Henri d'Orléans (1908-1999)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henri d'Orléans, Count of Paris (1987)

Henri d'Orleans, Count of Paris (born July 5, 1908 at Château Le Nouvion-en-Thiérache , Département Aisne ; †  June 19,  1999 in Cherisy , Eure-et-Loir ) was head of the House of Orléans and its pretender since 1940 on the French throne.

Life

Henri Robert Ferdinand Marie Louis Philippe d'Orleans was the only son of Jean d'Orléans, duc de Guise , and Isabelle d'Orléans, duchesse de Guise . After his father had become an Orléanist pretender to the throne in 1926 , Henri was considered an Orléanist Dauphin . After the death of his father in 1940, he therefore assumed the title of Count of Paris , Duke of France. These are birthright titles used under private law according to the historical house law of the formerly ruling French royal house of the Capetians , which are referred to by today's French courts as purely courtesy titles, but are also used as such, and also by politics and the press.

In 1939, after being denied entry into the French and British armies , he joined the French Foreign Legion . With her he fought against the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany until the surrender in August 1940 and subsequently supported the Vichy government of Marshal Philippe Pétain . He and his Prime Minister Pierre Laval met on August 7, 1942 for a meeting at Charmeil Castle near Vichy . But that same year he broke with Pétain and sought the closeness of free France under the leadership of General Charles de Gaulle , from whom he received critical undertones after the liberation in 1944.

On June 24, 1950, the National Assembly repealed the exile law of 1886, which allowed the House of Orléans to return to their French homeland. Henri d'Orléans moved into a city palace in Paris that had been bequeathed to him by a banker and tried to gather as many supporters of the monarchy as possible across the country. Family festivities have since received a lot of attention from the French media. Until the 1960s, he clung to the illusion that de Gaulle would propose him as his successor for the office of President.

Since he had eleven children and did not get a high income from his property, he set up a family foundation, the Fondation Saint-Louis , after his divorce in 1974 , in order to bundle the most important family goods and to protect them from being divided again. These include Amboise Castle , which is used as a family museum , the ancestral castle Bourbon-l'Archambault and Dreux Castle with the Orléans burial chapel. The respective Count of Paris is the honorary chairman of the foundation. He also managed the Condé Foundation , a center for the elderly in Chantilly . With his sons, however, he got into repeated quarrels about his handling of the family assets, against which the sons successfully defended themselves through legal action. Nevertheless, he died heavily in debt.

In 1984, Henri d'Orléans excluded his eldest son, Henri Philippe, from the succession as pretender to the throne, because he had divorced his wife without his consent and entered into a second marriage outside the church. He denied him the title of Comte de Clermont and gave him the lower rank of Comte de Mortain . He presented his 22-year-old son Jean as his successor. A few years later he reinstated his son in his old rights and gave his wife Micaela Cousiño Quinones de Leon the title of Princess de Joinville. He excluded his sons Michel and Thibaut from the line of succession because they married bourgeois women. His decision was later reversed by Henri Philippe. These different decisions were received and judged very differently by the French royalists.

After his death, Henri d'Orléans was buried on June 19, 1999 in the family grave in the Chapelle royale Saint-Louis in Dreux .

family

He married Isabelle d'Orléans-Bragance (1911–2003) on April 8, 1931 in Palermo , with whom he had eleven children. In 1986 they separated.

literature

  • Klaus Malettke : The Bourbons. Volume 3: From Louis XVIII. up to Louis Philippe. 1814-1848. W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-17-020584-0 , pp. 214-215.
  • Bruno Goyet: Henri d'Orléans, comte de Paris (1908–1999). Le prince impossible. Jacob, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-7381-0934-9 .

Web links

Commons : Henri d'Orléans  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tribunal de grande instance de Paris (1st Ch.) , December 21, 1988
  2. ↑ Website of the Fondation Saint-Louis (French)
  3. ↑ Angelika Heinick, Paris: Jewelry and Memorabilia: Family quarrel in the Orléans house . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed October 28, 2018]).
predecessor Office successor
Jean d'Orléans Blason duche for Orleans (modern) .svg
Head of the House of Orléans
orléanist pretender to the throne of France
1940–1999 		Henri d'Orléans
personal data
SURNAME Orléans, Henri d '
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Orléans, Henri Robert Ferdinand Marie Louis Philippe d '; Orleans, Henri Robert Ferdinand Marie Louis Philippe d '
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French noble descendant, boss and pretender to the throne of the House of Orléans
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Château Le Nouvion-en-Thiérache
DATE OF DEATH June 19, 1999
Place of death Cherisy