Max, Markgraf von Baden, Herzog von Zähringen 1933–2022
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Since 1963, Max Margrave of Baden was the head of the house at the head of the formerly ruling Grand Ducal Baden Princely House, which ruled from 1112 to 1918 in the Baden part of today's federal state
Baden-Württemberg provided the sovereigns.
His successor as head of the House of Baden is Bernhard Margrave of Baden, the previous hereditary prince.
Richard R
Obits from the Telegraph & Times of 4 January 2023:
E X T R A C TS
THE TELEGRAPH
The Margrave of Baden, German country gentleman and cousin of King Charles – obituary
The Badens were present on many royal occasions in Britain, notably at the Diamond Wedding service of the Queen and Prince Philip
The Margrave of Baden, who has died aged 89, was a German aristocrat, businessman and pretender to the former grand ducal throne of Baden; he was also a first cousin of King Charles III and his siblings, meaning that he and his family were often present at royal events in London even if they were barely recognisable to the public at large.
…by 1995 the gaunt and bespectacled Margrave had run up debts of more than 100 million marks, losing money on his engineering companies and forests with his seasoned woods being undercut by cheap timber from the East. To set matters right he invited German punters to park their Volkswagens on the forecourt of the Neues Schloss, a splendid pile on the crest of a hill overlooking Baden-Baden, and bid for about 25,000 objects divided into 7,000 lots in a 15-day auction organised by Sotheby’s… Most objects had an exotic history, such as the tea table made in 1780 for King Gustav III of Sweden. Not that the Margrave and his family had to fear being left homeless. They still had their main house, Salem Castle, a spectacular former Cistercian monastery near Lake Constance in the far south of Germany, and the Eberstein Palace near Gernsbach. [They received The Queen & Duke during their state visit in 1965].
…Maximilian Andreas Friedrich Gustav Ernst-August Bernhard was born in Salem Castle on July 3 1933. He was the second of three children of Berthold, Margrave of Baden, whose father, Prince Max, a cousin of Emperor Napoleon III of France, was the last German Imperial Chancellor and negotiated the 1918 peace with the Allies, and his wife Princess Theodora of Greece, who was the Duke of Edinburgh’s sister.
…There were strong links to the British Royal family. Princess Marie-Louise, was a daughter of Prince Ernst August, 3rd Duke of Cumberland (and thus a descendant of King George III) and of his wife, Princess Thyra (daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark, and a sister of Queen Alexandra).
The Margrave, a quiet country gentleman, maintained a low profile, keeping well away from German politics. .. In 2009 he oversaw the signing of an agreement that effectively transferred Salem Castle and its estate to the state of Baden-Württemberg.
In 1961 Maximilian announced his engagement to his first cousin, Princess Beatrix of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, the daughter of a maternal aunt. This was broken off soon afterwards, she remaining a spinster and serving as secretary to Princess Peg of Hesse at Wolfsgarten. In 1966 the Margrave married Archduchess Valerie of Austria, 7th daughter of Archduke Hubertus, Prince of Tuscany.
The Badens were present on many royal occasions in Britain, notably at the Diamond Wedding service of the Queen and Prince Philip in 2007, at Prince Philip’s 90th birthday service at Windsor in 2011, and they were close to Lord Mountbatten.
The Margravine represented her husband, by then not well enough to travel, at the state funeral of the Queen in September. She survives him with a daughter, Princess Marie, and three sons, Prince Bernhard, who succeeds as Margrave of Baden, and the princes Leopold and Michael.
Maximilian, Margrave of Baden, born July 3 1933, died December 29 2022
THE TIMES
E X T R A C T
Maximilian, Margrave of Baden obituary
German cousin of Charles III who was ostracised by the royal family after the war but later welcomed back into the fold
When Prince Philip married the future Queen Elizabeth II in 1947, his 14-year-old German nephew Prince Maximilian was not invited to the royal wedding at Westminster Abbey.
Ostracised
along with Maximilian were his parents, Princess Theodora, who was Prince
Philip’s sister, and her husband, Berthold, Margrave of Baden.
...[Philip's] extensive German connections meant that his engagement to the future queen of England inevitably attracted controversy.
Philip himself had been partly educated in Germany at the Schule Schloss Salem, owned by the Margrave of Baden. In addition to Theodora, another of Philip’s sisters Princess Sophie had also married a German prince, Christoph Ernst August of Hesse. A nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm II and a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, more to the point, he had also been an active Nazi and an Oberführer in the SS.
It was reported that even Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, had doubts about Philip’s engagement to her daughter and in private referred to her future son-in-law as “the Hun”.
...Maximilian spent the day of his uncle’s wedding with his parents at Marienburg Castle, a Gothic revival palace near Hanover, where they toasted Philip and his new bride in absentia. The party was joined by other similarly shunned German relatives of the British royal family, including the Duke and Duchess of Brunswick and Prince Louis and Princess Margaret of Hesse.
...the wounds of war had sufficiently healed for Maximilian to attend the coronation of his aunt Queen Elizabeth II with his parents and siblings as the official guests of the Duke of Edinburgh. It was at the ceremony that the 20-year-old future Margrave met his four-year-old cousin, the future King Charles III, while Maximilian’s mother was said to have got on famously with the new Queen and became her favourite sister-in-law.
...He was unable to attend the state funeral of Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey last year, when he was represented by his wife, the Margravine, Archduchess Valerie of Austria, and by Prince Bernhard, who succeeds his father as Margrave of Baden. He is survived by three further children, Princess Marie, Prince Leopold and Prince Michael.
Maximilian Andreas Friedrich Gustav Ernst August Bernhard, Prince of Baden, was born in 1933 in Salem, Germany, the eldest of three children to Berthold, Margrave of Baden, and Princess Theodora of Greece and Denmark.
...the family estates, ...included four castles and more than 2,000 hectares of forests and vineyards. He inherited the estate at the age of 30 in 1963 on the death of his father, along with the title of Margrave of Baden and an historical claim to the former Grand Ducal throne of Baden, created by Napoleon in 1806. Under pressure to produce his own heir, he became engaged to his first cousin, Princess Beatrix of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, the daughter of his mother’s older sister Princess Margarita, who like her husband, Gottfried, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, had been an active member of the Nazi Party. However, the engagement was called off and in 1966 he married Archduchess Valerie, the daughter of Archduke Hubert of Austria and Princess Rosemary of Salm-Salm.
...However, due to some poor investments he found himself in hock to his bankers for a sum in the region of 120 million marks (£42 million) and was forced to sell the contents of his castle at Baden-Baden. Amid a controversy, which was likened by the British media to the Duke of Devonshire announcing the sale of the treasures of Chatsworth, he initially offered the contents to the regional government of Baden-Württemberg as a job lot for $40 million. [The Sotheby's sale] brought in $55 million, at the time a record. The provenance of the items was certified by the detailed inventories the family had maintained since the mid-17th century.The sale also included some 750 old masters and 19th-century paintings. However, apart from a priceless set of 500-year-old panels from an altarpiece commissioned for the chapel at the family’s castle in Salem from Durer’s contemporary, Bernhard Strigel, a Sotheby’s spokesman noted that the family had “already sold its best pictures in 1790”.
Three years later he appointed his son and heir, Bernhard, as administrator of the family’s assets and the Baden-Baden castle was sold in 2001 to a German consortium. However, the Margrave was not quite left homeless and continued to live with his wife in another of the family’s ancestral seats at Salem Castle.
Maximilian, Margrave of Baden, first cousin of Charles III, was born on July 3, 1933. He died after a long illness on December 29, 2022, aged 89
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/maximilian-margrave-of-baden-obituary-kn7nmdmwj
