Friedrich Franz Duke of Mecklenburg

Friedrich Franz at the age of eight (1918)

Friedrich Franz Duke of Mecklenburg [-Schwerin] (born April 22, 1910 in Schwerin ; † July 31, 2001 in Hamburg ; full name: Friedrich Franz Michael Wilhelm Nikolaus Franz-Joseph Ernst August Hans Duke of Mecklenburg ) was from his birth to November 1918 Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburg in Mecklenburg-Schwerin and head of the House of Mecklenburg-Schwerin from 1945 until his death. Even after 1918 he was still referred to as Hereditary Grand Duke in common parlance, although his legal name since then has been Duke of Mecklenburg .

Origin and youth

Friedrich Franz was born on April 22, 1910 in Schwerin as the eldest son of the last Grand Duke Friedrich Franz IV of Mecklenburg-Schwerin from his marriage to Alexandra of Hanover and Cumberland . As children, Friedrich Franz and his younger brother Christian Ludwig were several times the motifs of photo postcards that were sold for the benefit of war relief during the First World War .

Friedrich Franz as a child
1915
1918

After Grand Duke Friedrich Franz IV renounced the throne for himself and his family for all time in November 1918, the son grew up in the castles of Gelbensande , Ludwigslust and Wiligrad , with a short break in exile in Denmark in 1918 . He attended the Realgymnasium in Ludwigslust and graduated from high school in 1929 . He then studied law from 1930 to 1932, received training in agriculture and from 1932 to 1935 undertook extensive trips through Africa with his great-uncle Adolf Friedrich .

Career in National Socialism

During his studies in Munich Friedrich Franz got to know leading National Socialists like Heinrich Himmler . As early as May 1, 1931, he joined the NSDAP under membership number 504.973 and was probably accepted into the SS before 1933 . After returning from a month-long safari through Africa with his cousin Prince Hubertus of Prussia in the spring of 1933, he joined the foreign department, the forerunner of the NSDAP / AO headed by Ernst Wilhelm Bohle . Bohle recommended him in a letter to Rudolf Hess at the end of 1933 , because he had "advocated our idea outside in a clever and skilful manner"; he had a healing effect there “where there is still a lot of German national spirit.” His next trip to Africa in 1934 was on behalf of the AO . On September 15, 1935 he became SS-Obersturmführer . He first worked in the Gutsbewirtschaftung and from October 1936 as Gauhauptstellenleiter . Plans to send Friedrich Franz as an "honorary attaché to Sweden" or to assign him to the Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs as SS adjutant in 1937 were not implemented.

He joined the Foreign Service on May 12, 1938. He was initially assigned to Section X / Africa. In August 1939 he was appointed legation secretary and seconded to the German embassy in Belgrade . He stayed here until May 1940, interrupted by a brief military service from August to November 1939.

After the occupation of Denmark , on November 20, 1940, he became a personal assistant to the representative of the Reich in Copenhagen, the previous German envoy Cécil von Renthe-Fink , while at the same time he worked for the security service of the Reichsführer SS . It was his family relationship with the Danish Queen Alexandrine , his aunt, that made the difference. Since Alexandrine refused contact with her nephew, Friedrich Franz's mission was unsuccessful. On April 20, 1941 he was promoted to Sturmbannführer .

From February 17, 1943, he did military service in the Waffen SS . Despite the Prince's decree of 1940 and the decree on the keeping of internationally bound men from leading positions in the state, party and economy of May 1943, he still served in the summer of 1944 on " Himmler's order in a unit of the Waffen-SS" and was due to his services to the party did not initially dismiss. His unit was the III. (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps . On July 1, 1944, he was appointed Untersturmführer d. R. promoted. It was not until September 28, 1944 that he retired due to the 1943 decree.

Coat of arms of the House of Mecklenburg-Schwerin

marriage

On June 11, 1941, Friedrich Franz married Karin von Schaper (born January 31, 1920 in Breslau ; † January 26, 2012 in Glücksburg ), a daughter of Colonel a. D. Dr. rer. pole. Walther von Schaper and Elisabeth-Luise (Isa), b. Baroness of Münchhausen . This marriage did not have the approval of the head of the house, his father Friedrich Franz IV. Instead, a family council chaired by Friedrich Franz IV appointed his younger brother Christian Ludwig Herzog zu Mecklenburg as the future chairman of the family association and gave it the title of "Royal Highness" . The ostentatious closeness of Friedrich Franz to the National Socialist system, so the interpretation of Jonathan Petropoulos, contributed to the fact that Friedrich Franz IV. And the rest of the family wanted to set an unequivocal sign with this decision .

The couple were divorced on September 22, 1967; However, it married again on April 27, 1977 at Glücksburg Castle .

After the death of his brother Christian Ludwig in 1996, Friedrich Franz was the last male member of the grand ducal house of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Since he had no children and his brother had two daughters and no sons, the Schwerin line of the Mecklenburg family died out with him in the direct male line.

painter

Friedrich Franz Herzog zu Mecklenburg worked as an industrial clerk in Frankfurt am Main and Düsseldorf in the 1960s . He then moved to Hamburg and, in retirement, devoted himself to painting. Among other things, his watercolors, designed in the style of North German Expressionists , became famous .

literature

Bella Fromm : Friedrich Franz Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburg. In: When Hitler kissed my hand. Berlin 1993, ISBN 978-3-499-19766-6 , pp. 319-320.
Bernd Kasten : Prince Schnaps. Black sheep in the Princely House of Mecklenburg. Hinstorff Verlag , Rostock 2009. ISBN 3-356-01334-3 , pp. 102-107.
Bernd Kasten, Matthias Manke , René Wiese: The Grand Dukes of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2015, ISBN 978-3-356-01986-5 .
Bernd Kasten: Herren und Knechte: Social and political change in Mecklenburg-Schwerin 1867-1945. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8378-4014-8 , p. 286.
Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger (edit.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 3: L-R. Schöningh, Paderborn 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-71842-6 , pp. 211-212.
Christian Madaus: Hereditary Grand Duke Friedrich Franz von Mecklenburg died. In: Mecklenburg , Volume 43 (2001), p. 23.
Christian Ludwig von Mecklenburg : Stories from my life. Stock & Stein, Schwerin 1998, ISBN 978-3-910-17975-2 .
Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes , Moshe Zimmermann : The Office and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 .
Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 400.
Frank-Rutger Hausmann : Ernst-Wilhelm Bohle. Gauleiter in the service of party and state. (Contemporary history research, Volume 38). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-428-12862-4 , p. 143.
Hermann Langer: Life under the swastika: Everyday life in Mecklenburg 1932-1945. Edition Temmen, Rostock 1996, ISBN 978-3-86108-291-0 , p. 65.
Jonathan Petropoulos: Royals and the Reich. Oxford University Press, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-533927-7 .
Paul Bruppacher: Adolf Hitler and the history of the NSDAP. A chronicle. Part 1: 1889-1937. 3rd revised and expanded edition, 2014, ISBN 978-3-7322-6870-2 , p. 239.

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Franz Herzog zu Mecklenburg - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Literature about Duke Friedrich Franz in the state bibliography MV
Literature by and about Friedrich Franz Herzog zu Mecklenburg in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Genealogical Handbook of the Nobility (1959). Volume V. Starke Publishing House . P 46-49
↑ Burke's Royal Families of the World. Vol 1 Europe and Latin America. (1977). Burke's Peerage P 236
↑ See Jonathan Petropoulos: Royals and the Reich. Oxford University Press, New York 2008, p. 384.
↑ So in a source from 1944, quoted by Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, p. 315; According to other sources, he joined the SS in 1934 (Conze, p. 119 and Biographisches Handbuch des Deutschen Auswärtigen Dienst 1871–1945 (lit.), where he joined June 26, 1934 )
↑ Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945 (lit.)
↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, p. 119.
↑ Pentopoulos (Lit.), p 123, according to a letter from Reinhard Heydrich to Heimrich Himmler of 31 January 1941st
↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, p. 315, also Pentopoulos p. 99 according to his file in the Berlin Document Center .
↑ All data from the Biographical Manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945 (lit.)
↑ Jonathan Petropoulos: Royals and the Reich. Oxford University Press, New York 2008, p. 272.

Remarks

↑ Even his entry in the Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service (lit.) lists him as Mecklenburg, Friedrich Franz Hereditary Grand Duke of.
↑ The ranks of the General SS and the Waffen-SS were assigned separately so that one person could have different ranks in both parts of the SS. Organizational structure of the SS .
↑ See Karin von Schaper in the English language Wikipedia

personal data
SURNAME	Friedrich Franz Duke of Mecklenburg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Friedrich Franz Michael Wilhelm Nikolaus Franz-Joseph Ernst August Hans Duke of Mecklenburg (full name); Friedrich Franz (former name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German nobleman
DATE OF BIRTH	April 22, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH	Schwerin
DATE OF DEATH	July 31, 2001
Place of death	Hamburg

[GHdA-1] Genealogical Handbook of the Nobility (1959). Volume V. Starke Publishing House . P 46-49

[2] Burke's Royal Families of the World. Vol 1 Europe and Latin America. (1977). Burke's Peerage P 236

[4] See Jonathan Petropoulos: Royals and the Reich. Oxford University Press, New York 2008, p. 384.

[5] So in a source from 1944, quoted by Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, p. 315; According to other sources, he joined the SS in 1934 (Conze, p. 119 and Biographisches Handbuch des Deutschen Auswärtigen Dienst 1871–1945 (lit.), where he joined June 26, 1934 )

[6] Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945 (lit.)

[7] Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, p. 119.

[8] Pentopoulos (Lit.), p 123, according to a letter from Reinhard Heydrich to Heimrich Himmler of 31 January 1941st

[9] Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, p. 315, also Pentopoulos p. 99 according to his file in the Berlin Document Center .

[11] All data from the Biographical Manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945 (lit.)

[13] Jonathan Petropoulos: Royals and the Reich. Oxford University Press, New York 2008, p. 272.

[3] Even his entry in the Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service (lit.) lists him as Mecklenburg, Friedrich Franz Hereditary Grand Duke of.

[10] The ranks of the General SS and the Waffen-SS were assigned separately so that one person could have different ranks in both parts of the SS. Organizational structure of the SS .

[12] See Karin von Schaper in the English language Wikipedia