Max Lobkowicz

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Maximilián Erwin Maria Josef Antonin Paduansky Jindrich Thomas Fürst von Lobkowicz (born December 26, 1888 in Bilin , † April 1, 1967 in Dover , Massachusetts ) was a Czechoslovak diplomat. He officiated a. a. as Czechoslovak Ambassador to Great Britain during World War II .

Life and activity

Lobkowicz came from a long-established noble family in Bohemia . He was a son of Ferdinand Zdenek Lobkowicz and his wife Anna Berta, née von Neiperg. After attending school, he studied law in Prague . In 1913 he received his doctorate there for Dr. jur.

As a result of the father's resignation on October 21, 1920, Lobkowicz rose to become Prince von Lobkowicz, Duke of Raudnitz, Count of Sternstein and Highness. He later renounced these titles in the course of the bourgeoisisation of Czechoslovak society.

During the time of the first Czechoslovak Republic , Lobkowicz, who owned extensive land in the Sudetenland (more than 15,000 hectares including a brewery and bottling plant), was one of the leading supporters of the same among the Bohemian nobility. In the interwar years he was a member of the Czechoslovak legation in London as a legation counselor, but since 1926 he has been on leave for health reasons most of the time.

Due to the annexation of Bohemia by National Socialist Germany in 1938, Lobkowicz, who had spoken out against the Munich Agreement , emigrated to Great Britain. From October 1941, at the request of the President of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, Edvard Beneš, he held the post of envoy , who was upgraded to that of ambassador in June 1942 . He was the first ambassador in the history of the Czechoslovak state at all.

After his emigration, the National Socialist police officers classified Lobkowicz as an enemy of the state: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people who the Nazi surveillance apparatus considered particularly dangerous or important, which is why they should be successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht should be located and arrested by the special SS commandos following the occupation troops with special priority.

Two and a half years after Lobcowicz's escape, the Nazi occupation authorities in Czechoslovakia confiscated a large part of his property as well as his other property: In addition to the extensive lands mentioned, including forests, agricultural goods, fruit estates and the Biliner Sauerbrunn (mineral water bottling), this also included several castles , including the Roudnice / Raudnitz Castle, the ancestral home of the Lobkowicz family (including the extensive library belonging to it, which contained more than 100,000 volumes, 600 manuscripts and 1,200 incunabula ). The total value of the confiscated property was estimated at around 30 million Reichsmarks. Roudnice Castle was later used by the SS as a training facility for SS troops.

After the end of the Second World War, Lobkowicz's property confiscated by the German occupation forces was returned, but was confiscated again three years later, in 1948, after the communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia.

Lobkowicz settled in the United States in the late 1940s .

family

Lobkowicz was married to Gillian Margaret Hope, dated Bonham-Carter, born on December 1, 1924. Somerville (1890-1982) with whom he had three sons.

Lobkowicz and his wife were friends with the poet Karl Kraus , who dedicated a translation / adaptation of William Shakespeare's sonnets to them, which appeared in the magazine Die Fackel in 1933 .

literature

  • Enno Georg: The economic enterprises of the SS , p. 78.
  • Sandra Pisano: The Lobkowicz Collections , 2007.
  • Who is who ?: Das Deutsche who's who , 1928, p. 964.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry on Lobkowicz on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London).