Charles II (Romania)
Carol II von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (born October 15, 1893 in Sinaia ; † April 4, 1953 in Estoril , Portugal ) was King of Romania from 1930 to 1940 . He was a son of King Ferdinand of Romania and Princess Marie of Edinburgh (1875–1938), daughter of Duke Alfred von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha , and thus on his mother's side a great-grandson of British Queen Victoria and of Russian Tsar Alexander II.
Exclusion from the throne and first exile
Crown Prince Carol was married to Princess Elena of Greece after a short, morganatic marriage to Ioana Lambrino (Zizi Lambrino) (the marriage was divorced on June 21, 1928), but he was excluded from the line of succession in 1926 because his status was not befitting Liaisons, especially with the divorced Magda Lupescu , caused ongoing scandals. Carol went into exile with Magda in Paris . Michael , the five-year-old son of Carol and Elena, took the throne de jure .
Domination
Carol returned to Romania on June 6, 1930, and after promising to part with Magda Lupescu, became King of Romania on June 8.
On February 10, 1938, Carol II dismissed the government and instituted a royal dictatorship in order to prevent the formation of a government whose ministers had belonged to the fascist movement of the Iron Guard . He appointed Patriarch Miron Cristea as the new head of government .
Over the next two years, the already violent conflict between the Iron Guard and other political groups turned into almost a civil war. In April 1938, Carol had the Iron Guard leader, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, arrested. On the night of November 29th to 30th, 1938, presumably in revenge for a series of assassinations by Iron Guard commands, Codreanu and several other legionaries were killed in an alleged attempt to escape.
The king's dictatorship was short-lived. On March 7, 1939, Armand Călinescu (who was again murdered by legionnaires on September 21, 1939 in revenge for Codreanu) as prime minister formed a new government.
Abdication and second exile
As a result, it turned out that Romania could not maintain its great territorial gains after the First World War without allies and surrounded by nothing but enemies. Although the country received a guarantee of its territory from Great Britain in April 1939 after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia , the protecting power was initially occupied with its own defense and disinterested in the Balkans during World War II . The new protecting power, the Third Reich , was only interested in the preservation of Romania to the extent that Romania's vital oil supplies to Germany were not endangered. The accident in the summer of 1940 after the fall of France could not be stopped:
At the end of June, in the wake of its annexation of the Baltic states of Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania covered by the Hitler-Stalin Pact , the Soviet Union also issued an ultimatum to force Romania to surrender the predominantly Ukrainian-populated northern Bukovina and Bessarabia . Immediately afterwards Bulgaria and Hungary registered their territorial claims: Romania reached an agreement with Bulgaria relatively quickly on the cession of the southern Dobruja , which was already mostly populated by Bulgarians , but the negotiations with Hungary quickly ended in a dead end. Since a war seemed inevitable and, moreover, allegedly a renewed intervention by the Soviet Union in the direction of the Romanian oil fields threatened, Hitler dictated the Second Vienna Arbitral Award on August 30, 1940 . Through this, Romania lost the entire north and east of Transylvania to Hungary, whose territory now protruded like a wedge into the rest of Romania, but also areas came to Hungary that (even today) have a Hungarian majority.
In order to prevent an invasion of Hungary and thus the complete collapse of the Romanian state, King Carol II felt compelled to accept all these territorial assignments; However, there was no longer any thought of continuing to rule. He appointed the former Minister of War, Ion Antonescu , as the new Prime Minister on September 4, 1940, abdicated on September 6, 1940 and went back into exile. In the appointment of Antonescu, Carol saw the only way to protect the state from the takeover of power by the Iron Guard. He was succeeded by his son King Michael I . On July 3, 1947, Carol married his partner Magda Lupescu in a hotel room in Rio de Janeiro, who from then on called herself "Princess of Romania".
The couple's remains were transferred to Romania on February 14, 2003 from the National Pantheon ( Panteao Nacional ) in Lisbon . Carol was buried in the tomb of the Romanian royal family in the Orthodox Cathedral in Curtea de Argeș , while Magda was laid to rest 450 meters away from him in the courtyard of a former monastery.
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See also
literature
- Andreas Hillgruber : Karl II. (Carol II.) . In: Mathias Bernath, Felix von Schroeder (Ed.), Gerda Bartl (Red.): Biographical Lexicon for the History of Southeast Europe . Volume 2. Oldenbourg, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-486-49241-1 , pp. 369-371.
Web links
- Newspaper article about Carol II in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
- Exclusion from Succession (January 4, 1926 )
- Cancellation of Exclusion (June 8, 1930 )
Individual evidence
- ^ Crown Prince Carol. In: Berner Woche, 1926. Retrieved on May 6, 2020 .
- ↑ Povestea de dragoste tulburătoare dintre Elena Lupescu şi Regele Carol al II-lea . In: Adevărul of June 15, 2015.
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Michael I. |
King of Romania 1930–1940 |
Michael I. |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Charles II |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Carol II |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | King of Romania |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 15, 1893 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sinaia |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 4th 1953 |
| Place of death | Estoril , Portugal |