LIECHTENSTEIN: New Mother

Citizens of pastoral Liechtenstein—minute, autonomous, mountain-hemmed, principality adjoining Switzerland—had every right, last week, to call their new ruler, Prince Franz, a harum scarum.

“While good Prince Johann lived, Prince Franz would never have acted this way!” mourned many a grey-bearded householder, and indeed the scandal appeared grievous, for last week His Highness brought home as his wife, to rule with him in Liechtenstein, a mere commoner, Frau Elsa von Eroes of Vienna, with whom he has lived in clandestine, morganatic marriage for the last ten years.

Connoisseurs of aristocracy alone are fit to judge the magnitude, the enormity, of what Prince Franz has done. Before the War the anointed Hapsburg Emperors of Austria and Kings of Hungary (erstwhile Holy Roman Emperors) always prized and esteemed the House of Liechtenstein as one of the two or three in Europe of a lineage almost as pure and exalted as their own. Princesses of Liechtenstein had at least an even chance of espousing archdukes of Austria. Last week members of the few aristocratic families left in Vaduz, capital of Liechtenstein, wished that they could refuse to believe their eyes and ears as they saw Prince Franz enter his castle in state with that woman, then heard his Grand Chamberlain present her to “every son and daughter of Liechtenstein” as “the new mother of our country, Princess Elsa.”

The sons and daughters of Liechtenstein number only a little over 11,000. Correspondents estimated last week that at least 6,000 turned out to shout “Hail to our new mother!” Peasants had come trudging in to Vaduz from the remotest parts of a country slightly larger than Staten Island. They and the lowlier towns folk evidently thought that free beer and a barbecue at the castle made up for any little irregularities. Besides only sternest aristocrats would deny that in the case of Liechtenstein’s ruler and Princess Elsa there are peculiarly extenuating circumstances.

Harum-scarum Prince Franz is 76. He was five years old when his elder brother, Johann, came to the throne in 1858, and therefore he had to wait over 70 years for Good Prince Johann’s death and his own accession a few months ago. So good was Johann, in the purest dynastic sense, that Prince Franz lived in daily terror for some 20 years lest his affair with a commoner be found out. His secret morganatic marriage a decade ago scarcely decreased the couple’s anxiety. Today the new Mother of Liechtenstein is 51. She and Prince Franz are believed to be childless. Surely, urge their well-wishers, two such devoted lovers may be pardoned much.

Even the official nuptials of Prince Franz (as distinguished from his morganatic marriage) were performed clandestinely some weeks ago at night behind closed church doors in Lainz, Vienna suburb. An anonymous threat of assassination if the marriage took place had been received. Even last week this fear hung over the long-thwarted lovers. Paradoxically both are immensely rich, envied by people who do not understand their years of trial. Princess Elsa is the daughter of an Austrian coal tycoon. Prince Franz is supposed to have inherited nearly a hundred million dollars—not to mention the ancestral Liechtenstein Art Gallery in Vienna, famed as “the most valuable private collection in Europe.” Last week, with nothing to conceal for the first time in at least a generation, Prince Franz von und zu Liechtenstein. Due de Troppeau, Prince et Due de Jägerndorf, celebrated in his castle by conferring upon his twice-wedded wife the proud title “Countess of Vaduz.”