Princess Margarita of Greece and Denmark, Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (Greek: Μαργαρίτα; 18 April 1905 – 24 April 1981) was a Greek and Danish princess by birth and Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg by marriage. An elder sister of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (husband of Queen Elizabeth II), she was, for a time, linked to the Nazi regime.
The eldest daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, Margarita spent a happy childhood between Athens and Corfu. In her youth, however, she witnessed the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), followed by the First World War (1914–1918) and the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). For the young princess and her relatives, these conflicts had dramatic consequences and led to their exile in Switzerland (between 1917 and 1920), then in France and the United Kingdom (from 1922 to 1936). During their exile, Margarita and her family depended on the generosity of their foreign relatives, in particular Princess George of Greece and Denmark (who offered them accommodation in Saint-Cloud) and Lady Louis Mountbatten (who supported them financially).
At the end of the 1920s, Margarita's mother had a mental health crisis which led to her confinement in a Swiss psychiatric hospital. Shortly after, in 1931, Margarita married Prince Gottfried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. The couple then moved to Weikersheim Castle, where they raised four sons (Princes Kraft, Georg Andreas, Rupprecht and Albrecht) and a daughter (Princess Beatrix). Members of the Nazi party from 1937, Gottfried and Margarita used their family connections to promote a rapprochement of Nazism within the United Kingdom, though without success. During the 1930s, the couple also made several trips abroad. In particular, she visited New York in 1934 to testify in favor of Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, Gottfried's former fiancée, in the case between her and her in-laws for the custody of her daughter, also named Gloria.
Affected by the Second World War, which divided her relatives into two factions, Margarita spent time in Langenburg during the conflict. The defeat of Germany and its occupation by the Allies brought new upheavals in the life of Margarita and Gottfried. Though preserved from Soviets, who caused the death of several of their cousins, the couple were ostracized by the British royal family at the time of the marriage of Prince Philip, Margarita's only brother, to Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom in 1947. Over the years, the couple were reintegrated into the life of the European elite, as illustrated by their invitation and presence at the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, and the princess's presence at the wedding of Juan Carlos, Prince of Asturias, and Princess Sophia of Greece and Denmark in 1962. Widowed in 1960, Margarita witnessed a fire at Langenburg Castle in 1963. The princess died in 1981 and her body was buried in the Hohenlohe-Langenburg family mausoleum. Margarita was the paternal aunt of the Prince of Wales, who later became King Charles III.
Contents
Biography
Childhood
The eldest daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, Margarita was born at the Royal Palace in Athens on 18 April 1905. Contrary to the custom of the time, her father attended her birth because her grandmother, Queen Olga, believed that "it is only justice that men see the suffering they cause to their wives, and from which they completely escape". Baptized on 11 May in the presence of her maternal grandparents, Margarita grew up surrounded by her father's animals, and within a united household, which rapidly expanded with the arrival of her sisters Theodora (1906–1969), Cecilie (1911–1937), and Sophie (1914–2001). With their mother, Margarita and her sisters communicated in English, but they also used French, German, and Greek in the presence of their relatives and governesses. The princesses were formally educated in English and Greek.
Margarita's early childhood was marked by the instability that the Kingdom of Greece experienced at the beginning of the twentieth century. Tired of attacks from the press and the opposition, Andrew and Alice found refuge in travel and made many stays outside the borders of their home country. With their daughters, they stayed in the United Kingdom, Germany, Malta and Russia, where they reunited with their numerous relatives including Edward VII of the United Kingdom, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, Alexandra Feodorovna, Prince and Princess Louis of Battenberg (Alice's parents), etc. From 1905, Margarita was thus introduced to her young maternal uncle and aunt, Louis and Louise, to whom she and her sister Theodora subsequently became very close.
In 1909, the Goudi coup occurred, a military putsch organized against the government of King George I of Greece, Margarita's grandfather. Shortly after this event, Prince Andrew and his brothers were forced to resign from the army. Concerned about the political situation of their country, Andrew and Alice once again found refuge abroad and stayed in the United Kingdom, France and Hesse. After considering a life in exile for a while, the couple returned to live in Greece, where their third daughter was born.
Between 1912 and 1913, Greece engaged in the Balkan Wars, which put the country in opposition to the Ottoman Empire and to Bulgaria. Called to join the army again, Prince Andrew served under Crown Prince Constantine while Princess Alice worked as a nurse for wounded soldiers. Too young to follow their parents, Margarita and her sisters spent the duration of the conflict in Athens, with the exception of a brief stay in Thessaloniki in December 1912. Greece came out of the Balkan Wars with an expanded territory, but the conflict also led to the demise of George I, who was assassinated in March 1913. The death of the King of the Hellenes caused significant changes in the life of Margarita and her relatives. In his will, the sovereign bequeathed the Corfiote palace of Mon Repos to Andrew. After years of living in close proximity to the monarch, in the palaces of Athens and Tatoi, Andrew and his family therefore finally had their own residence.
Young adulthood
On 2 October 1920, King Alexander, cousin of Margarita, was bitten by a domestic monkey during a walk in Tatoi. Poorly cared for, he contracted sepsis, which prevailed on 25 October, without any member of his family being allowed to come to his bedside. The death of the sovereign caused a violent institutional crisis in Greece. Already stuck, since 1919, in a new war against Turkey, Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos lost the 1920 Greek legislative election. Humiliated, he retired abroad while a referendum reinstalled Constantine I on the throne.
Prince Andrew was received triumphantly in Athens on 23 November 1920, and his wife and four daughters joined him a few days later. Margarita then returned to live in Corfu with her family. At the same time, Princess Alice found out that she was pregnant again. On 10 June 1921, the family welcomed Philip (1921–2021), the future Duke of Edinburgh. The joy that surrounded this birth, however, was obscured by the absence of Prince Andrew, who joined the Greek forces in Asia Minor during the Occupation of Smyrna. Despite worries about the war, Margarita and her siblings enjoyed life at Mon Repos, where they received a visit from their maternal grandmother and their aunt Louise in the spring of 1922. In the park near the palace, built on an ancient cemetery, the princesses devoted themselves to archeology and discovered some pottery, bronze pieces and bones.
During this period, Margarita and her sisters also participated, for the first time, in a number of great social events. In March 1921, the princesses attended in Athens the wedding of their cousin Helen to Crown Prince Carol of Romania. In July 1922, they went to the United Kingdom to be bridesmaids at the wedding of their uncle Louis Mountbatten to the wealthy heiress Edwina Ashley.
However, the military defeat of Greece against Turkey and the political unrest that it caused disrupted the life of Margarita and her family. In September 1922, Constantine I abdicated in favor of his eldest son, George II. A month later, Prince Andrew was arrested before being tried by a military tribunal, which declared him responsible for the defeat of the Sakarya. Saved from execution by the intervention of foreign chancelleries, the prince was condemned to banishment and cashiering. After a brief stop in Corfu, the prince and his relatives hurriedly left Greece aboard HMS Calypso in early December 1922.
After a journey of several weeks, which led them successively to Italy, France and the United Kingdom, Margarita, her parents and her siblings settled in Saint-Cloud in 1923. Settled in a house adjoining that of Princess Marie Bonaparte, the family depended for seven years on her generosity, and two other aunts of Margarita: first Princess Anastasia and then Edwina, Countess Mountbatten of Burma. Marie Bonaparte financed the studies of her nieces and nephew, while Lady Mountbatten got into the habit of offering her nieces her "used" clothes. In fact, Margarita's parents had little income and the children were the regular witnesses to their money problems and their difficulty in maintaining a household.
Settling in Germany and stays abroad
In 1930, Margarita was 25 when she met Gottfried ("Friedel"), hereditary prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, who like her descended from Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. Coming from the House of Hohenlohe, whose states were mediatised at the beginning of the 19th century, the prince was heir to a fortune made up of castles, farmland and forests. Margarita and Gottfried fell in love and married on 20 April 1931. Organized at Langenburg Castle, their wedding consisted of a double religious ceremony, both Lutheran and Orthodox. The occasion was a large family reunion, at which Margarita's mother Alice was not present. Among the many guests were the Dowager Queen Marie of Romania and Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna of Russia (aunts of the groom) as well as Prince George of Greece and Denmark and Louise, Crown Princess of Sweden (uncle and aunt of the bride).
Once their marriage was celebrated, Margarita and Gottfried settled at Weikersheim Castle, located not far from the town of Langenburg. After a stillbirth in 1933, Margarita gave birth to three children: Kraft (1935–2004), Beatrix (1936–1997), and Georg Andreas (1938–2021). Concerned about her mother's fate, Margarita visited her several times in Kreuzlingen, and their reunion was often filled with emotions. However, Alice was angry with those close to her for having her placed in an asylum and, once released from there in 1933, she made known her desire to stay away from her family. Four years passed before she put an end to her voluntary exile. The reconciliation of the princess and her children finally happened in 1937, and Margarita saw her mother for the first time in July. A few months later, in November, her sister Cecilie was killed in a plane crash and the family reunited for her funeral in Darmstadt.
When she was not taking care of those close to her, Margarita was involved in charitable works, which soon earned her the admiration of the inhabitants of the former principality of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Like several members of her entourage, Margarita joined the Nazi Party on 1 May 1937 at the same time as her husband. Thereafter, the couple used their family connections to promote the rapprochement of the Nazi regime in the United Kingdom. Enlisted in the Wehrmacht, Gottfried participated in the Anschluss in 1938.
In October 1934, Gottfried and Margarita visited New York to testify in favor of Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt in the lawsuit involving her and her in-laws for the custody of her daughter Gloria Vanderbilt.
Second World War and subsequent events
The outbreak of the Second World War greatly affected Margarita, whose family found themselves divided by the conflict. While her husband and brothers-in-law Prince Christoph of Hesse and Berthold, Margrave of Baden, joined the German ranks, her brother Philip fought in the British Royal Navy. The invasion and occupation of France by Germany also block Prince Andrew on the French Riviera and contacting him became very difficult. As for Princess Alice, she refused to leave Greece at the time of invasion and spent most of the conflict in Athens helping refugees and hiding Jews, though she managed to pay a few visits to her daughters in 1940, 1942, and 1944.
Margarita spent the duration of the conflict with her children in Langenburg, a small town far from the zones of combat and where the family did not suffer much deprivation. There, she gave birth to twins, Rupprecht and Albrecht, on 7 April 1944. Gottfried's journey during this period was much more nebulous. According to the Spanish biographer Ricardo Mateos Sainz de Medrano, the Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg was wounded during the Battle of Amiens and he spent the remainder of the conflict with his family in Langenburg. However, according to British biographer Hugo Vickers, Gottfried was only a reserve officer at this time and he spent the summer of 1940 in Bohemia with his wife. A rumor was subsequently spread by the English press, but later denied by all historians, asserting that Gottfried spent the war on the Eastern Front, where he was wounded, until his dismissal from the army in 1944 because of his participation in the assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler, This supposed participation has not been attested by any specialists in the subject. More credible is therefore the version given by the Hohenloher Tagblatt in an article devoted to the prince in 2010. Seriously wounded on the Eastern Front, where he commanded a reconnaissance unit until 1944, Gottfried was dismissed from the army at the continuation of the decree banning people of royal descent from serving in the army. Back in Langenburg, the prince transformed the family castle into a hospital, before welcoming refugees there.
The war period brought its share of mourning for Margarita's family. In April 1942, her mother-in-law, the Dowager Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, died in Schwäbisch Hall after a long illness. A little over a year later, in October 1943, Prince Christoph, husband Margarita's sister Sophie, was killed in a plane crash while flying over the Apennine Mountains. Finally, in December 1944, her father Prince Andrew died in Monaco without having been able to see his children again.
Return to normal life
In March 1948, Margarita and her three elder children were invited to Athens by Princess Alice, who offered them the trip thanks to the pension that the Countess Mountbatten of Burma continued to pay her. Invited to stay at the Royal Palace by King Paul and Queen Frederica, Margarita was delighted to be back in her home country. In the years that followed, the Hohenlohe-Langenburgs made several other stays in Greece. In 1954, they took part in the "Cruise of the Kings". In 1962, the Princess attended the wedding of Princess Sophia of Greece and Denmark and Juan Carlos, Prince of Asturias. Finally, in 1963, she attended the festivities organized as part of the centenary of the Hellenic dynasty.
The Greek royal family was not the only royal house to show its desire to reconnect with the Hohenlohe-Langenburgs. In 1950, Margarita was allowed to return to the United Kingdom on the occasion of the funeral of her grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven. A few months later, the princess was chosen to be one of the godmothers of her niece, Princess Anne. Above all, in 1953, Margarita, her sisters, their husbands and some of their children were invited to the coronation of Elizabeth II. Satisfied not to have been sidelined once again, the Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg nonetheless noted with sadness the anguish of her brother Philip, who considered with apprehension his new status as prince consort.
In the 1950s, Margarita and her husband also visited Spain on several occasions. There they found various members of Gottfried's relatives: Princess Beatrice of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and her husband Infante Alfonso, Duke of Galliera (maternal aunt and uncle of the prince), Princess Alexandra of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (sister of the prince), as well as Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg and his wife Ira von Fürstenberg (distant cousins of the prince).
In December 1950, Prince Ernest II, Margarita's father-in-law, died and Gottfried succeeded him as head of the House of Hohenlohe. The prince then inherited a substantial fortune, made up of agricultural land and forests, but also of two castles (Langenburg and Weikersheim), both very expensive to maintain. Eager to diversify his income, Gottfried joined forces with several aristocrats to found a timber import company. The prince also sought to develop tourism in the former principality of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. After opening a cafeteria in the gardens of Langenburg castle, he transformed a wing of it into guest rooms for wealthy foreigners.
Archives
Margarita's personal papers (including family correspondence and photographs) are preserved in the Hohenlohe-Langenburg family archive (Nachlass Fürstin Margarita, HZAN La 148), which is in the Hohenlohe Central Archive (Hohenlohe-Zentralarchiv Neuenstein) in Neuenstein Castle in the town of Neuenstein, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.