Prince Michael of Prussia

Wilhelm Heinrich Michael Louis Ferdinand Friedrich Franz Wladimir Prinz von Preussen (22 March 1940 – 3 April 2014) was a descendant of the Hohenzollern dynasty which ruled Germany until the end of World War I. His great-grandfather Wilhelm II was the German Emperor and King of Prussia until 1918. Although Kaiser Wilhelm died in exile and his family was stripped of much of its wealth and recognition of its rank and titles by the German Republic, Michael spent nearly all of his life in Germany.

Biography

Michael was the second son of Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia, and Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna of Russia. Both of his parents lived their early years as members of ruling imperial families that were deposed before they reached adulthood, leaving them to adjust to life in straitened circumstances, in exile or under surveillance, and sometimes in flight from their ancestral nations. The Kaiser lived in the Netherlands under banishment from Germany when Michael was born. However, by the time Michael was ten years old, both his great-grandfather and grandfather had died, leaving his father as the Hohenzollern pater familias, whom German monarchists recognized as their rightful emperor and king. also known as Richard von Dallwitz-Wegner. The couple had no children.

Michael was the godfather of Georg Friedrich Prinz von Preussen.

He died on 3 April 2014, aged 74. Two years later, his widow, Brigitte, died by suicide.

Books in German Ein Preußenprinz zu sein, Munich 1986 Auf den Spuren der deutschen Monarchien, Cologne 2008 Zu Gast bei Preußens Königen, Cologne 2009 Die Staufer: Herrscher einer glanzvollen Epoche, Cologne 2010 Die Preußen am Rhein: Burgen, Schlösser, Rheinromantik, Cologne 2011 Friedrich der Große, Cologne 2011

Ancestry