Book Review: "Jugenderinnerungen 1923-1950" by Princess Irmingard of Bavaria

Princess Irmingard of Bavaria (1923-2010) was the second child and eldest daughter of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria (1869-1955) and his second wife Crown Princess Antonia (1899-1954, born a Princess of Luxembourg). She was born in 1923 in Berchtesgarden Castle, the residence of the Crown Princely family.

Princess Irmingard's autobiography was published in 2000. She describes the first 27 years of her life, starting with her birth and ending with her marriage to Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, her first cousin.

Born into a former ruling family, Irmingard and her siblings enjoyed a free and happy family life, nevertheless with the knowledge of her family's past and of being "special" in her role as a princess. They didn't attend state schools but had private tutors and also weren't allowed to play with every child in the neighbouring villages. The tutors and the family's priest decided with whom the crown princely children should play. 

The crown princely family spent their time in Schloss Berchtesgarden until 1929. After that they divided the time between their winter residence in Munich, the so-called Leuchtenberg-Palais, and their summer residence Schloss Hohenschwangau in Schwangau (best known as one of the childhood homes of King Ludwig II). From 1933 onwards the family lived in Schloss Leutstetten.

Most of the time they spent their summer holidays in Luxembourg at Château de Berg and Bavaria at Schloss Hohenburg, the residences of Dowager Grand Duchess Maria-Ana, Irmingard's grandmother. Irmingard describes a get-together of the extended Grand-Ducal family which means the families of Aunt Lotti (Grand Duchess Charlotte) and her sisters Hilda, Antonia, Sophie and Elisabeth. She also tells her readers how the family regularly remembered Aunt Maus (mouse), the late Grand Duchess Marie-Adelaide and how the children played with each other. Her cousin Johany/Johnny is described especially well by Irmingard. Later he became Grand Duke Jean.

Times changed and became tougher when Adolf Hitler came to power. This was the reason why the family left Munich and moved to Leutstetten. Crown Prince Rupprecht was an opponent of the new regime and so the family had to deal with many difficulties.

Between 1936 and 1939 Irmingard, her sister Editha and two of her Luxembourgish  cousins Elisabeth and Marie Adelheid went to "Sacré Coeur" a boarding school in England. A year later her two younger sisters Hilda and Gabrielle followed. The families hoped to protect the girls, and Grand Duchess Charlotte and Crown Princess Antonia accompanied the girls in the first few days. At "Sacré Coeur" Irmingard had some famous classmates: Joan and Patricia Kennedy, as well as Benedikta and Maria Adelgunde of Hohenzollern ("Mädi and Mimi" in the book). During this time Irmingard, her sisters, and cousins were invited to meet Queen Mary.

With the start of World War II an odyssey started. The family spent the summer of 1939 in Luxembourg, and after that the girls moved to Brussels to enter another "Sacré Coeur" school. There they also met with Empress Zita of Austria and her children, who spent part of their exile in Steenokkerzeel near Brussels. The family returned to Munich but left the city shortly afterwards to live in Italy. King Vittorio Emanuele helped the family to flee by sending his private saloon car. In Italy the family spent some time in Rome where Prince Heinrich went into hiding, Florence where Crown Prince Rupprecht went into hiding as well as in Padua and Brixen.

After an assassination attempt on Hitler failed, the Gestapo (the Nazi's secret police) imprisoned Crown Princess Antonia and the rest of her children except of Irmingard who stayed with family friends during this time. Crown Princess Antonia was sent to a hospital in Innsbruck while her children were brought to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. Later Princess Irmingard was also caught by the Gestapo and sent to Innsbruck as well because of typhus. There she met her mother. After their recovery they were sent into concentration camps as well, Irmingard to Sachsenhausen and Antonia was brought to Weimar. From Sachsenhausen Irmingard and her siblings were sent to Flossenbürg and later to Dachau. During this time the siblings didn't know about their parents' destiny. In April 1945 they were liberated by American soldiers and sent back to Schloss Leutstetten.

Princess Irmingard describes this horror very personally and emphatically. The despair of not knowing if and how to survive the next day is supported by various paintings by Irmingard, which she painted during and after her stay in the concentration camps. These paintings can also be seen at the "Museum der bayerischen Könige" in Schwangau.

After the war was over Irmingard was sent to the USA for recovery. Her sister Hilda married in Peru, and she was the only family member who took part in this wedding. The book ends with a detailed description of her father's 80th birthday celebrations, Irmingard's own wedding and the death of her mother. 

In her autobiography Irmingard of Bavaria gives a lively description of her family life in a time of unrest. She shows how close the extended Grand Ducal and Crown Princely family were and how they managed to stay in contact throughout the years. Her book includes many private family pictures, most of them never released before. It is a recommendation for everyone who is interested in the history of the houses of Wittelsbach and Nassau/Luxembourg from a more personal point of view.             

Book Review: "The Nassaus of Luxembourg" by Kassandra and Sabrina Pollock with Arturo E. Beéche

There's a new book out on the Grand Ducal Family: Earlier this year, EuroHistory.com published "The Nassaus of Luxembourg" by Kassandra and Sabrina Pollock with Arturo E. Beéche mainly focusing on the lives of Grand Duchess Charlotte and her five sisters.

When Team Luxarazzi first heard about the book, we were thrilled to bits. An up-to-date English-language book about several members of the Grand Ducal Family?! That sounded like heaven. Something further enhanced by a statement of the authors: 

"This book's concept began with our frustration over the lack of English language sources available on the six beautiful Nassau sisters of Luxembourg, their descendants and the families they married into. We, however, wanted to know more. Thus, we braved our way through whatever foreign language materials we could find, and as we learned more about the princesses' lives our interest grew to include the account of their parents' courtship and eventual marriage, a union which is one of the more touching but tragic of history's untold royal love stories. Nor would the narrative of the sisters' lives be complete without an explanation of how their grandfather came to inherit the Luxembourg throne. We hope you enjoy our effort..."

In the end, I suppose, our expectations were simply too high. Though admittedly the quality between the different parts of the book varies greatly. "The Nassaus of Luxembourg" consists of an introduction and eight chapters (A New Dynasty - Grand Duke Adolphe; The Sickly Heir - Grand Duke Guillaume; A Grand Duchess Maligned - Marie Adelaide; A Beloved Grand Duchess - Charlotte; A Popular Princess and Aunt - Hilda; A Tragic Crown Princess - Antonia; A Giving Princess - Elisabeth; A Spared Princess - Sophie), followed by notes, bibliography and index.

While we thought that the book would put its focus on the lives on the six daughters of Grand Duke Wilhelm, it turned out that it basically covers the Nassau family including the siblings of Grand Duke Adolph, the present day descendants of the sisters, as well as the 23 Bourbon-Parma siblings of Prince Felix. Of course this isn't bad per se but as the book only covers 211 pages excluding notes, bibliography and index, you can guess how thorough it can be. To Nichole and I, the book did not include a lot of new information, apart from a few anecdotes and stories around Princess Antonia and her family (which clearly make the best chapter of this book).

Due to the way it is structured, we would probably recommend this book to readers who don't know much about the Grand Ducal Family generally and would like to get a bit of an overview but not to anyone doing serious research or wanting to delve deep into the family's history. However, the book contains a number of factual errors; here just three examples:

- Page 34: "Thirty-five years later in 1947, his [Grand Duke Wilhelm's] daughter Charlotte had her father's remains returned to Luxembourg, where he was interned in Notre-Dame Cathedral in Luxembourg City." (-- Correction: Grand Duke Wilhelm remains interned in the crypt of the castle church of Schloss Weilburg in Germany.)

- Page 88: "She [Princess Anita of Hohenberg] has labored tirelessly to regain possession of Konopiste, a beautiful estate the Czecjoslovakian [sic] goivernment [sic] ilegaly [sic] epropriated [sic] from her grandfather after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. [-- Correction: The fact that it is her sister, Princess Sophie of Hohenberg, who has worked to regain Konopiste is the least of this sentence's problems, I believe.)

- Page 115: "Since they [Prince Jean and Countess Diane] only married civilly, given Prince Jean's previous marriage, Madame de Guerre does not have a title. (-- Correction: Marriage and titles in the Grand Ducal Family are based on consent and not whether a religious wedding took place. The former Countess Stéphanie de Lannoy became Princess Stéphanie of Luxembourg on the day of her civil wedding as her marriage received the Grand Duke's consent. Much the same applies to the former Claire Lademacher who became Princess Claire of Luxembourg on her civil wedding day based on her father-in-law's consent to her wedding. In difference, the former Tessy Antony became Tessy de Nassau upon her civil wedding as the Grand Duke did not give the required consent. This did not change even though she religiously married Prince Louis. It is true that the former Diane de Guerre did not enjoy a title right after her marriage because it did not receive the Grand Duke's consent. However, she became a Countess of Nassau in 2012 on the basis of the changed bylaws concerning the house law.)

These and a number of other factual errors make it difficult to even recommend "The Nassaus of Luxembourg" to beginners. Someone not familiar with the topic would need to be extremely cautious and double check information provided as not to start out learning mistakes. We're aware that you should never take information provided in a book for granted and that many other books on various subjects also contain mistakes but in this case we are able to identify them and there were a shocking lot. (And that's not counting those twelve mistakes already corrected on a piece of paper delivered together with the book.)

A few other things that bugged us about the book were the mispelling of names, using Wikipedia as a source of information, or being quite judgmental at times. (E.g. stating that someone was "an unlikable man" -- While this might very well be true, shouldn't you give examples of someone's behaviour and then let the reader decide instead of giving them a prefabricated opinion?!)

Turning to something that is nice about the book: Its abundance of pictures. The text is interspersed with lots of older (and some newer) pictures of the Grand Ducal Family and their relatives. While many of the pictures will seem familiar to those interested in the history of the Nassau family, there are a number of pictures that aren't as readily available but instead new (to us at least).

If you would like to get your own impression of the book, "The Nassaus of Luxembourg" written by Kassandra and Sabrina Pollock together with Arturo E. Beéche, you can order it via Amazon. (Note: We are part of the Amazon Affiliates Program.) The hardcover book published by EuroHistory.com contains 240 pages and costs about $48.95.

Book Review: "Lion at the Cross Roads - Orders of Luxembourg" by Antti Ruokonen

Whenever the Luxembourg (or any) royals get glammed up for an occasion, orders are usually never far away. Thus far, however, there has always been a bit of an informational drought when it came to the Luxembourgish orders. There is the 1990 German-language book "Orden und Ehrenzeichen des Großherzogtums Luxemburg" by Jean Schoos but unfortunately many of the information has long been outdated. Thankfully, a new book published in November of last year provides remedy.

The English-language "Lion at the Cross Roads - Orders of Luxembourg" written by Finnish expert Antti Ruokonen, who has also published books about Belgian and Romanian orders, is the new definitive work on Luxembourgish orders. After a brief introduction into Luxembourg's general history and short biographies of the two Luxembourgish rulers most essential to the country's orders, Grand Duke Adolph and Grand Duchess Charlotte, the book gives extensive descriptions of the history, development, appearance as well as bestowal criteria and numbers of the four orders of the Grand Duchy, the Order of the Gold Lion of the House of Nassau, the Order of Civil and Military Merit of Adolph of Nassau, the Order of the Oak Crown and the Order of Merit of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Some of the books biggest and most interesting assets are a great number of high quality pictures of the Luxembourgish orders up close, which make you immediately appreciate all the craftsmanship going into their manufacture. The visual aspect of the book is rounded up with additional pictures of recipients, award documents throughout the decades as well as pictures of the some of the orders' original establishment decrees.

In addition, there are a few biographies of recipients of Luxembourgish orders as well as an appendice featuring conferral statistics and lists of selected and Finnish recipients. The sometimes rather technical information about the orders is spiced up by anecdotes surrounding the conferral (and return) of the decorations. Having read the book ourselves, we can whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone interested in all things Luxembourgish or orders in particular.

The U.S. version of "Lion at the Cross Roads - Orders of Luxembourg", which is 206 pages long, is available via Amazon and costs around $70/€60. A more limited European version - which only differs in format - is available through specialised vendors here, here and here.