Morganatic Marriage - German-speaking Europe

German-speaking Europe

The practice of morganatic marriage was most common in the German-speaking parts of Europe, where equality of birth (Ebenbürtigkeit) between the spouses was considered an important principle among the reigning houses and high nobility. The German name was Ehe zur linken Hand ("marriage by the left hand") and the husband gave his left hand during the wedding ceremony instead of the right.

The origin of morganatic marriage may have been related to the succession laws of Germany. During the Middle Ages, the territories of the German nobility were divided equally among the males of their families. Morganatic marriages limited the pool of potential heirs, slowing diminution of the family's power.

Perhaps the most famous example in modern times was the 1900 marriage of the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and Bohemian aristocrat Countess Sophie Chotek von Chotkowa. The marriage was initially resisted by Emperor Franz Joseph I, but after pressure from family members and other European rulers, he relented in 1899 (but did not attend the wedding himself). The bride was made Princess (later Duchess) of Hohenberg, their children took their mother's new name and rank, and were excluded from the imperial succession. The Sarajevo assassination in 1914, during which the couple was killed, triggered the First World War.

Although the issue of morganatic marriages were ineligible to succeed to their families' respective thrones, some children of morganatic marriages did go on to achieve dynastic success elsewhere in Europe. The 1851 marriage of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine and German-Polish noblewoman Countess Julia von Hauke (created Princess of Battenberg), provided a sovereign prince of Bulgaria, and queen-consorts for Spain and Sweden, as well as (through female descent) the consort of the current Queen of the United Kingdom. The present Spanish Royal Family and members of the British Royal Family, including the current Prince of Wales, trace descent from her. Likewise, the marriage of Duke Alexander of Württemberg and Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde (created "Countess of Hohenstein") resulted in the morganatic House of Teck. That family's most famous member, Mary of Teck, married George V of the United Kingdom, and the present British Royal Family descends from her.

Occasionally, children of morganatic marriages have overcome their non-dynastic origins, succeeding to their family's realms. Margrave Leopold inherited the throne of Baden despite being born of a morganatic marriage. The son of Karl Friedrich, Grand Duke of Baden by his second, wife Luise Karoline Geyer von Geyersberg, who belonged to the minor nobility, only became a Prince in 1817 (aged 27), as part of a new law of succession. Baden's grandducal family faced extinction, so Leopold was enfranchised by international treaty and married to a princess, ascending the throne in 1830. His descendants ruled the grand duchy until the abolition of the monarchy in 1918.

Other reigning German families adopted similar approaches when facing a lack of male heirs. In 1896 the Princely House of Schwarzburg, with the Sondershausen branch numbering two elderly childless princes and Rudolstadt just one childless prince, recognised Prince Sizzo von Leutenberg, morganatic son of Friedrich Günther, Prince of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, as a Prince of Schwarzburg and heir to the two principalities.

The senior line of the dynasty ruling the Principality of Lippe bordered on extinction as the 20th century approached, prompting a succession dispute between the Lippe-Biesterfeld and Schaumburg-Lippe branches of the dynasty which evoked international intervention and troop movements. It centered on whether some ancestresses of the Biesterfeld branch had been legally dynastic; if so, that line stood next to inherit the princely crown according to primogeniture. If not, the Biesterfelds would be deemed morganatic and the Schaumburg-Lippes would mount the throne. Lippe's Parliament was blocked from voting on the matter by the German Empire's Diet, which instead created a panel of jurists selected by the King of Saxony to evaluate the evidence concerning the historical marital rules of the House of Lippe and render a decision in the matter, all parties agreeing to abide by their judgment. In 1897 and 1905 panels ruled in favour of the dynasticity of the challenged ancestresses and their descendants, based largely on the fact that, although neither had been of dynastic rank, the Lippes had historically accepted such marriages when approved by the Head of House.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a few families considered morganatic in Germany were considered for crowns elsewhere, constituting unexpected rehabilitation of their status. The first of these was Prince Alexander of Battenberg who, in 1877, was agreed upon by the Great Powers as the best candidate for the new throne of Bulgaria. He was, however, unable to hold onto his crown, nor able to obtain the hand in marriage of Princess Victoria of Prussia despite the efforts of her imperial mother and royal grandmother.

Wilhelm, Duke of Urach (1864–1928), whose father was the morganatic son of a Württemberg prince, had the distinction of being under consideration for the crowns of five realms at different times: that of the Kingdom of Württemberg in the 1890s, as the senior agnate by primogeniture when it became likely that King William II would die without male descendants, leaving as heir Duke Albrecht of Württemberg, a more distantly related, albeit dynastic, royal kinsman; the Principality of Albania in 1913; the Principality of Monaco at turn of the 20th century, as the next heir by proximity of blood following the Hereditary Prince Louis, until the Monaco succession crisis of 1918 was resolved as the First World War ended; the prospective Grand Duchy of Alsace-Lorraine in 1917, and his abortive election by the Taryba as King Mindaugugas II of Lithuania in July 1918. In the event, Duke Wilhelm obtained none of these thrones.

Relying upon the Almanach de Gotha to gazette dynastic events, Germany's deposed heads of state continued to notify its editors of changes in family members' status and traditional titles. In 1919 the morganatic wife and children of Prince Oskar of Prussia, the counts and countesses von Ruppin, were upgraded to princes and princesses of Prussia by the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1928 Georg, Count von Carlow, morganatic son of Duke George Alexander of Mecklenburg and commoner Natalia Vanljarskaya, became a duke of Mecklenburg and heir to his uncle Duke Charles Michael. In 1949, and again in 1999, various morganatic members of the Bavarian Royal House were recognised as princes and princesses of Bavaria, with the current head of the house, Franz, Duke of Bavaria, being among the beneficiaries of his father's ruling, having been born of a marriage initially deemed morganatic.

In the former Royal Family of Saxony Maria Emanuel, Margrave of Meissen adopted and designated as his heir his nephew Alexander de Afif, thus bypassing his agnatic cousin’s morganatic son, Ruediger von Sachsen, and his three sons.