in exploring the photographs in the family archive: Emily Hedges and Laurence Hill.

Gerrit te Spenke and Jan Favie, for their helpful comments.

Ian Shackleton at the Chatham Archive, Christopher Sykes and Alan Williams, for their assistance.

The publishing team at Bloomsbury, for their encouragement, especially Nigel Newton, Michael Fishwick and Anna Simpson.

Last, I must thank the Rolling Stones for the years we voyaged together through waters often uncharted, occasionally choppy, but always enthralling.

Image Section 1

Schloss Holzen, my mother’s family home between Augsburg and Munich. Due to my grandfather’s financial extravagance, it was sold off to Franciscan nuns before I was born.

My mother, Countess Bianca Henriette Maria Fischler von Treuberg – a friend described her as ‘very tall and stately with ice-blue eyes’.

My father, Prince Leopold zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg. ‘No woman married to a Loewenstein’, he once wrote, ‘can for long live outside history.’