Overview
Prince Christoph of Hesse (Christoph Ernst August; 14 May 1901 – 7 October 1943) was a nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm II. He was an SS-Oberführer in the Allgemeine SS and an officer in the Luftwaffe Reserve, killed on active duty in a plane crash during World War II. His brother-in-law, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, fought on the British side and married the future Queen Elizabeth II after the war.
Birth
Prince Christoph of Hesse was born in Frankfurt, the fifth son of Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse and Princess Margaret of Prussia. His father, Frederick Charles, a scion of the House of Hesse, was elected King of Finland in 1918, when Finland declared its independence after the collapse of the Russian Empire. However, the overwhelming Republican victories in the 1919 Finnish parliamentary election effectively ended any ambitions for a Finnish monarchy.
Christoph's mother was the daughter of Emperor Frederick III and of Victoria, Princess Royal. Prince Christoph was thus a great-grandson of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Christoph had several brothers, including Prince Philipp and Prince Wolfgang. His two eldest brothers, Friedrich Wilhelm and Maximilian, both died in World War I.
Career and death
Prince Christoph was a director in the Third Reich's Ministry of Air Forces, Commander of the Air Reserves, and held the rank of Oberführer in the SS. His brother Prince Philipp joined Hitler's SA. They were not the only family members to embrace Nazism; their mother "Mossy" (a sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II) invited Adolf Hitler to tea and flew the swastika from her home at Schloss Kronberg.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
