Princess Margaret of Prussia - Last Years

Last Years

Landgravine Margaret had difficult years after 1945; they were compounded by the theft from Schloss Friedrichshof in November 1945 of the family jewellery, valued at over 2 million pounds. After World War II, Friedrichshof was used as an officer's club by the military authorities during the American occupation. Princess Margaret's son Wolfgang, fearing for the jewels, had buried them in a subcellar of the castle. On 5 November 1945, the manager of the club, Captain Kathleen Nash, discovered the jewels and together with her future husband, Colonel Jack Durant, and Major David Watson, stole the treasure and took the jewels out of Germany. In early 1946, Princess Margaret discovered the theft when the family wanted to use the jewels for the wedding of Princess Sophia who was preparing to remarry. Princess Sophia and Landgravine Margaret denounced it to the Frankfurt authorities; the culprits were imprisoned but not until August 1951; the Hesse family received what had been recovered, only 10 percent of what had been stolen.

Landgravine Margaret, the last surviving child of Emperor Frederick III, died in Kronberg on 22 January 1954, 22 years after her husband and exactly 53 years to the day after her British grandmother Queen Victoria. She was 81 years old.

Read more about this topic:  Princess Margaret Of Prussia

Famous quotes containing the word years:

    I was able to believe for years that going to Madame Swann’s was a vague chimera that I would never attain; after having passed a quarter of an hour there, it was the time at which I did not know her which became to me a chimera and vague, as a possible destroyed by another possible.
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.
    Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)