Almanach de Gotha

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The Almanach de Gotha
The Almanach de Gotha

The Almanach de Gotha, published from 1763 to 1944, was a respected directory of Europe's highest nobility and royalty. First published at the ducal court of Frederick III, Duke of Saxe-Gotha, it was regarded as an authority in the classification of monarchies, ducal houses, families of former rulers, and royalty. A similarly named publication in London, begun in 2000, is one of the directories of Europe's highest nobility and royalty, and has received some severe criticism.[citation needed]

Contents

[edit] Old Gotha (1763-1944)

The purpose of the almanach was to record the ruling houses of Europe and their cadet branches, the most important of those they had ennobled, and incumbent diplomatic corps and highest officers of state. The undertaking was massive, as there were many royal families in Germany and Italy alone, and their minor branches numbered in the thousands. The inclusion of a noble family in the almanach was seen as socially vital. Since communications were slow in the 18th and 19th centuries, a source was needed to check the existence of high noble persons. Following World War I and the fall of many royal houses, noble titles became easy to masquerade due to the inexistence of a regulating government in the business of granting titles; this made inclusion in the incorruptible Almanach de Gotha even more essential. If a noble title was not listed in the almanach, it was presumed as self-created and invalid. Inclusion of lower nobility was never even attempted, as that was seen as the task of each country's own nobility or corresponding institution.

Even in the early 19th century this in-or-out dichotomy caused problems. Napoleon's reaction was typical of the "nouveau riche". The self-proclaimed Emperor wrote to his Foreign Minister, de Champagny:

Monsieur de Champagny, this year's "Almanach de Gotha" is badly done. I protest. There should be more of the French Nobility I have created and less of the German Princes who are no longer sovereign. Furthermore, the Imperial Family of Bonaparte should appear before all other royal dynasties, and let it be clear that we and not the Bourbons are the House of France. Summon the Minister of the Interior of Gotha at once so that I personally may order these changes.[cite this quote]

The response of the publishers was to humour Bonaparte by producing two editions: one for France, with the newly ennobled, and one for the remainder of Europe (i.e., those ennobled by those enthroned by Divine Right of Kings, as opposed to what the publishers deemed a Corsican upstart).

[edit] Structure

Although the almanach's structure changed over years, it consisted essentially of three sections. The first section always listed the sovereign houses of Europe. Sections two and three experienced some changes after the Franco-Prussian War (Reitwiesner comments that those changes display "pan-German triumphalism" and even a "nasty bit of Germanic chauvinism"[cite this quote]).

For over a century, the second section consisted of non-sovereign princely houses from all over Europe (save many easternmost areas). Rohans, Leiningens, Ruspolis, Windisch-graetzes, Norfolks, Lobkowiczes, Thurn-Taxises and Czartoryskis appeared in happy coexistence. At that time, the third section was for immediate counts of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), a specific, and by many measures the lowest, caste of the included high nobility.

However, in the 1876 edition, sections two and three were amalgamated, which elevated those former HRE comital families to the level of princely houses. In the intervening years, those counts had become mediatized, but quite regularly, their heads had received a compensation in titles: primogenitural princely title. In the 1877 edition, section two was divided into parts A and B, almost along "ethnic" lines: all mediatized Germans, be they comital or princely, were assigned to A; and all princely non-German families and non-mediatized HRE families were put into B. This created an illusion that mediatized Germans were higher than princely non-Germans. The illusion was strengthened in 1890, when the almanach renamed II A to section II, and II B to section III.

The original section two, and its successor, the third section, included only selected families of European high nobility, or "princely houses". The almanach did not succeed in full coverage; families from geographical corners that were not perceived by editors to be of interest to monarchical courts of Western Europe, the almanach's major audience, were not well-represented or were listed only in later editions.

This division was considered of great social significance in the Holy Roman Empire and its successor states; nobles from the second section were considered legally equal to German royals appearing in the first section (at least with those royals whose houses actually were ducal or less before the Napoleonic period; of the trully older kingdoms, Prussia declined to recognize a countess Harrach, mediatized, from section two, to marry its king in better than morganatic terms). For example, if a countess from the second section married a royal or sovereign from the first section (who mostly were of houses until 19th century just ducal or margravial, immediate comital and so forth), their alliance was considered equal and their children were regarded as dynastic, thus inheriting succession rights. On the other hand, if a countess or princess or duchesse-in-her-own-right from the third section married a German petty sovereign from the first section, their children were usually treated as non-dynastical and excluded from the succession line in most monarchies.

The arbitrary division was a major source of frustration for those families who landed in the third section. For example, the Birons of Courland and Murats of Italy, both relatively parvenue families, ineffectually claimed their right to be included in the second section. Moreover, most princely families of the Russian Empire were not included in the Gotha at all, while the Bagrationi of Georgia (presumed to be the oldest royal dynasty of Europe) possibly deserved a place in the first section. The same may be said for the Girays of Crimea, who claimed descent from Genghis Khan.

Another source of frustration was Gotha's rather Salic stance in favor of agnatic descent. Plenty of houses of other countries were formed in basis of cognatic succession. There existed many pretenders to lost monarchies and sovereign or semi-sovereign earlier provinces in Western Europe, but these were regularly treated as ducal or princely families of agnatic descent in part three, if mentioned at all.

The Gotha's condescending attitude towards Eastern European nobility and royalty, and towards Iberian, Spanish, British, Italian, and Scandinavian highest nobility, led to the proliferation of German mediatized princesses in the royal houses of Europe, as their value in the marriage market had been artificially enhanced by Gothic rankings. Another consequence was the yet ongoing Romanov succession dispute, as Maria Vladimirovna of Russia, the current head of the Russian Imperial Family, is the daughter of the Romanov father and the Bagrationi princess, a morganaut according to the Gotha standards; the entire male dynastic descent went extinct when applying Gothic standards.

[edit] Gotha until the Iron Curtain

When the Soviet troops entered Gotha in 1945, they systematically destroyed all archives of the almanach[1], as a public gesture [2] of protest against all the Almanach de Gotha stood for. However, the customers had retained sufficient copies of their own to ensure the survival of the almanach's records. From 1945 onwards, the almanach has not been published. Those tracing the ancestry of German nobility have used the Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels (GHdA) (particularly its part Fürstliche Häuser) as a substitute.

[edit] Almanach de Gotha published in London since 2000

In 1999, following the fall of communism, a commercial enterprise decided to renew the publication, touting themselves as the true successors to the reputable almanach. Partly in response to the many European aristocrats who have been trying to regain property sequestered by communist regimes, a new Almanach de Gotha was published in London, with John Kennedy as its editor. Thus far, three editions (in 2000, 2001 and 2004) have been published, with the aim of helping the aristocrats prove their identities, and restore to them their ancestral estates. Several rival publications appeared as well, although many feel that their accuracy is not up to the level of the old Gotha.[citation needed]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Matthew Engel, editor of Wisden
  2. ^  /site/history.htm Almanach de Gotha

[edit] Further reading

  • Diesbach, Ghislain de. Secrets of the Gotha. Meredith Press, 1964.

[edit] External links and references

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