Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Charles Edward
Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Reign	30 July 1900 – 14 November 1918
Predecessor	Alfred
Born	(1884-07-19)19 July 1884 Claremont House, Surrey
Died	6 March 1954(1954-03-06) (aged 69) Coburg, West Germany
Burial	near Schloss Callenberg, Germany
Spouse	Princess Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein
Issue	Johann Leopold, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Princess Sibylla, Duchess of Västerbotten Prince Hubertus Princess Caroline Mathilde, Countess of Castell-Rüdenhausen Friedrich Josias, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Full name Charles Edward George Albert Leopold German: Carl Eduard Georg Albert Leopold
House	Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Father	Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany
Mother	Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont

British Royalty
House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Victoria and Albert
Grandchildren Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale Prince Alexander John of Wales Alfred, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Marie, Queen of the Romanians Victoria Melita, Grand Duchess of Russia Alexandra, Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg Princess Beatrice, Duchess of Galliera Margaret, Crown Princess of Sweden Prince Arthur of Connaught Princess Patricia, Lady Ramsay Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (baptized Leopold Charles Edward George Albert, German: Leopold Carl Eduard Georg Albert; 19 July 1884 – 6 March 1954), was the last reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha from 30 July 1900 to 14 November 1918, and the head of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha from 1900 until his death in 1954. A male-line grandson of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, he was also until 1919 a Prince of the United Kingdom and held the British titles of Duke of Albany, Earl of Clarence and Baron Arklow.

The Duke was a controversial figure in the United Kingdom due to his status as the Sovereign Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which was part of the German Empire, during World War I. He was deprived of his British peerages, his title of Prince and Royal Highness and his British honours in 1919.^[1] In 1918, he was forced to abdicate his ducal throne. He later joined the Nazi Party, and served in a number of positions in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, including as President of the German Red Cross from 1933–45. He was the maternal grandfather of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and the younger brother of Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone.

Early life in Great Britain

Prince Charles Edward was born at Claremont House near Esher, Surrey. His father was Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, the fourth son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. His mother was Princess Helena, Duchess of Albany (née Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont), the fourth daughter of George Victor of Waldeck and Pyrmont and his first wife Princess Helena of Nassau. As his father died before his birth, Prince Charles Edward succeeded to his titles at birth and was styled His Royal Highness The Duke of Albany.^[2]

After falling ill, the young Duke was baptised privately at Claremont on 4 August 1884, two weeks after his birth and publicly in Esher Parish Church on 4 December 1884 four months later. His godparents were his paternal grandmother Queen Victoria, his paternal uncle the Prince of Wales, his paternal aunts Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein and the Marchioness of Lorne, Princess Frederica of Hanover (his father's second cousin), his maternal uncle Alexis, Prince of Bentheim and Steinfurt and his maternal grandfather George Victor, Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont (neither of whom could attend).^[3]

Charles Edward was educated as a Prince of the United Kingdom for his first 15 years.^[2] He attended Eton College. As a grandson of Queen Victoria, the Duke was a first cousin of George V, Emperor of India and of the following European Royals: Queen Maud of Norway, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, Empress Alexandra of Russia, Queen Marie of Romania, Crown Princess Margaret of Sweden, Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain, Queen Sophia of the Hellenes, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, Josias, Hereditary Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont (the last two through his mother) and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Such was the interest Wilhelm showed in his young cousin's upbringing that Charles Edward was dubbed "the Emperor's seventh son".^[4] His mother drummed into him endlessly the importance of "becoming a good man, so you bring no shame on Papa's name".^[5]

Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Charles Edward on a 5 Mark coin from 1907

In 1899 the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, urged by Kaiser Wilhelm II, decided on how to deal with the succession of Duke Alfred, who was in ill health. His only son, Prince Alfred ("Young Affie"), had died in February 1899. The Duke of Connaught, the Queen's third son, served in the British military, causing Wilhelm II to oppose him as a ruling prince of Germany. His son, Prince Arthur of Connaught attended Eton with Charles Edward. Wilhelm II demanded a German education for the boy, but this was unacceptable to the Duke of Connaught. Thus young Arthur also renounced his claims to the Duchy. Next in line was sixteen-year-old Charles Edward, who now inherited the ducal throne of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, when his uncle Alfred died in July 1900.^[2][6]

With his mother and sister Charles Edward moved to Germany. Following an education plan by Wilhelm II, he attended the Preußische Hauptkadettenanstalt at Lichterfelde, studied in Bonn and became a member of Corps Borussia Bonn. He also joined the 1st Garderegiment zu Fuß at Potsdam and spent some time at the German court in Berlin.^[2][6] His uncle, Edward VII, made him a Knight of the Garter on 15 July 1902, just prior to his 18th birthday.

From 1900 to 1905 Charles Edward reigned through the regency of Ernst, Hereditary Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, the husband of Duke Alfred's third daughter Alexandra. The regent acted under the strict guidance of Emperor Wilhelm II.

Upon coming of age on 19 July 1905, he assumed full constitutional powers. He proved loyal to the Emperor and was deemed a constitutionally-minded prince. However, he soon deviated from his early liberal views and gave in to autocratic impulses, also becoming dependent on advisors at his two courts at Gotha and Coburg, between which political differences and rivalries had developed. He liberally supported the court theatres in both towns. Taking an interest in Zeppelin and airplane technology, Charles Edward supported the newly created aircraft industry at Gotha (see Gothaer Waggonfabrik). Like all Dukes of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, he divided his time between the two towns. Among his residences Schloss Friedenstein, Ehrenburg Palace, and Schloss Callenberg, he favoured the last. He also took great interest in the renovation of Veste Coburg which had been abandoned as a ducal residence in the 17th century. This work, which strained the ducal finances, was ongoing from 1908 until 1924.^[2]

Marriage and family

The Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, 11 October 1905.

Wilhelm II picked out Princess Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein, the niece of his wife, Empress Augusta Victoria, as Charles Edward's bride. She was the eldest daughter of Friedrich Ferdinand, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, and Princess Karoline Mathilde of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg. They married on 11 October 1905, at Glücksburg Castle, Schleswig-Holstein, and had five children,^[2] including Sibylla, the mother of Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

World War I

World War I caused a conflict of loyalties for Charles Edward, but he finally decided to support Germany. He broke off relations with his family at the British and Belgian courts. This did not suffice to overcome doubts about his loyalties in Germany. Charles Edward served on the staff of an infantry division at the beginning of the war, but in 1915 had to stop due to rheumatism. Although he never held a command, he visited both the western and eastern fronts numerous times. Soldiers from his duchies were awarded the Carl-Eduard-Kriegskreuz.^[2][6] In 1915, King George V ordered his name removed from the register of the Knights of the Garter.

In March 1917, the Landtag of Coburg excluded members of the ducal family from the succession if their country was hostile to (i.e. at war with) Germany.^[6] In July 1917, still unaware of the change in law at Coburg, in an effort to distance his dynasty from its German origins, George V changed the name of the British Royal House from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor. That year, the British Parliament passed the Titles Deprivation Act which empowered the Privy Council to investigate "any persons enjoying any dignity or title as a peer or British prince who have, during the present war, borne arms against His Majesty or His Allies, or who have adhered to His Majesty's enemies."

Under the terms of that act, an Order in Council on 28 March 1919 formally removed Charles Edward's British peerages. He and his children also lost their entitlement to the titles of Prince and Princess of the United Kingdom and the styles Royal Highness and Highness.^[7] Nevertheless, they retained the style of Highness as members of a sovereign ducal house in Germany.

Private citizen and Nazi politician

Charles Edward in 1933, as SA-Gruppenführer

Charles Edward (left) meeting the British Ambassador to Germany, Sir Neville Henderson, in 1939. He had been at Eton with Henderson and this photograph may have been taken at a meeting of the Anglo-German Fellowship that Henderson addressed in May 1937, shortly after his appointment as British Ambassador.^[8]

The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused Charles much concern and he watched anxiously during the ensuing power struggles between the left- and right-wing parties in Germany. On the morning of 9 November 1918, during the German Revolution the Workers' and Soldiers' Council of Gotha declared him deposed. On 11 November, his abdication was demanded in Coburg. Only on 14 November, later than most other ruling princes, did he formally announce that he had "ceased to rule" in both Gotha and Coburg. He did not explicitly renounce his throne.^[2]

Effectively exiled from England and fearful of the communist threat, he started looking for a new political home. He also worked towards the restoration of the monarchy, thus supporting the nationalistic-conservative and völkisch right.^[9][2]

His properties and collections in Coburg were transferred in 1919 to the Coburger Landesstiftung, a foundation that still exists today. A similar solution for Gotha took longer and only after legal struggles with the Free State of Thuringia was it set up in 1928/34. The Gotha foundation was expropriated by the Soviet authorities after 1945.^[2] After 1919, the family retained Schloss Callenberg, some other properties (including those in Austria) and a right to live at Veste Coburg and received substantial financial compensation for lost possessions. Some additional real estate in Thuringia was restored to the ducal family in 1925.^[6]

Now a private citizen,^[10] he became associated with various right-wing paramilitary and political organisations. He supported Hermann Ehrhardt both morally and financially after the Freikorps' commander's participation in the failed Kapp Putsch. Until 1922, Charles Edward was the head of the Preußenbund.^[2]

He met Adolf Hitler for the first time on 14 October 1922 (at the Nazis' second Deutscher Tag held at Coburg). In 1923, he joined the Bund Wiking as Oberbereichsleiter in Thuringia. When the Wiking joined the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, Charles Edward became a member of the Stahlhelm's national board.^[2][6]

In 1932, he took part in the creation of the Harzburg Front, through which the German National People's Party became associated with the Nazi Party. He also publicly called on voters to support Hitler in the presidential election.

Charles Edward formally joined the Nazi Party in March 1933 and that same year became a member of the SA (Brownshirts), rising to the rank of Obergruppenführer by 1936. He also served as a member of the Reichstag representing the Nazi Party from 1936–45 and as president of the German Red Cross from December 1933–45. When he took over this position, the German Red Cross had already been gleichgeschaltet by the Nazis (i.e. was controlled by them).^[2][6]

In 1934, he visited Japan where he attended a conference on the protection of civilians during war and delivered Hitler's birthday greeting to the Emperor.^[6]

In 1936, Hitler sent Charles Edward to Britain as president of the Anglo-German Friendship Society. His mission was to improve Anglo-German relations and to explore the possibility of a pact between the two countries. He attended the funeral of his first cousin George V in the uniform of a general of the German army (his British uniforms having been taken away from him), and sent Hitler encouraging reports about the strength of pro-German sentiment among the British aristocracy. After the Abdication Crisis, he played host to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the former King-Emperor and his wife, during their private tour of Germany in 1937.

In 1940, Charles Edward travelled via Moscow and Japan to the US, where he met President Roosevelt at the White House. In 1943, at Hitler's behest, Charles Edward asked the International Red Cross to investigate the Katyn massacre.^[6]

World War II

Burial site at Schloss Callenberg

Although Charles Edward was too old for active service during World War II, his three sons served in the Wehrmacht. His second son, Hubertus, was killed in action in 1943 in a plane crash near Mosty.

When World War II ended, the American Military Government in Bavaria, under the command of General George S. Patton, placed Charles Edward under house arrest at his home, the vast Veste Coburg, because of his Nazi sympathies. He was later imprisoned with other Nazi officials. His sister, Princess Alice, learning of his incarceration, came to Germany with her husband, Major-General The Earl of Athlone (the former Governor General of Canada), to plead for his release with his American captors. They dined with the American generals holding her brother, who declined to release him.

Charles Edward was imprisoned until 1946. Originally charged with Crimes against humanity, in 1950 (August 1949, according to his ODNB entry), after several appeals, he was sentenced by a denazification court as a Mitläufer and Minderbelasteter (roughly: follower and of lesser guilt),^[6] fined (DM 5,000) and almost bankrupted. Since Gotha was part of Thuringia and therefore in the Soviet occupation zone, the Soviet Army confiscated much of the family's property in Gotha. Coburg had become part of Bavaria in 1920, and the family kept property there and in other parts of Germany and abroad. He spent the last years of his life in seclusion. In 1953, he travelled to a local cinema to watch the coronation of his cousin's granddaughter, Elizabeth II.^[5]

Death

Having been evicted by the Allies from the Veste Coburg and his other palaces in 1946, he died of cancer in Coburg in his flat in Elsässer Straße on 6 March 1954. This made him the second-to-last ruling prince of the German Reich to die (only Ernst II of Saxe-Altenburg outlived him, see List of Princes of the German Empire (German)).

Charles Edward is buried at the family burial site in the forest of Schloss Callenberg, near Coburg.

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Royal Monogram of Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Titles and styles

• 19 July 1884 – 28 March 1919: His Royal Highness The Duke of Albany
  • 30 July 1900 – 28 March 1919: His Royal Highness The Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
• 28 March 1919 – 6 March 1954: His Highness The Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

In Germany his style and titles included: Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Saxony, Duke of Jülich, Cleves and Berg, of Angria and Westphalia, Landgrave in Thuringia, Margrave in Meissen, Princely Count of Henneberg, Count of the Mark and Ravensberg, Lord of Ravenstein and Tonna.

Honours

Domestic

• KG: Knight of the Garter, 15 July 1902–1915^[11]
• GCVO: Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, (gazetted as Leopold Charles Edward George Albert) 27 January 1901^[12]

Foreign

•  Saxe-Coburg and Gotha: Grand Master of the Saxe-Ernestine House Order
•  Prussia: Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle
•  Prussia: Knight of the Order of the Red Eagle
•  Prussia: Pour le Mérite
•  Prussia: Grand Cross of the Iron Cross
•  Bulgaria: Knight of the Order of Bravery III grade, 1st class
•  Sweden: Knight of the Royal Order of the Seraphim^[13]

Arms

Charles Edward was never granted arms in the United Kingdom. Also, he did not inherit the arms of his father since royal arms, as a differenced version of Arms of Dominion, are granted individually and not inherited. On his accession as Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, he used the arms of that duchy, both the greater and lesser versions.

One variant that he used was a shield of the arms of Saxony, with a differenced version of the arms of the United Kingdom, charged with the label borne by his father on his father's arms (essentially, the arms of his father in reverse).^[14] This was similar to the arms borne by his uncle, Alfred, as Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which can be seen on his stall plate as a Knight of the Swedish Order of the Seraphim.^[15]

Coat of Arms of Charles Edward

In the media

On 2 June 2008, British Channel 4 aired an hour-length documentary about Charles Edward called Hitler's Favorite Royal, including re-coloured original footage and photos from all stages of his private and public life, his troubled conversion to the National-Socialist regime and other aspects. Various international historians commented on the events and issues revolving around his life, reminding the public of his existence and reviving public debate.^[16] The programme inaccurately described Charles Edward as Queen Victoria's youngest grandson and Nicholas II of Russia's first cousin.

Issue

Ancestry

References

Sources

• Hubertus Büschel, Hitlers adliger Diplomat. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt, 2016. ISBN 978-3100022615.
• Harald Sandner, Hitlers Herzog: Carl Eduard von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha: die Biographie. Aachen, 2010.

External links

Media related to Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha at Wikimedia Commons