Stephanie von Hohenlohe

Princess Stephanie
Princess of Hohenlohe
Born (1891-09-16)16 September 1891
Austria-Hungary Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died 13 June 1972(1972-06-13) (aged 80)
Spouse Prince Friedrich Franz of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst (m.1914 div.1920)
Issue Prince Franz Josef (by Archduke Franz Salvator)
Father Johann Sebastian Richter
Mother Ludmilla Kuranda

Stephanie Julianne von Hohenlohe, born Stephany Julienne Richter (16 September 1891 – 13 June 1972) was an Austrian princess by her marriage to the diplomat Prince Friedrich Franz von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, a member of the princely Hohenlohe family. She was born a commoner of Jewish family background.

A Hungarian national, she relocated to London after her divorce from the prince, where she is suspected of having acted as a spy for Germany during the 1930s. She developed close connections among the Nazi hierarchy, including Adolf Hitler. She also developed other influential relationships, including with Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, and promoted British support for Germany while living in London from 1932. The British, French and Americans all suspected her of being a spy for the German Government.[1] During the 1930s, she was awarded the Gold Medal of the Nazi Party for her services.[2]

Fleeing from Britain to San Francisco in 1939 after war was declared, she was put under surveillance by the US government. After the attack on Pearl Harbor she was arrested by the FBI and interned in the United States as an enemy alien. She provided information to the Office of Strategic Services which was used in a 1943 report on the personality of Adolf Hitler. In May 1945 she was released on parole and returned to Germany, where she cultivated influential connections in post-war German society.

Early life

Stephanie Richter was born in Vienna, Austria to Ludmilla Kuranda (said to be Jewish) and Johann Sebastian Richter, purported to be a dentist or minor lawyer.[1] She was named after Crown Princess Stephanie of Austria-Hungary. (Note: A 2004 biography by Martha Schad says that Richter was the illegitimate daughter of two Jewish parents.)[3] In 1906, Stephanie Richter was enrolled in the ballet school of the Vienna Court Opera. As a young woman, she used her beauty, charm and sophistication to gain an entrée to Vienna's high society.

In her early twenties, Richter had an affair with the married Archduke Franz Salvator, Prince of Tuscany. He was the son-in-law of Emperor Franz Joseph I through his marriage to Archduchess Marie Valerie of Austria.

Pregnant with Franz Salvator's child, she persuaded Friedrich Franz von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst (1879-1958), a German prince of the Hohenlohe family, that the baby was his. They married in London on 12 May 1914, giving her the title of "princess", which she used the rest of her life. Her son was born in Vienna on 5 December 1914, and named Franz Josef. (According to an FBI memo of October 1941, the Hohenlohe family had some doubts about whether the child was theirs, but acknowledged him.)[1] His full name was Franz Josef Rudolf Hans Weriand Max Stefan Anton von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst.

Between world wars

Princess Stephanie and her husband were divorced in 1920. Later that year he married Countess Emanuela Batthyány von Német-Ujvár of Hungary, in Budapest on 6 December 1920. They did not have any children. They escaped to Brazil in the closing days of World War II.

After the divorce, Princess Stephanie's surname was zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, as was Austrian custom. Over the years, she always represented herself as a Hohenlohe princess. She lived in Paris, France until the government forced her out on suspicion of being a spy.[1] She moved to London in 1932, settling at the exclusive Dorchester Hotel in Mayfair, London. During this period, she had developed friendships and sometimes intimate relationships with powerful and influential men, including Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, an Anglo-Irish tycoon who owned the influential Daily Mail and Daily Mirror in London, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, who in the 1930s was the German Ambassador to Britain. She also cultivated others in the Nazi Party hierarchy.[4]

As a princess, she socialized with the British aristocracy, connections that the Nazis believed could be valuable for their new government after they came to power in 1933. Her close friends included Lady Margot Asquith, the widow of the former prime minister Herbert Henry Asquith, Lady Ethel Snowden, the wife of a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lady Londonderry and her husband Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry.[5]

After Hitler gained power in Germany in 1933, MI6 circulated a report stating that the French secret service had discovered documents in the princess's flat in Paris ordering her to persuade Lord Rothermere to campaign for the return to Germany of territory ceded to Poland at the end of First World War. She was to receive £300,000 – equal to £13 million today – if she succeeded.[5]

Princess Stephanie received financial support from Rothermere, who was an early admirer of Hitler, and in the early 1930s he advocated an alliance with Germany.[5] During the 1930s he paid Princess Stephanie an annual retainer of £5,000 (£200,000 today) to promote Germany and develop support for it among her influential connections;[5] he also hoped she would introduce him to Nazi inner circles.[4][5]

As war approached, Rothemere pushed for British rearmament, their association deteriorated and Rothermere stopped paying her. Princess Stephanie took him to court, alleging in a lawsuit that he had promised the retainer for life. She lost the case.[5]

During visits to Germany, she had become closely acquainted with members of the Nazi hierarchy, including Adolf Hitler, who called her his "dear princess". She developed a close friendship with Hermann Göring, and Heinrich Himmler declared her an "honorary Aryan." In a 1938 MI6 report, British intelligence said of her, "She is frequently summoned by the Führer who appreciates her intelligence and good advice. She is perhaps the only woman who can exercise any influence on him."[5](This was part of a release of MI6 records in 2005 under declassification of documents.)[5]

In England, Princess Stephanie acted as a courier, passing secret messages among high-ranking British men who were sympathetic to the Nazi regime. In 1937 she arranged for Lord Halifax to travel to Germany and meet Göring. She was also instrumental in arranging the visit that year to Germany of Edward, Duke of Windsor and his wife Wallis, The Duchess of Windsor.[4]

In 1937 Princess Stephanie began an affair with Fritz Wiedemann, a personal aide to Hitler. When Wiedemann was appointed to the post of German Consul-General in San Francisco, she joined him in the United States in late 1937 and stayed for a time, returning to Europe the following year.

In 1938, the Nazis confiscated the property of Austrian Jews, including the Leopoldskron castle in Salzburg, which had been owned by theatre director Max Reinhardt. It was here she received and entertained Walter Runciman, author of the Runciman Report which argued in favour of returning Sudetenland to Germany. He is reported to have spent several delightful days there. Some reported that Göring gave Princess Stephanie the property; other sources say she leased it, or was charged by Göring with developing the estate as a guest house for prominent artists of the Reich and to serve as a reception facility to Hitler's Berghof home.

Second World War

Princess Stephanie returned to Britain in 1939, but after war was declared later that year she left the country, fearful of being arrested as a German spy. She traveled to the United States, returning to her former lover Fritz Wiedemann, then German Consul in San Francisco. On her arrival, the United States government placed her under security surveillance by the FBI.[1]

In March 1941 she was detained for several days by U.S. immigration authorities. She made up to Major Lemuel B. Schofield, the Director of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington, DC. He put her up in the Raleigh Hotel, where he also lived, and the two carried on an affair that lasted several months. She then lived with her mother and son in Alexandria, Virginia.[1]

In October of that year, the FBI prepared a memo describing her as "extremely intelligent, dangerous and clever," and claiming that as a spy she was "worse than ten thousand men."[1] Summarizing what was known about her, it recommended that her deportation not be further delayed, noting that the British and French, in addition to the United States intelligence community, suspected her of being a spy for Germany.[1] She continued to stay in the US.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the formal entry of the USA into World War II, the FBI arrested Princess Stephanie, interning her at a facility in Philadelphia, and later at a Texas camp for enemy aliens. During this period, she was interviewed by personnel of the newly formed Office of Strategic Services (OSS). She was paroled in May 1945.[6]

It was not until 2005 that British intelligence MI6 and the US FBI declassified and released some of the documents from these years, which are now available to researchers.[7] American files show that during her interrogation by the OSS she provided insights into the character of Adolf Hitler, which were used by Henry A. Murray, Director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic, and psychoanalyst Dr. Walter C. Langer, in preparing the 1943 OSS report entitled Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler.

Postwar years

In the post-war era, Princess Stephanie returned to Germany, where she established new, influential connections. She worked with media executives such as Henri Nannen of Stern news magazine and Axel Springer, the owner of the Axel Springer AG publishing company. For the latter, she secured interviews with the United States presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.[8]

Princess Stephanie zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst died in Geneva, Switzerland in 1972 and is buried there.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "October 28, 1941 Memorandum on Stephanie von Hohenlohe for U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt" from ?, Safe files, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, hosted at Marist University, accessed 18 May 2013
  2. ↑ Martha Schad, Hitler's Spy Princess: The Extraordinary Life of Princess Stephanie Von Hohenlohe (translated by Angus McGeoch), Sutton: 2004
  3. ↑ Schad (2004), Hitler's Spy Princess. Note: Schad says that Richter was the illegitimate daughter of two Jewish parents: her mother was from Prague and her father worked as a moneylender in Vienna. In the Third Reich, her Jewish ancestry was known, but she was awarded the Gold Medal of the Nazi Party for her services.
  4. 1 2 3 Norton-Taylor, Richard (1 April 2005). "Months before war, Rothermere said Hitler's work was superhuman". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Tweedie, Neil and Day, Peter. "When Rothermere urged Hitler to invade Romania", The Daily Telegraph, (March 1, 2005)
  6. ↑ Robert H. Jackson, That Man, An Insider's Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Oxford University Press, 2003
  7. ↑ Jim Wilson, "Introduction", Nazi Princess: Hitler, Lord Rothermere and Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, The History Press, 2011
  8. ↑ Schad (2011), Hitler's Spy Princess
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