Prince Francis Joseph of Battenberg

Prince Francis Joseph of Battenberg (* September 24, 1861 in Padua, † July 31, 1924 in Schaffhausen ) was a member of the House of Battenberg, a branch line of the Hessian royal family.

Life

Franz Joseph was the fourth son of five children of Prince Alexander of Hesse- Darmstadt (1823-1888), founder of the House of Battenberg, and his morganatic wife, the Countess and Princess Julia of Battenberg (1825-1895), daughter of the Polish- Russian Count Hans Moritz Hauke ​​and his wife Sophie Lafontaine, daughter of the military physician Franz Leopold Lafontaine. By not befitting marriage of his parents could not bear the title of Prince or Princess of Hesse, he and his siblings; he bore the title of Prince of Battenberg in 1314 after already extinct family of the Counts of Battenberg.

After his schooling, he received military training in Potsdam. After his older brother, Prince Alexander Joseph, was elected on 17 April 1879 Bulgarian princes and had no legitimate descendants, he was regarded as his successor. 1886 Prince Alexander I was overthrown by Russian minded officers and forced 26 August of the same year to abdicate.

At a family reunion in London got to Prince Franz Joseph in 1894 the heiress of the American railroad magnate, Consuelo Vanderbilt ( 1877-1964 ), a member of the prominent Vanderbilt family and cousin of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, know. But her mother Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, a prominent women's rights activist, had for her daughter the British politician Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, chosen as the husband. Disappointed traveled from Franz Joseph. On May 18, 1897 married Prince Franz Joseph in Cetinje the Princess Anna of Montenegro ( 1874-1971 ), the sixth daughter of Prince and King Nikola I Petrović Njegoš and his wife Milena Vukotić. The marriage, which by all accounts was happy, remained childless.