Princess Marie Adelheid of Lippe
Marie Adelheid of Lippe | |||||
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Princess Heinrich XXXII Reuss of Köstritz Princess Heinrich XXXV Reuss of Köstritz | |||||
Born | Drogelwitz, Glogau, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire | 30 August 1895||||
Died | 25 December 1993 Tangstedt, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany | (aged 98)||||
Spouse | Prince Heinrich XXXII Reuss of Köstritz (m. 1920; div. 1921)Prince Heinrich XXXV Reuss of Köstritz
(m. 1921; div. 1923)Hanno Konopath
(m. 1927; div. 1936) | ||||
Issue | Prince Heinrich V Reuss of Köstritz | ||||
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House | Lippe | ||||
Father | Count Rudolf of Lippe-Biesterfeld | ||||
Mother | Princess Luise von Ardeck |
Princess Marie Adelheid of Lippe (30 August 1895 – 25 December 1993) was a socialite and writer who was active in Nazi Germany. As the wife of Hanno Konopath, a prominent Nazi official, Marie Adelheid was a well known and ardent supporter of the Nazi regime. She was instrumental in the Nordic Ring, a forum for the discussion of issues concerning race and eugenics.
Marie Adelheid also served as an aide to
Family
Countess Marie Adelheid was born the youngest child and only daughter of Count Rudolf of
Marriages
At the age of 24, Marie Adelheid wed, in the castle in which she was born at
Soon after the wedding on 19 May 1920 the marriage began to break down: Marie Adelheid would give birth to a son, Prince Heinrich V, on 26 May 1921 and, in order to marry the father before she delivered the child, she divorced Heinrich XXXII at Guben on 18 February and on 12 April married his younger brother, Heinrich XXXV Reuss J.L. (1887-1936) who, to be eligible for the elopement to Bremen, had divorced his wife of 10 years, Princess Maria of Saxe-Altenburg (1888-1947), on 4 March.[3] When Heinrich V was two years old, on 23 June 1923, his parents obtained a divorce in Berlin.[1][2] Thereafter, Marie Adelheid used the title Princess Reuss zur Lippe.[3][4]
Marie Adelheid married a third and final time to commoner Hanno Konopath (born surnamed "Konopacki"),[1] a Nazi government official, on 24 February 1927.[2] This marriage also ended in divorce nine years later in 1936,[3] but not before it generated important contacts for her in the German regime.[2]
Issue
- Prince Heinrich V Reuss (b. 26 May 1921, d. 28 Oct 1980), married morganatically on 22 June 1961 with Ingrid Jobst. They had three children:
- Marie Alexandra Luise Hermine Dora Helene Reuss (b. 1 September 1963), married on 13 July 1985 to Eberhard, Count of Erbach-Erbach (b. 2 June 1958), grandson of Josias, Hereditary Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont. They had three children:
- Countess Felicitas Alexandra Magita Elena of Erbach-Erbach (b. 27 June 1987).
- Franz Georg Albrecht Wittekind Karl-Emich Raimund Kraft Carl, Hereditary Count of Erbach-Erbach (b. 6 June 1989).
- Count Franz Konrad Ludwig Heinrich Gustav of Erbach-Erbach (b. 12 December 1991).
- Heinrich Ico Reuss (b. 18 October 1964), married on 17 July 1999 to Baroness Corinna von Elmendorff. They had one daughter:
- Henriette Josephine Viktoria Luise Reuss (b. 16 November 2000).
- Caroline Marie Adelheid Freia Gabriele Elisabeth Reuss (b. 30 December 1968), married on 25 October 1995 to Sebastian Papst.
- Marie Alexandra Luise Hermine Dora Helene Reuss (b. 1 September 1963), married on 13 July 1985 to Eberhard, Count of
Nazi Germany
Early years
Alarmed by the failure of their class to respond to the troubles occurring in Germany, many younger members of royal families joined the emerging Nazi Party and other radical right-wing groups.
She embraced "blood and soil" notions with great enthusiasm, and belonged to the
Nordic Faith Movement
In the late 1920s, Marie Adelheid regularly attended meetings for the paganist Nordic Ring, which was a forum for the discussion of issues concerning race and eugenics.[11] Her third husband was a leader of this group.[12] Konopath was a member of the Race and Culture Division in the Reich Leadership Office.[12] The group was a great proponent of the "Nordic idea", in which they believed that the Occidental and Germanic cultures were a creation of the Nordic race.[11] To them, the Nordic race had been "losing ground rapidly" in the new industrial age due to an influx of "inferior" races to the enlarging cities; their goal was thus to reverse this trend before Germany followed France, Italy, and Spain in racial decline.[11] Through these meetings, Marie Adelheid emerged as a leader of the Nordic Faith Movement. At one meeting she presided over in March 1935, she stated that children should be forbidden from reading the Old Testament and asserted that there was not much sense in reading the New Testament.[13]
"In the Old Testament, the greatest and most sacred things are treated as a variety of sin. One should not, therefore, place in children's hands the sort of tales of which the Old Testament is made up. However, the new Testament is not much better. Throughout the Old Testament woman is treated as something shameful. We read there that a woman who has borne a child should make a sacrifice".[13]
In the same meeting, Marie Adelheid also called on other Nordic pagans to remember that "thousands of blond-haired, blue-eyed women" had been burned as witches during the Middle Ages, a fact, she declared, that meant they should be avenged by bringing back to life the old Nordic faith.[13]
The Nordic Faith professed by Konopath and Marie Adelheid soon declined in importance. Wilhelm Kube, the leader of the Nazi Party in the Prussian parliament and a fervent Christian, soon discovered that Konopath belonged to "a school of thought that even the most radical of Kube's group could no longer consider Christian". Soon afterwards, Kube had Konopath ejected from his DC responsibilities; he was additionally deprived of all his party offices on "grounds of immorality".[14]
Fall of Darré
As the war caused unwelcome developments, Darré's romantic "blood and soil" views suffered as new and more efficient plans were produced by important Nazi officials Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring.[10] As Darré's influence declined, so did that of Marie Adelheid and her cousin, as their family lacked a viable power base.[10] While Darré retired to his hunting lodge outside Berlin, she and Ernst continued their activities under the Nazi regime until the end of the war.[10]
Post-World War II
After
She gave financial support to Die Bauernschaft, a periodical launched by
Death
Marie Adelheid died on Christmas Day 25 December 1993 in Tangstedt, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, aged 98.[15]
List of works
Marie Adelheid produced and published many different works under the names Marie Adelheid Prinzessin Reuss-zur Lippe and Marie Adelheid Konopath throughout her life.
Novels
Poetry
Essays
- Das bist du [That is you] (1924)[18]
- Deutscher Hausrat [Setting up the German Household] (1936)[9]
- Nordische Frau und Nordischer Glaube [Nordic Women and Nordic Religion] (1934)[9]
- Feiern im Jahresring (1968)[18]
- Small contributions to the monthly magazine Odal. Monatsschrift für Blut und Boden (1932–1942)[18]
Translations
As a speaker of French, English, and German, Marie Adelheid produced translations of various works after the end of World War II. Along with Paul Rassinier's Holocaust-denying work The Drama of the European Jews, Marie Adelheid also translated Lenora Mattingly Weber's work My True Love Waits from French into German and Harry Elmer Barnes' Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt from English into German, among others.[20]
Ancestry
Ancestors of Princess Marie Adelheid of Lippe | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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References
- ^ ISBN 2-901138-02-0.
- ^ a b c d e Gossman, p. 65.
- ^ a b c d e f Almanach de Gotha. Justus Perthes, 1942, Gotha), pp. 76-79. (French).
- ^ a b c d e f Petropoulos, p. 266.
- ^ a b Gossman, p. 67.
- ^ a b Petropoulos, p. 100.
- ^ a b Gossman, p. 1.
- ^ Gossman, pp. 1-2 and 65.
- ^ a b c d e f g Gossman, p. 2.
- ^ a b c d Petropoulos, p. 267.
- ^ a b c Gossman, p. 69.
- ^ a b Steigmann-Gall, p. 110.
- ^ a b c "German Princess Assails The Bible; Tells Nordic Pagans Children Should Be Prohibited From Reading Old Testament", The New York Times, Berlin, 31 March 1935
- ^ Steigmann-Gall, pp. 110-111.
- ^ a b Gossman, p. 66.
- ^ a b Gossman, pp. 114-115.
- ^ Gossman, p. 114.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Gossman, p. 179.
- ^ Gossman, p. 112.
- ^ Gossman, pp. 112 and 179-180.
Sources
- Gossman, Lionel (2009). Brownshirt Princess: A Study of the "Nazi Conscience". Cambridge: OpenBook Publishers. p. 1.
adelheid.
- Petropoulos, Jonathan (2006). Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199796076.
- Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521823715.