Early Life
Irmingard was born at her father's residence, Schloss Berchtesgaden. She spent her childhood between Berchtesgaden and her father's other residences, the Leuchtenberg Palais in Munich, Schloss Leutstetten, and Schloss Hohenschwangau. In 1936 she was sent to England to be educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton (later Woldingham School) where several of her cousins, princesses of Luxembourg, were also enrolled.
In early 1940 Irmingard and her siblings were allowed to go to Italy and join their father who had left Germany in order to avoid conflict with the Nazi authorities. She spent the rest of the war mostly in Rome, Florence, and Padua.
In September 1944 Irmingard was arrested by the Nazis who had been unsuccessful in trying to find and arrest her father. She fell ill from typhus and was sent to a prison hospital in Innsbruck. When she recovered, she was sent to the concentration camp at Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen, where she was reunited with other members of her family who had also been arrested. Later they were transferred to the concentration camps at Flossenbürg and Dachau, before being freed by the Third American Army, April 30, 1945.
Irmingard and her sisters sought refuge in Luxembourg, where their mother's sister Charlotte reigned. After a brief return to Germany, she went to the United States for a year, where her uncle Prince Adolf of Schwarzenberg had a ranch in Montana.
Read more about this topic: Princess Irmingard Of Bavaria
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw
A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw,
A Buddha, hand at rest,
Hand lifted up that blest;
And right between these two a girl at play
That, it may be, had danced her life away....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)