Philipp, Prince and Landgrave of Hesse (6 November 1896 – 25 October 1980) was head of the ElectoralHouse of Hesse from 1940 to 1980.
Philipp joined the Nazi Party in 1930, and, when they gained power with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor in 1933, he became Oberpräsident of the Prussian Province of Hesse-Nassau. However, he later began to fall out of favour with Hitler in the spring of 1943 after delivering an honest assessment of the military situation in Italy.[1] He was arrested in September 1943 on the day Italy surrendered to the western Allies, dismissed in the following year, and was sent to the Flossenbürg concentration camp, then Dachau, where he remained until being transported to Tyrol by the SS, where he was liberated by Wehrmacht forces on 30 April 1945[2] and then arrested by U.S. forces on 4 May 1945, being interned until 1947.[3]
As a child, Philipp had an English governess. In 1910, he was sent to Britain to attend school in Bexhill-on-Sea. After returning to Germany, he attended a Musterschule in Frankfurt and then the Realgymnasium in Potsdam. He was the only one of the brothers who did not attend a military academy.
At the beginning of the First World War, Philipp joined the Hessian Dragoon-Regiment Nr. 24 along with his older brother Maximilian. They served first in Belgium where Maximilian was killed in October. In 1915 and 1916, Philipp served on the Eastern Front in what is now Ukraine. He held the rank of lieutenant (an extremely low rank considering his princely background) and was mostly responsible for the procurement of munitions. In 1917, he served on the Hindenburg Line, before returning to Ukraine where he was wounded in combat.
In 1916, Philipp's oldest brother Friedrich Wilhelm died (in World War I) and Philipp became second in line to succeed his uncle as Head of the Electoral House of Hesse. In October 1918, Philipp's father was elected king of Finland. It was intended that Philipp would eventually succeed his father as Head of the House of Hesse, while his (younger) twin brother Wolfgang would be heir to the Finnish throne. The plans for a Finnish monarchy, however, soon came to an abrupt end with the defeat of Germany; Finland became a republic in July 1919.
Following the war, Philipp was a member of the Übergangsheer (the Transitional Army, precursor to the Reichswehr) which was successful in repressing communist and socialist action. From 1920 to 1922, he attended the Technical University in Darmstadt where he studied art history and architecture. He made several visits to Greece where his aunt, Princess Sophie of Prussia was the wife of King Constantine I. In 1922, he left university without completing a degree and took a job at the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin. The following year, he moved to Rome where he used his aristocratic connections to establish himself as a successful interior designer. (He had designed some furniture for the palace his father intended to occupy as King of Finland.)[3]
Prince Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse (6 August 1926 – 23 May 2013) he married Princess Tatiana of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg on 1 June 1964 and they were divorced on 16 October 1974. They have four children and eleven grandchildren.
Prince Otto Adolf of Hesse-Kassel (3 June 1937 Rome – 3 January 1998 Hanover) he married Angela von Doering (daughter of Bernd von Doering and ex-wife of Hans-Peter Schmiedler) on 5 April 1965 and they were divorced on 3 February 1969. He married Elisabeth Bonker on 28 December 1988 and they were divorced in 1994.
Princess Elisabeth Margarethe of Hesse-Kassel (8 October 1940 Rome, Italy) she married Count Friedrich von Oppersdorff on 28 February 1962. They have two sons.
The family lived mostly at Villa Polissena (named after Queen Polyxena), part of Villa Savoia, the King of Italy's estate on the outskirts of Rome. But they also travelled frequently to Germany.[5]
Involvement with the NSDAP
Philip of Hesse, second from right in the first row, in Kassel, 1933
While in Italy, Philipp fell under the influence of Fascism, or otherwise believed the Bolsheviks to be a greater threat.[5] On his return to Germany in October 1930, he joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party.[3] He was assigned Party membership number 418,991 and, on 30 January 1939, he would be awarded the Golden Party Badge.[7] In 1932, he joined the Stormtroopers (SA, commonly referred to as the Brown Shirts),[8] and, the following year, his younger brother Christoph joined the Schutzstaffel (SS).[8] Later, his two other brothers, including Wolfgang, also joined the SA. Through his party membership, Philipp became a particularly close friend of Hermann Göring, the future head of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe).[8] Göring would bestow the rank of LuftwaffeHauptmann of reserves on Philipp in 1936.[9] In the Stormtroopers, he held the rank of SA-Obergruppenführer.[4]
Following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as the German Chancellor on 30 January 1933, Philipp was appointed Oberpräsident (Governor) of Hesse-Nassau on 7 June 1933 by Prussian Minister-President Göring, who also named him to the Prussian State Council in July.[10] Philipp played an important role in the consolidation of National Socialist rule in Germany. He introduced other aristocrats to NSDAP officials and, as son-in-law of the king of Italy, was a frequent go-between for Hitler and Benito Mussolini.[8][3] He also acted as an art agent for Hitler in Italy.[11] Philipp arranged the purchase of many important works of art for the large museum that Hitler was planning in Linz. For this purpose, the Reich Chancellery established a special account for him at the German Embassy in Rome, over which Prince Philipp could freely dispose. In 1940/41, German art purchases in Italy increased to such an extent that the Fascist government prohibited the sale of art treasures to foreigners in September 1941.[12] On 11 March 1938, he delivered Hitler's letter of reassurance to Mussolini prior to Hitler's marching into Austria, and received a gushing call from Hitler upon the news of Mussolini's acquiescence.
As governor of Hesse-Nassau, Philipp was associated with the Aktion T4 euthanasia programme. In February 1941, Philipp signed the contract placing the sanitarium of Hadamar Clinic at the disposal of the Reich Interior Ministry. Over 10,000 mentally ill people were killed there. In 1946, Philipp was charged with murder, but the charges were later dropped.
As the war progressed, the attitude of the National Socialist authorities towards members of the German princely houses changed. While at first, they had been happy to use the historic family names to bolster popular support, they now decided to distance themselves even from those princes who had supported them.
In late April 1943, Philipp was ordered to report to Hitler's headquarters, where he stayed for most of the next four months. In May 1943, Hitler issued the "Decree Concerning Internationally Connected Men" declaring that princes could not hold positions in the party, state, or armed forces. The arrest of Mussolini by Philipp's father-in-law King Victor Emmanuel in July 1943 made Phillip's position even more difficult.
Arrest
Hitler believed that Philipp and his family were complicit in Mussolini's downfall.[11] On 8 September 1943, Philipp was arrested. He was stripped of his membership in the party and dismissed from the Luftwaffe. On 25 January 1944, his political disgrace became public when he was dismissed from his office as Oberpräsident of Hesse-Nassau.[13]
In September 1943, Philipp was sent to Flossenbürg concentration camp. He was placed in solitary confinement and was not permitted any contact with the outside world. He was, however, granted certain privileges: wearing civilian clothes and eating the same food as the guards.
Philipp's wife Mafalda was arrested and placed under military custody in Rome. She was sent to Munich and Berlin for questioning and eventually to Buchenwald concentration camp[5] where she was housed next to an armaments factory. In August 1944, the factory was bombed by the Allies. Mafalda was seriously injured and died several days later following a belated[a] operation by camp medical staff.[3]
Philipp was held by the Allies in Naples and subsequently was transferred to Camp Ashcan in Luxembourg and then to a series of other detention centres until 1947. He underwent denazification procedures in Darmstadt and, on 17 December 1947, was classified as Category II (offender). He was sentenced to 2 years in a labour camp, which was suspended on the basis of time served. He also was required to forfeit 30% of his property and assets, which were valued at 600,000 Deutsche Mark (DM). Subsequent appeals concluded in February 1949, and resulted in a reclassification as Category IV (follower) and a reduction of his fine to 36,568 DM.[14]
On 28 May 1940, Philipp succeeded his father as Head of the Electoral House of Hesse. In 1968, upon the death of his distant agnatic relative, Louis, Prince of Hesse and by Rhine (who was also his second cousin as Philipp's mother and Louis' father were grandchildren of Queen Victoria), Philipp succeeded as head of the entire House of Hesse, including grand ducal Hesse (Hesse and by Rhine/Hesse-Darmstadt). Louis had nominally adopted Philipp's son Moritz, who at that time inherited the Hessian and by-Rhine properties, including remarkable cultural collections: for the first time since the division of Hesse into branches after the death of Philip the Magnanimous in 1567, all sovereign branches of the house of Hesse were reunited again.
^ abSpeer, Albert (1995). Inside the Third Reich. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 419–420. ISBN9781842127353.
^König, Malte. "Shopping in wartime Italy: On the purchases made by German troops, tourists, and politicians, 1940/1941", in War in History 28.4, 2021, pp. 858-861.
Miller, Michael D.; Schulz, Andreas (2015). Leaders of the Storm Troops. Vol. 1. Solihull, England: Helion & Company. ISBN978-1-909-98287-1.
Whitford, David M. (2015). Reformation Life: The European Reformation through the Eyes of Philipp of Hesse. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. ISBN978-1-440802-54-6.
Jonathan Petropoulos, Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Jobst Knigge, Prinz Philipp von Hessen. Hitlers Sonerbotschafter für Italien, Humboldt University Berlin (open access) 2009
