Today marks the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Prince Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse, who was born on this day in 1926! The Head of the illustrious House of Hesse, related to most European Royalty, was a noted Art Collector and presided over numerous historic Estates and Castles!
The eldest son of Prince Philipp, Landgrave of Hesse, and his wife, Princess Mafalda of Savoy, a daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, Prince Moritz was born at the Castle of Racconigi. Through his paternal grandmother, Princess Margaret of Prussia, the youngest daughter of Emperor Frederick III of Germany and Victoria,Princess Royal and youngest sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II, he descended from Queen Victoria. Moritz was first cousin of Princess Christina of Yugoslavia, Princess Dorothea of Windish-Grätz, Prince Karl of Hesse, Princess Maria Pia of Yugoslavia and Bourbon-Parma, The Prince of Naples, Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, Tsar Simeon II of Bulgaria and Princess Marie Louise of Leiningen.
Moritz’s father was an enthusiastic Nazi, drawn into the party through his acquaintance with Hermann Goering and other high-ranking Nazis, partly out of opportunism and partly from ideological conviction. In July 1943, however, he was put under house arrest. Formally arrested in September, he was imprisoned in Flossenbürg concentration camp until April 1945. Only in 1948 did Landgrave Philipp emerge from Nazi and then American imprisonment. In 1943 Princess Mafalda was tricked into going into the German Embassy in Rome to collect a message; she was subsequently imprisoned in Buchenwald. Prince Moritz never saw his mother again. One night in 1944 it was Moritz’s brother, Prince Heinrich, who had heard on the wireless that his mother had been killed. An allied bomb had fallen on the concentration camp.
During those years, he and his siblings were looked after by Princess Sophie of Greece, widow of his uncle, Prince Christoph of Hesse, and sister of the Duke of Edinburgh. In April 1945 Moritz and his siblings were living with their aunt Sophie at Kronberg, another of the family seats, when they were evicted by US Occupational Forces, and told to leave by 6pm. Prince Moritz, then aged 18, was a great help to his aunt in organising the other children. Presently they were all housed by Prince Louis of Hesse and by Rhine at Schloss Wolfsgarten. Princess Tatiana von Metternich-Winneburg recalled:
The entire family: the old Landgrafin (sister of the last Kaiser and Queen Victoria’s grand-daughter), her daughter-in-law Tiny (Princess Sophie of Greece) with her five children and four nephews, had been thrown out without previous warning, forced to find quarters for the first night as best they could in the overcrowded little town.
Finally Tiny, having found room for them all, had to take refuge herself in the summer-house in the Park, where there was a small sofa. She barricaded the door with wicker chairs wedged under the latch. In the middle of the night she was startled by the sound of running steps and a sobbing figure hurled itself against the door. It was her nephew, sixteen-year-old Heinrich, who had just heard on the wireless that his mother, Princess Mafalda of Italy, had died in tragic circumstances in Buchenwald. (They had lost all trace of her for many months.) She kept him with her then for the rest of the night, trying to console him.
Next morning, with all nine children, she moved to Wolfsgarten. She then took her eldest nephew Moritz (18) to visit the U.S. senior officer and find out more about her sister-in-law’s death. The misguided man shouted at Moritz: ‘You damn’ Nazis!’ Tiny intervened: ‘How dare you! Don’t you understand, it is the boy’s mother who has died in a Nazi camp?’
In a quandary what to do with Moritz, Lu decided to send him to work on the farm of Kranichstein near Darmstadt, in the hope that tough exercise and more substantial food would help him to recover from the shock of his mother’s tragic death.
Together with his younger brothers, Prince Moritz took part in the ship tour organized by Queen Frederica and King Paul of Greece in 1954, which became known as the “Cruise of the Kings” and was attended by 107 royals from all over Europe. He also attended the Ball at the Royal Palace of Stockholm, which were among a series of balls hosted by King Gustav VI Adolf, Queen Louise and Princess Sibylla of Sweden to find suitable royal matches for the Haga Princesses and other the royal guests. He proposed to Princess Alexandra of Kent, but she did not marry him.
In 1960 Prince Moritz was adopted as eventual heir by Prince Louis of Hesse and by Rhine, the last head of the Hesse-Darmstadt line, and his wife, Princess Margaret (Peg), who were childless. Prince Louis died in 1968, at which time Moritz’s father succeeded him as head of the entire house. Prince Moritz became the head of the House of Hesse after the death of his father Philipp in 1980.
In 1964, Prince Moritz married at Kronberg, Princess Tatiana, sister of Richard, The 6th Prince of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, who later married Princess Benedikte of Denmark in 1968. They had two sons and two daughter, before divorcing in 1974.
Prince Moritz owned Schloss Panker, in Ostholstein, Northern Germany and Schloss Fasanerie at Fulda, as well as Schloss Friedrichshof near Darmstadt, the former home of his great-grandmother, the Empress Frederick. When Princess Margaret of Hesse died in 1997, he inherited Schloss Wolfsgarten, the Hesse hunting lodge, centre of family life, much loved by the German and British royal families. For a decade he ran the Hesse Hausstiftung, the foundation which managed all the Darmstadt treasures and properties, later handing over responsibilities to his son. He controlled the archives at Schloss Fasanerie and took a great interest in his family’s history.
Prince Moritz died in 2013, aged 86, and his funeral was attended by Queen Sofìa of Spain, King Constantine II of Greece, The Prince of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg and Princess Benedickte of Denmark, Tsar Simeon II of Bulgaria, The Prince of Naples, Prince Constantjin of The Netherlands, Princess Sarvath of Jordan, The Prince of Prussia, The Duke of Württemberg, The Duke of Bavaria, The Margrave of Baden, The Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, The Prince of Hohenzollern, The Prince of Hohenlohe-Langeburg, The Hereditary Prince of Hanover, The Princess of Leiningen, and by many other German royals and nobles.
He was succeeded by his eldest son, Prince Donatus, Landgrave of Hesse, who represented the family at the funerals of the Duke of Edinburgh in 2021 and Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, and at the coronation of King Charles III in 2023.
Thank You to Antonio Orefice for sharing this article with us!
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