Margrave Max of Baden (1933-2022)

Margrave Max of Baden, head of the Grand Ducal House of Baden since 1963, died at Schloss Salem this morning, 89 years old. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Bernhard, b. 1970.

Margrave Max was the eldest son of Margrave Berthold of Baden (1906–1963) and Margravine Theodora, née Princess of Greece and Denmark (1906–1969). Theodora was an elder sister of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and thus Margrave Max was a first cousin of King Charles III.

When Max succeeded as head of the house, he also became the manager of the family business, Markgräflich Badische Verwaltung. The management includes farming and forestry and has also deceloped a fine winery, 

The margrave married in 1966 Archduchess Valerie of Austria, b. 1941. They had four children and four grandchildren. Margrave Bernhard's eldest son Leopold, b. 2002, is now the new Hereditary Prince of Baden.

Royalty Digest Quarterly no. 3, 2022

I received my copy of Royalty Digest Quarterly no. 3, 2022 on 5 October 2022, but haven't had much time for blog activities since then. Some periods of the year are just more hectic than others. I have already received issue no. 4, so I better write a few words about no. 3 before I start reading the next issue. 

The front cover this time shows a photo of 12 princes of the Reuss. The main article in this issue is called Die Fürsten Reuss zu Köstritz – A Family Album and is written by the  magazine's editor, Ted Rosvall. He writes that «The Reuss zu Köstritz family is huge and extremely difficult to keep track of – not least because of the many inter-marriages between and within the various branches – and it is also very  difficult to find images of the various members. I have therefore chosen to focus on the more easily accessible branches and family members, describing this article as more of a collage than an album.» No reason to be so modest, I think Rosvall has done a good job in presenting the house and finding images. All in all I count 87 images of various family members and palaces. Rosvall gives an introduction to the dynasty and also presents 4 family tables. There is even a photo of Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss, b. 1951, who was arrested in December this year for allegedly having a leading role in the so-called coup d'état plot. A distant cousin, Prince Heinrich XIV Reuss, b. 1955, is today the head of the house. In an interview with BBC News, he said that «This outsider was ostracised years ago because of his outlandish conspiracy theories and antisemitic views. He's not representative of our family at all.» Rosvall might mention the black sheep in a future issue.

In his Editor's Corner, Rosvall of course writes about Queen Elizabeth II, who died on 8 September 2022, 96 years old. Rosvall writes among others: «Elizabeth II will go down in history as a straight-back and dutiful head of state who, against all odds, managed to hold together not only one nation but a large group of other countries within the Commonwealth.» He continues: «The Queen was also the epicenter  of constitutional monarchy, a form of government that has proven superior to most others. A counterweight to all the wretched dictators and tyrants currently plaguing our world, elected or not.»

The contents of the third issue this year:

• Marlene A. Eilers Koenig: A Maritial Alliance. The Marriage of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and Princess Marie of Romania, pp. 1–12.
• Stephen Bunford: The Murdering Prince, pp. 13–16.
• Alexandre Tissot Demidoff & Richard Jay Hutto: The Karageorgevitch Twins. Princes or not ..., pp. 17–26.
• Elizabeth Jane Timms: A Wedding in Ischl, pp. 27–34.
• Ted Rosvall: Die Fürsten Reuss zu Köstritz - A Family Album, pp. 35–56.
• Ove Mogensen: Tombs, Graves and Monuments in Thuringia. VII: Reuss zu Greiz (Ältere Linie), pp. 57–59.
• Coryne Hall: Little-known Royals. Prince Georg of Denmark, pp. 60–61.

The issue also includes two book reviews – Michael L. Nash gives his view on Defenders of the faith. British Monarchy, Religion and the Next Coronation by Catherine Pepinster (Hodder & Stoughton, 2022), while the editor himself has written a review of Queen Victoria in Cornwall by Susan Symons (of German castles and palaces fame) (2022).

The World Wide Web of Royalty column this times gives us genealogical news from or about Bavaria, Belgium, Brazil, England (United Kingdom or at least Great Britain, it should have been), Hochberg/Pless, Mecklenburg and Württemberg.

If anyone wonders, the murdering prince in question was Prince Pierre Napoléon Bonaparte (1815–1881), the sixth child of Lucien Bonaparte, who was a younger brother of Emperor Napoléon. The wedding that took place in Ischl in 1890 was between Archduchess Marie Valerie of Austria (1868–1924), fourth child of Emperor Franz Joseph (1830–1848–1916), and Archduke Franz Salvator of Austria (1866–1939), son of Archduke Karl Salvator of Austria and Princess Maria Immacolata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. The so-called Karageorgevich twins – Nicholas and Sergei – were born into the marriage of Prince Arsene Karageorgevich (1859–1938) and Princess Aurora Demidoff (1873–1904), but was the product of an affair Aurora had with Count Ernst Andreas von Manteuffel (1873–1953). 

All in all several articles worth reading this time as well. If you are not subscriber yet, information about Royalty Digest Quarterly can be found at its editor's website Royalbooks.se. See earlier presentations of RDQ here. See also its Facebook page.