Friedrich Josias Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

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Friedrich Josias Carl Eduard Kyrill Harald Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (born November 29, 1918 in Schloss Callenberg near Coburg ; † January 23, 1998 in Amstetten , Lower Austria ) was a German businessman and head of the House of Saxe-Coburg from 1954 to 1998 and Gotha .

origin

Friedrich Josias of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was the youngest of five children of the recently in the November Revolution deposed Duke Carl Eduard of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1884-1954) and Princess Victoria Adelaide to House of Glücksburg (1885 –1970) to the world. His siblings were Hereditary Prince Johann Leopold (1906–1972), Sibylla (1908–1972), the mother of Sweden's King Carl Gustaf , Hubertus (1909–1943), who fell in Ukraine, and Caroline Mathilde (1912–1983), who married a count zu Castell-Rüdenhausen in his first marriage .

Career

Friedrich Josias of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha initially received private lessons. From 1929 to 1934 he attended the Casimirianum high school in Coburg. After three years at the Salzmann School in Schnepfenthal , he passed his Abitur there in 1938.

After a short assignment with the Reich Labor Service in Neustadt near Coburg , he joined the armored forces of the Wehrmacht in 1938 as an officer candidate . First he was trained in Stahnsdorf near Berlin and first used in 1939 during the occupation of Czechoslovakia . He took part in the attack on Poland and was in France in 1940 as a lieutenant in a tank reconnaissance company. The campaigns against Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union followed in 1941 . After surviving a serious illness ( dysentery ) in the winter of 1941 , he was transferred to Stahnsdorf.

Shortly afterwards, the Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha , who had meanwhile been promoted to lieutenant , was posted to the Arabia Freikorps and to the Caucasus . In 1944 he became an orderly officer under General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel on the French Channel coast, and in June 1944 with General von Hanneken in Denmark . Despite the prince's decree , which had excluded the sons of former ruling houses from service in the Wehrmacht since 1943, he was able to serve there until his defeat in May 1945 after he had lodged a complaint. In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the English and came to Coburg after his release in autumn 1945.

A year later he traveled to Stockholm to see his sister Sibylla and lived there for the time being. In 1946 he took a job with the Swedish shipping company Johnson Line AB . From 1948 he was employed by WR Grace & Co. in San Francisco . After working for the shipping company in Santos / Brazil from 1951 , he returned to Germany in 1952 and worked for the shipping company in the Hamburg office. Following his father's request, he ended his employment relationship to work for the family foundation.

Head of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Veste Coburg - west view (2010)

After the eldest brother Johann Leopold had renounced in 1932 due to an inappropriate marriage and the brother Hubertus had died on November 26, 1943, Friedrich Josias of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was considered the designated successor to his father in the traditional role of head of the house. According to the severance payment agreement of June 7, 1919 between his father and the then government of the Free State of Coburg , Friedrich Josias of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha owned the right to live in the prince's building on the Coburg Fortress . He lived in the guest house there. With the death of his father on March 6, 1954, he became head of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Associated with this was the chairmanship of the Foundation of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Family and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Foundation for Art and Science . The household assets are united in these two foundations, which were established by his father in 1928. The foundations include the two castles Callenberg in Coburg and Greinburg in Grein an der Donau in Upper Austria, as well as the art and cultural assets of the ducal house. In 1958 the Austrian possessions, which had been confiscated by the Allies in occupied post-war Austria in 1945 , were returned to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha by the Raab federal government . It was 4,000 hectares near Hinterriß in Tirol and 8,000 hectares near Grein.

From 1958, Friedrich Josias von Sachsen-Coburg and Gotha worked again temporarily for the Johnson shipping company, this time in Buenos Aires .

Callenberg Castle , Coburg
Greinburg Castle , Upper Austria

In 1964 he returned to Germany, initially living in Hamburg for three years, then from 1967 in Coburg and later mainly in Grein, Austria. The family history of the past 150 years had led to various family relationships with the great European noble houses. In June 1981 Friedrich Josias of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha received a visit from the Belgian royal couple Baudouin (who belonged to the Belgian line of Saxe-Coburgs) and Fabiola , in October 1982 from the Swedish royal couple Carl Gustaf (whose mother was a sister of Friedrich Josias) and Silvia , each of which was accompanied by considerable media interest and official receptions in the town hall of Coburg. Only the British royal family, which was renamed from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor during the First World War in 1917 , showed little interest in closer contacts to Coburg due to the close ties between the parent company and the respective rulers of the German Empire during the two world wars.

For health reasons, Friedrich Josias of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha did not come to Coburg in the last years of his life. So he could no longer visit the big Bavarian state exhibition , which took place in Coburg in 1997 under the title "One Duchy and Many Crowns - Coburg in Bavaria and Europe" and the history of the duchy with international connections as well as the duchy of Saxony-Coburg and treated Gotha . As head of the house, he was already represented by his son Andreas during these years .

In 1998 he died in Amstetten Hospital; He was buried on February 2, 1998 in the forest of Schloss Callenberg . With the death of Friedrich Josias of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the family's right of residence in the Veste Coburg ended.

Marriages and offspring

I. On January 25, 1942, he married Viktoria Luise Countess zu Solms-Baruth in Kasel-Golzig (* March 13, 1921; † March 1, 2003). The marriage was divorced on September 19, 1946. From this marriage the current head of the house emerged on March 21, 1943:

II. On February 14, 1948, he married Denyse Henriette de Muralt (* December 14, 1923, † April 25, 2005), a native of Basel, in San Francisco . The second marriage was divorced on September 17, 1964. From this the children followed:

  • 1. Maria Claudia Sibylla (* May 22, 1949 in San Francisco; † February 5, 2016), married to Gion Schäfer (* July 20, 1945)
  • 2. Beatrice Charlotte (born July 15, 1951 in Bern ), married to Prince Friedrich-Ernst von Sachsen-Meiningen (born January 21, 1935 - † July 13, 2004)
    • Marie Alexandra of Saxony-Meiningen (* 1978) ⚭ Benno Widmer (* 1971)
    • Constantin of Saxony-Meiningen (* 1980)
  • 3. Adrian Vinzenz Edward (born October 18, 1955 in Coburg; † August 30, 2011 in Bern), married 1984–1993 to Lea Rinderknecht (born January 5, 1960) and 1997–2011 with Gertrud Krieg (born March 18, 1958 )

III. His third marriage was on October 30, 1964 with Katrin Bremme (* April 22, 1940 - July 13, 2011), this marriage had no offspring.

Honors

On 23 November 1988 was Friedrich Josias of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha for his achievements in the restoration of Castle Greinburg the honorary citizenship of the city of Grein.

literature

  • One duchy and many crowns. Coburg in Bavaria and Europe. Catalog for the 1997 state exhibition of the House of Bavarian History and the art collections of the Veste Coburg in cooperation with the Foundation of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and the Gotha family and the city of Coburg. Veste Coburg and Callenberg Castle, June 3 to September 28, 1997. Edited by Michael Henker , Evamaria Brockhoff, Margot Hamm, Pia Haertinger, Renate Weber and Peter Wolf. Publications on Bavarian history and culture No. 36/97, Bavarian State Chancellery, House of Bavarian History, Augsburg 1997, ISBN 3-927233-56-0 , p. 51 Biographical entry with illustrated oil painting
  • Harald Sandner : The House of Saxony-Coburg and Gotha: a documentation for the 175th anniversary of the parent company in words and pictures . 1826 to 2001. Neue Presse, Coburg 2001, ISBN 3-00-008525-4 (there pp. 243-252).
  • Franz Haarmann: The House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha . Börde-Verlag, Werl 2006, ISBN 3-9810315-5-5 .

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d Harald Sandner: The House of Saxony-Coburg and Gotha: a documentation for the 175th anniversary of the parent company in words and pictures from 1826 to 2001 . Presse, Coburg 2001, ISBN 3-00-008525-4 .
  2. ↑ a b c Excerpt from Paul Theroff's Online Gotha, Part 4: Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
predecessor Office successor
Carl Eduard Head of the House of Saxony-Coburg and Gotha
1954–1998 		Andreas
personal data
SURNAME Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Friedrich Josias Prince of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Friedrich Josias Carl Eduard Kyrill Harald Prince von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businessman, head of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
DATE OF BIRTH November 29, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Callenberg Castle near Coburg
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1998
Place of death Amstetten , Lower Austria