![]() His marriage to Kira, Grand Duchess of Russia and niece of the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, was an exceptionally happy one, producing four sons and three daughters. Of his three journeys to Israel after 1945, the last was the most memorable, the occasion being the erection of an obelisk dedicated to Wilhelm II and the Empress Auguste Victoria.Īt the end of the Second World War, Prince Louis Ferdinand had to flee with his family from his Eastern estates to West Germany and made the Wummehof in Bremen his private residence, concentrating on the administration of the rather reduced assets left to the Hohenzollern family and on an extensive restoration of Burg Hohenzollern in Hechingen, southern Germany, the family's original seat. Documents of the underground movement show that he was in fact seriously considered a possible future head of state in the event that the coup planned for 20 July 1944 against Hitler succeeded. This book was first published in 1983 as an extension and amended version of his earlier book Die Geschichte meine Lebens ('The History of my Life', 1968). These activities are described in greater detail in Prince Louis Ferdinand's fascinating autobiography, Im Strom der Geschichte: die Heimkehr noch Potsdam. He later had close contacts with members of the German underground movement, among them Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and Dr Carl Goerdeler - who were executed after their involvement in the failed attempt in July 1944 to kill Hitler - and with Klaus Bonhoefer, Otto John and Field Marshal Georg von Kuchler. Far from it, his spell as an officer in the German Air Force during the Second World War was short-lived, as in 1940 he retreated to his country estate after being expelled from military service by Hitler's new law restricting the military activities of members of the former Imperial family. The dubious role which some members of the deposed German Imperial family played during the Nazi period was not shared by Prince Louis Ferdinand. ![]() He was awarded his doctorate in 1929 for his thesis on the theory of immigration and its application to Argentina, an achievement he valued highly. ![]() Before his American years he read economics, philosophy and history at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
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