Leka Zogu

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Leka Zogu or Zog (born April 5, 1939 in Tirana ; † November 30, 2011 ibid) was an Albanian pretender to the throne and politician . He was the only son of Zogu I , King of the Albanians , and his wife, Countess Geraldine of Apponyi .

Life

Two days after his birth , Italian troops invaded Albania and the royal family fled the country. Zogu was educated in English schools in Egypt and Switzerland , later he studied at the Sorbonne and graduated from the Sandhurst Military Academy .

With the death of his father in 1961 in exile in Paris, Zogu assumed the title Leka I, King of the Albanians . He later lived as a businessman in South Africa and built a fortune. With the approval of the transitional government, he returned to Albania in 1993. He announced that he would integrate the areas of former Yugoslavia inhabited by Albanians into the state and spoke out in favor of a referendum on the future form of government in Albania, in which he would later rule on the model of King Hussein of Jordan . In the referendum on the future form of Albania's state , held at the same time as the parliamentary elections in July 1997 , the voters decided to retain the republic. Zogu refused to acknowledge this result and drove armed and accompanied by supporters in front of the building of the election commission. After an exchange of fire with the police , in which one person was killed, he had to flee Albania. He was sentenced in absentia to three years in prison by a court on November 25, 1999; in 2002 the parliament decreed an amnesty.

Following a decision by the Albanian government under Prime Minister Sali Berisha in 2006, Zogu was given back his family's former royal palace in the capital Tirana. A law passed in 2003 regulates the status of the royal family.

In 1975 Zogu married the Australian Susan Barbara Cullen-Ward (1941-2004) in Biarritz . The couple's only child is their son Leka Anwar Zogu Reza , born on March 26, 1982 in Johannesburg .

literature

  • Miranda Vickers: The Albanians. A Modern History . Tauris, London et al. 2001, ISBN 1-86064-541-0 .
  • Peter Bartl: Albania. From the Middle Ages to the present . Pustet, Regensburg 1995, ISBN 3-7917-1451-1 , ( Eastern and Southeastern Europe - history of countries and peoples ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Albania's Self-Proclaimed King Dies at 72
  2. Albanian pretender to the throne considers government participation impossible without his movement for national development (message on dw-world.de from December 19, 2004) ( Memento from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  3. Ex-king's son returns to Albania. In: BBC News Online. June 28, 2002, accessed September 9, 2014 .
  4. Llazar Semini: Albania's self-styled King Leka this at 72. In: The Guardian. November 30, 2011, archived from the original on September 10, 2014 ; accessed on September 9, 2014 .
  5. Ligj No. 9063 8.5.2003 për statusin e trashëgimtarëve të ish-Familjes Mbretërore. (PDF) In: Fletorja Zyrtare. June 19, 2003, accessed on April 28, 2019 (Albanian, p. 16 in PDF (p. 1802)).
predecessor Office successor
Zogu I. Head of the House of Zogu
1961–2011
Leka II.