Wiesbaden prince robbery
Wiesbaden prince robbery is the popular name for the forced return journey of Crown Prince Alexander (1876-1903) from Serbia on July 13, 1888 from Wiesbaden to Serbia .
Separation Agreement
The Majesties King Milan of Serbia and his wife Natalija , who lived separately after personal and political conflicts, signed a treaty in Belgrade on April 6, 1887 , which stipulated that the education of the Crown Prince should take place from 1887/1888 on in a jointly selected city in Germany, which, in addition to favorable climatic conditions, should also have an Orthodox Serbian or Russian church. This applied to Wiesbaden. There was also a corresponding Russian Orthodox church there .
The treaty contained extensive concessions to Queen Natalija in relation to the education of the Crown Prince. The Crown Prince was to be under the care of his mother for the duration of his upbringing, who was to accompany him to Serbia during the holidays. King Milan did not consider the presence of the Queen and the Crown Prince in Belgrade to be opportune at the time because of possible political unrest.
Wiesbaden
On June 4, 1888, Queen Natalija informed her husband that she had rented the very beautiful Villa Clementine in Wiesbaden and would settle here. Shortly afterwards, King Milan informed her that he had applied for divorce from the Church . When Queen Natalija rejected this request, King Milan demanded in a despatch on June 14th that Natalija should recognize him as “husband and father” and prove this by letting the Crown Prince leave for Belgrade without her company. The German government was ready to send the prince back to Serbia. If Natalija does not consent, he will bring his son back by force and should it occur to her to come to Belgrade with him, he will take him by force and carry out the divorce. In a new draft treaty, Queen Natalija was to undertake never to come to Serbia until the Crown Prince came of age without an invitation from the King. She was to remain in Wiesbaden with the Crown Prince until January 1, 1893 and not to change her residence without the king's written consent. However, Natalija rejected this contract, which had already been signed by Milan. However, she did not have much time to think about it, because on June 20, Milan sent the “definitive and irrevocable instructions” to the Serbian Minister of War, General Protić, to order a saloon car for the Crown Prince's departure. Protić was supposed to go to Lothar von Wurmb , district president of Wiesbaden, the next day to inform him of the prince's departure and to ask him for assistance in case the queen resisted. Milan granted her one last ultimatum to agree to the submitted contract by six o'clock the next day, but Queen Natalija still refused.
departure
On the eve of July 13, 1888, Police President Paul von Rheinbaben went to the Villa Clementine, which had been heavily guarded for days, to inform the Queen that the Crown Prince would be picked up at ten o'clock the next morning "if necessary by force ...". She herself was expelled and had to leave Germany ten hours after the Prince's departure. King Milan had achieved this by intervening with Kaiser Wilhelm II and Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck , while the queen's cries for help to the ruling dynasty remained without echo. Kaiser Wilhelm II asked in a personal telegram that she give up her resistance and willingly hand over the Crown Prince to his father's proxy.
Since the early morning of July 13th, the Villa Clementine had been shielded by a section of policemen and secret police. Shortly before ten o'clock, Major Chiević and Lieutenant Colonel Bjalović, who had been appointed adjutants to the Crown Prince by King Milan , went to the villa to report to the twelve-year-old Royal Highness. The police chief drove up shortly after ten o'clock, followed by a police inspector, two commissioners and twelve policemen. After a short negotiation, the prince was handed over to General Protić and then taken to the Taunus train station in a car . There was a saloon car attached to a scheduled train with which the Crown Prince and his companion drove to Belgrade.
Political background
The political background to the actions of the Serbian king only became clear later, when he suddenly abdicated in February 1889 and had his underage son proclaimed King Alexander I of Serbia. Alexander was assigned three regents . Only later did a secret agreement between Milan and the regents become known, which ensured the former king, who lived mainly in the Austrian Puster Valley until his death in 1901, a decisive influence on Serbian politics even after his abdication behind the backs of the public and his political opponents.
literature
- Memoirs of Queen Nathalie of Serbia . Berlin 1891.
- Heinrich Büttner: From Queen Nathalie's diary . Experiences of the Serbian regent. Communicated according to authentic sources. H. Schmidt, Berlin 1892.
- Brigitte Forßbohm. The kidnapping of the Crown Prince Alexander. An act in the Serbian “King's Tragedy” (1888). In: Hans-Jürgen Fuchs (Ed.): Crimes and fates. A Wiesbaden pitaval. Spectacular criminal cases from four centuries. Edition 6065, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-9810365-0-6 , pp. 82-98.
- Jochen Frickel: Villa Clementine. A political thriller from Wiesbaden. Reischl-Roland 2018, ISBN 978-3-943580-24-2 .