Titles Still Count for Something : A German Pop Princess Is the Focus of Media Attention

The Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, young and vivacious, operates from the 500-room family castle in this Bavarian city, planning a hectic round of parties and foreign trips with her husband, Prince Johannes, one of the world’s richest men.

At the other end of Germany, in a comfortable house outside Bremen, elderly Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, grandson of the last Kaiser, lives rather more simply, sometimes pondering whether the imperial crown will ever be restored to his family.

Titled Officials

Although successive constitutions for modern German republics have banned the monarchy and the various ranks of aristocracy, titles from long-gone duchies and principalities still abound in West Germany today. While they no longer have exclusive control of public affairs as their ancestors did in centuries past, there are many aristocrats in public life today who continue to use their titles.

In the Bundestag, or Parliament, for instance, the leader of the Free Democratic Party is Count Otto Lambsdorff. In Hamburg, the publisher of the leading weekly newspaper, Die Zeit, is Countess Marion Doenhoff. And in Frankfurt, Prince Zu Loewenstein is an official of the Metzler Bank.

One aristocrat, however, who has dropped the “baron” he is entitled to use with his name is Federal President Richard von Weizsaecker.

Staple of Fashion Magazines

The formal system of aristocracy in Germany ended with the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, and the establishment of a republic the following year. Although the nobility was abolished, West German law allows a person to include a former family title as part of his or her legal name. Unlike a member of Britain’s House of Lords, however, the modern West German aristocrat has no special status or privileges.

Still, having a titlel makes a person stand out and, in many cases, the object of a good deal of media attention. And of all the well-known aristocratic figures in Germany, Princess Mariae Gloria Ferdinanda Joachima Josephine Wilhelmine Huberta, born Countess von Schoenburg zu Glauchau und Waldenburg, of a family dating to 1130, is the most eye-catching.

Her marriage--in 1980 to a man 35 years her senior--is under constant scrutiny in the popular press. Her parties are splashed on front pages, and her striking wardrobe and startling hair styles are a staple for the fashion magazines.

A recent issue of the German edition of Elle, for instance, spread four-color glossies of Gloria, the pop princess, in various costumes by Lacroix and Chanel across nine pages. In one shot, she is pictured straddling her Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

There are two Glorias, however: the far-out 28-year-old darling of the jet set and media, and an unpretentious mother, looking after three young children but running a castle household that has more employees than many small companies.

Warm Greetings

On a recent drizzly afternoon at “the cottage,” the vast hunting estate in the rolling woodland east of Regensburg, the princess offered a visitor tea and comment. Clad in simple peasant knickerbockers and a white cotton shirt under a leather vest, she wore no makeup and her short brown hair was casually tossed back.

She warmly greeted her three children, Maria Theresia, Elisabeth, and Albert, when they bounded into a sitting room, and she mentioned that the eldest goes to a public elementary school in town.

“I know the media likes to show me at parties,” she said, describing her varied responsibilities. “But my main occupation is my children. I have an English nanny, but I get them up, lunch with them, see them after school and put them to bed.

“We have a staff of about 120 at the castle and here at the cottage. So making sure that everything goes well is like running a big hotel. There is the entertaining to be done for my husband’s business friends, which I supervise.

“Then I have responsibility for family charitable institutions--the hospital, the children’s home, and so forth,” she added. “I keep busy.”

The princess is the daughter of a Saxon count and Hungarian-related noblewoman who fled Eastern Germany at the end of World War II, losing homes and land to the Communists. She was educated in Roman Catholic boarding schools in Bonn and later Munich, and picked up seven languages: German, English, Hungarian, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Names Changed

While living in Munich, she met her future husband, the Prince von Thurn und Taxis, who was then one of the world’s richest bachelors. He was the scion of an immensely wealthy family, originally a freebooting Italian clan known as Della Torre e Tasso. A branch moved north of the Alps, and the name was Germanized. (The first part torre --tower--was translated almost directly into the equivalent German word, turm ; tasso , or badger, which appeared on the family coat of arms, became taxis , something close to the German equivalent, dachs .)

For 300 years, until 1867, the family held the lucrative postal monopoly in Central Europe, That was the basis for its fortune, and over the centuries, the Thurn und Taxis clan acquired real estate, breweries, banks and industrial assets. At one time, the family owned 18 castles.

Equally valuable is the Thurn und Taxis art collection--paintings, sculptures, tapestries, porcelain, furniture, bibelots, jewelry, rare postage stamps created by the family and a library with 250,000 precious books and manuscripts dating back to the Dark Ages.

With such wealth and treasures in the family, Princess Gloria can entertain royally when she wants to. But such entertaining has its pitfalls, as she discovered when she gave a much-publicized ball to celebrate the Prince’s 60th birthday two years ago. After the party, she discovered that guests had pocketed 75 of the 1,100-piece, 17th-Century Augsburg silver setting.

“People don’t know how to behave any more,” the princess said, recalling that party. “They turn over plates to see if it’s Meissen china--either you know or you don’t. I’ve found squashed cigarettes on the parquet floor, drinks spilled on the upholstery, stolen silver. What’s the point of giving a big party in your own house?”

As for party giving and going in general, she explained: “I’m a very energetic, natural and happy per-son, and I like to have fun. The press needs material, and they like to turn me into some kind of extraordinary being. I suppose they want to make me into a modern fairy tale. Well, let them, I’m not up-tight about it.”

Personally, she says she is a conservative, with a small “c.”

“It is important for a nation to have a conservative class with traditions,” she said, so that the young generation can disregard the rules because their elders have established a proper society.

“I’m afraid there’s a big difference between old money and new money. We are used to being powerful and rich. But you see elderly ladies in my family living in small apartments in Salzburg, who are as distinguished as those living in castles. In our family, you learned to behave modestly whether you had money or not.”

Among Princess Gloria’s fascinations is America.

“When I go to New York or Los Angeles, it is really a big deal for me,” she said. “I love the museums and the people, and the whole scene is vastly amusing for me--a European country girl.”

The Princess admits that her interest in egalitarian democracy has limits, particularly on the issue of choosing spouses and continuing the family line.

“We want to marry aristocrats,” she said.

Marriage, of course, is one reason why there are so many titles. In most cases, European aristocrats, unlike their British counterparts, dropped the strict rule of primogeniture--in which succession and title pass only to the eldest surviving son--and allowed all sons and daughters to inherit titles.

But the profusion of German princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, margraves and margravines, “grafs” and “vons,” originates with the Holy Roman Empire, the ever-changing political entity that evolved from Charlemagne’s 8th-Century kingdom and included a profusion of princeling states in central Europe until 1806.

With the vast number of small fiefdoms, each with its own ruler, court and attendant noblemen, titles proliferated. The Roman Catholic Church, some of whose bishops ruled small states and helped to elect the emperor, added to the numbers.

Early on, one mark of noble background was the prefix “von,” meaning “from,” before a place name. Like the French “de,” which means “of,” it indicated a long-established family, high up in the social scale.

Later, rulers sometimes granted the title “von” to commoners, such as the great German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe, for distinguished service. Such honors were incorporated into the family name.

Additional Titles Created

After the German Empire was proclaimed in 1871, under the Prussian royal House of Hohenzollern, most local titles were formally recognized, and additional ones created by the Kaiser, or emperor: Germany’s Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, was made a prince.

Today, Germany’s leading noble descendant is 81-year-old Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, the pretender to the Imperial throne once held by his grandfather, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who died in exile in Holland in 1941. The Prince is also the great-great-grandson of Britain’s Queen Victoria, and thus related to most of Europe’s royal houses.

Sipping sherry in an old crystal glass, engraved with the Imperial Prussian crest, Prince Louis sat relaxed in his comfortable villa outside of Bremen and recalled his unconventional and flaming youth.

“I went to America in 1929, a sort of family rebel, and took a job with the Ford Motor Co.,” he said. “I was working in the plant in Los Angeles and I fell in love with the actress Lili Damita. I wanted to marry her.

Marriage Restrictions

“I liked America. People there called me Louie. (By the way, you can call me Louie.) But my grandfather wanted me to come back home. My oldest brother married a commoner, and for 1,000 years it has been a tradition in my family that the successor to the throne does not marry outside the nobility.

“Henry Ford called me from Detroit and told me I should do as my grandfather wished and become first in line-of-succession after my father. Though I’d been a rebel, I did have a sense of duty and didn’t want to disappoint my grandfather.

“So I didn’t marry Lili.” (She later married actor Errol Flynn.)

Louis Ferdinand instead returned to Germany, earned a doctorate in economics and history at the University of Berlin and married a Russian aristocrat.

Proud of Degree

“I’m proud of that (doctoral) degree,” said the prince over a luncheon bowl of tomato soup with his son, daughter-in-law and 2-year-old grandson at the table. “It’s a real title. That’s why my legal name is Dr. Prince of Prussia.”

During World War II, the Prince’s elder brother was killed fighting in a German infantry regiment. He himself was an air force instructor but Hitler forced him to resign in 1942 because his wife was Russian.

After the war, Soviets confiscated the family’s vast estates in Prussia, which was in the Communist zone. But significant holdings were left in Western Germany, and in 1951, on his father’s death, Louis Ferdinand became head of the family and pretender to the Imperial throne.

These days the Prince, a tall, lean man, looks after family investments and property including the magnificent Hohenzollern family castle in southern Germany.

Few Call Him ‘Louie’

It would be hard to find anyone who calls him “Louie.” Even the West German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, addresses Louis Ferdinand by his courtesy title, “Imperial Highness.”

“You know,” said the Prince, sipping a German white wine, “my grandfather, the Kaiser, was very much misunderstood, much maligned by propagandists during the war. If he had traveled to America when he was a young man, as I did, I think things would have been very different.”

“I think if the monarchy had not been abolished, we would not have seen Hitler rise to power. There would have been no Holocaust.

“So one day, perhaps after eventual reunification of Germany, there may be a plebiscite on the restoration of the monarchy. Not in my time, I know, but in my son’s or grandson’s.”