Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Upbringing and education

Theo Aronson described the Albany household at Claremont House as "cosy, comfortable, well-ordered". After her husband's death, the British Parliament had given Helen an annual grant from the civil list of 6,000 pound sterling. This did not make her as wealthy as she was during her marriage, but did allow her to employ several domestic servants, including a number responsible for the children. One of Charles Edward's childhood nannies referred to him as "delicate and sensitive, nervous and tiring". Medical experts consulted by the royal family believed that he had been permanently harmed by the grief which his widowed mother had suffered from during her pregnancy. No record of Charles Edward's own childhood memories exists, but Alice fondly recalled this period of their lives. Aronson commented that the environment where the two children were looked after was a "typical, late nineteenth-century nursery". He described it as:... a small, self-contained world of early-to-rise, porridge for breakfast, vigorous hair-brushings, buttoned boots, holland pinafores, pick-a-back rides, stories, squabbles, tears, treats and punishments, bland nursery meals, walks to the lake to feed the wild ducks with squares of dry bread..., little covered baskets holding soup or jelly or junket for the sick, pony rides in the park, baths filled with hot water from highly polished copper cans, firelight, lamplight, warming-pans, good-night prayers, nightlights.Caring for the children was mainly the responsibility of their nannies, but they spent time with their mother for set periods each day. She taught the children practical skills, such as knitting, and gave them their Sunday school lessons. Helen read them literature by various well-known English and Scottish authors of the 19th century. She was an affectionate mother but also a strict one—insisting her children were brought up with stern discipline and encouraged to develop a sense of duty. Her son did not react well to this, becoming afraid of his mother and authority more generally.

Public duties, such as attending public events and providing patronage to charities, were a part of the royal family's functions. Aronson suggests that while they possessed "a highly developed sense of duty and responsibility", they were naïve about the deeply unpleasant conditions in which much of the British population lived. Charles Edward's mother was—unusually for a German aristocrat—especially interested in social issues and, according to Alice, the children were encouraged to sympathise with others and engage in charitable work. Alice felt that "discipline at home and familiarity with the troubles of others... cultivated in us [children] a sense of responsibility, poise and self-control."

Historian Hubertus Büschel indicates that the British royal family had high expectations for their young members' education. Charles Edward's first teacher was a governess called "Mrs Potts" who taught him together with his sister. The siblings developed a lifelong interest in history from her lessons where they were allowed to play-act historical scenes. He was then sent to school without his sister, studying in the privately funded public school system. Charles Edward attended two prep schools, firstly Sandroyd School in Surrey, and later Park Hill School in Lyndhurst. In a 1896 diary entry, Queen Victoria mentioned meeting the headmaster of the latter school "Mr Rawnsley" and his wife. She commented that: "All they said was most satisfactory. He seems to be very careful & kind."

Charles Edward developed an interest in military and royal occasions at a young age. He was given his first ceremonial position in the Seaforth Highlanders regiment of the British Army as a child. Victoria mentioned the five-year-old Prince wearing the "full uniform of the Seaforth Highlanders" in her diary. Shortly before his 13th birthday, Charles Edward participated in a parade for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The boy climbed on the roof of Buckingham Palace to see the assembled crowds before the event. He was described in contemporary press reports as being the most well-received participant.

In 1898 the prince enrolled at Eton College and his mother hoped he would eventually go on to Oxford University. Press reports sometimes accused the boy of behaving self-importantly at school, refusing to complete mandatory chores as he considered them a "degradation". He was happy at Eton and looked back nostalgically at his time at that school throughout his life. Aronson described the prince in his early teens as "small, blue-eyed, exceptionally handsome and highly strung". He was not expected to grow up to be a particularly prominent person.

Birth and family

Charles Edward's father was Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, the youngest son of the reigning British monarch, Queen Victoria. Historian Karina Urbach described Leopold as "the most intellectual of Queen Victoria's children". His mother, Princess Helen, Duchess of Albany, was the daughter of the ruling prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont, George Victor, and the sister of Queen Emma of the Netherlands. Royal biographer Theo Aronson described her as a "capable, conscientious" woman, and a devout Christian. Leopold, who suffered from haemophilia, died after slipping and hitting his head, several months before Charles Edward was born. The unborn child was not at risk of haemophilia, as the condition cannot be passed from father to son. He succeeded to his deceased father's titles at birth and was styled His Royal Highness the Duke of Albany. In addition to being the Duke of Albany, he was also the Earl of Clarence and Baron Arklow.

Leopold Charles Edward George Albert was born on 19 July 1884 at Claremont House near Esher, Surrey. He used the name Charles Edward. Leopold had wanted his firstborn son to be named after Charles Edward Stuart, an 18th-century claimant to the British throne. The infant was privately baptised at Claremont on 4 August after he fell ill. His baptism was publicly certified at St George's Church, Esher, on 4 December. Charles Edward was brought up as a prince of the United Kingdom for the first 15 years of his life. He had a sister, Alice, who was a year and a half older. Being an intensely anxious child, he often looked to Alice for support, a habit that continued throughout his adulthood. The siblings were nicknamed "Siamese twins".

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the British royal family had developed close familial relationships with continental Protestant, and particularly German, reigning families. Queen Victoria's immediate family belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; her deceased husband, Prince Albert, was the younger brother of the childless Duke Ernest II. Ernest governed the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, one of the states in the German Empire, which had a federal system of government. Victoria and Albert's eldest daughter, Victoria, German Empress, was the mother of German Emperor Wilhelm II. Victoria and Albert's eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, was the heir apparent to the British throne. Thus it was their second son, Prince Alfred, who succeeded his uncle Ernest II in 1893. Aronson commented on a painting of the family commissioned to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887:To each other, these impressive-looking figures might be known by such arch nicknames as Ducky or Mossie or Sossie, but among the group were a host of future kings, queens, emperors and empresses. In time, these direct descendants of Queen Victoria would sit on no less than ten European thrones. With good reason was the old Queen known as the 'Grandmama of Europe'. And in an age when it was still widely believed that monarchs were as important as they looked, it would be only natural... [for a child to assume it was] the most powerful clan on earth.

Charles Edward, his mother, and his sister were surrounded by members of the wider royal family in proximity to Queen Victoria. They frequently spent time with the Queen at her various estates. Charles Edward was described as Victoria's favourite grandchild. The boy and his sister often visited Balmoral Castle where they prepared for their future positions. Victoria enjoyed her grandchildren acting out dramatic scenes which reflected the religious values she wanted to inculcate in them. Lewis Carroll, a family friend, described Charles Edward as a "perfect little prince" who was well-trained in court etiquette and ceremony. Princess Helen also took her children on visits to her relatives in Germany and the Netherlands.

1920s political and paramilitary activities

Charles Edward continued to describe himself as a monarchist in the post-First-World-War period. He was said to want to return to political power as "King of Thuringia". In practice, however, his enthusiasm for restoration was lukewarm. His emotional attachment to the German emperor largely ended with Wilhelm's exile. The former duke began to look for political options which he saw as a stronger alternative to the deposed German emperor.

Charles Edward became far more overtly involved in politics after being deposed, supporting the nationalist and conservative right. The former duke was nostalgic for aspects of pre-war Germany, especially its militarism, and was frightened by communism. Urbach also suggested he had an obsession with masculine physical strength which stemmed from his lack of it. The former duke became associated with various right-wing paramilitary and political organisations. Rushton wrote that he "became a member and patron of the paramilitary group Coburg Einwohnerwehr, the Viking League and the veterans group Der Stahlhelm. The Viking League had previously been the Organisation Consul in the early 1920s—a group which he also funded and participated in. It was involved in the politically motivated murders of politicians Karl Gareis and Walther Rathenau. Urbach commented that "Though Carl Eduard did not himself murder, he financed murderers". Police reports from the time noted that he and Victoria Adelaide attended speeches in public houses which expressed support for far-right terrorism.

Charles Edward also funded various antisemitic nationalist groups. In 1922, he was invited to a traditional event where the best-performing student leaving a local gymnasium could make a speech. The schoolboy that year was a young Jewish man called Hans Morgenthau. The former duke expressed his disapproval by turning his back to Morgenthau and holding his nose throughout the speech. On 14 October 1922, the Nazi Party participated in a nationalist event called the German Day in Coburg, which involved a significant amount of violence. That evening, Charles Edward attended a meal run by the party where Adolf Hitler spoke. The next day he shook hands with Hitler, becoming the first nobleman to publicly support him. Police investigated whether the former duke had encouraged his oldest son, Leopold, to join the Young German Order, an anti-semitic paramilitary organisation. In the autumn of 1923, it was reported in the press that Leopold had led a series of attacks on Jewish people in the area around Coburg, a number of incidents in the village of Autenhausen where Jewish farmers were seriously injured received particular attention. It was alleged that the former duke had bribed witnesses to protect his son from prosecution.

In 1920, he hid Hermann Ehrhardt, a Freikorps commander and later leader of the Organisation Consul, in one of his castles with a store of weapons, after Ehrhardt participated in the unsuccessful Kapp Putsch against the government. Büschel suggests that Ehrhardt, who was unhappy with Wilhelm and his heir, Crown Prince Wilhelm, may have wanted to make Charles Edward the monarch of the entirety of Germany. In 1923, the value of the German mark collapsed. Both the radical left and right of politics saw this as an opportunity to change the system of government. Communists tried to start a revolution in Thuringia and Saxony. Ehrhart and 5,000 followers—including Charles Edward's eldest son—responded by preparing to march into Thuringia. The federal German government then removed the left-wing state governments in those areas reestablishing its authority from the perspective of public opinion. While Charles Edward was irritated by the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch by the Nazi Party a short time later because it disrupted Ehrhart's own attempts to take power—the leader of Bavaria, Gustav von Kahr, had been planning a coup against the federal government with Ehrhart before Hitler began a coup against him—the former duke did hide Nazis in one of his castles afterwards.

Trial and final years

After the end of the Second World War, Charles Edward was interned by the American military authorities from 1945 to 1946. His sister lobbied for his release on health grounds. After his release, he and Victoria Adelaide moved into a cottage outside Callenberg Castle. The castle was being used as a home for refugees. Alice visited the couple in 1948; according to her account, they were impoverished and her brother was severely unwell with arthritis. She persuaded the authorities to let them move into part of one of his residences, closer to where her sister-in-law could buy food.In April 1946, Charles Edward's daughter Sibylla gave birth to a son, Carl Gustaf, who at birth was third in the line of succession to the Swedish throne. In January 1947, Sibylla's husband died in a plane crash, and in October 1950, Gustaf V of Sweden died, at which point Charles Edward's grandson became Crown Prince of Sweden, later becoming King Carl XVI Gustaf.

Charles Edward's trial spanned four years and included two appeals. Alice and many other associates dishonestly spoke on his behalf, minimising his involvement in the regime. A year or so after the war, the priority of the Western Allies had shifted away from punishing former Nazis towards preparing their occupation zones to become part of the Western Bloc during the Cold War. In 1950 (or August 1949, according to his ODNB entry), the former duke was found by a denazification court to be a Mitläufer and Minderbelasteter (roughly: 'follower' and 'follower of lesser guilt'). The former duke's biographer Carl Sandler called the result a "farce". Charles Edward also lost significant property due to his participation in the Second World War. His property in Gotha, situated in the Soviet occupation zone, was confiscated and redistributed.

Charles Edward spent the last years of his life in seclusion, forced into relative poverty by the fines he had been required to pay by the denazification tribunal, and the seizure of much of his property by the Soviets. However, his lifestyle to a large extent returned to normal after his trial. In 1953, he was taken by ambulance and wheelchair to view the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom at a cinema in Coburg. He reportedly appeared to be close to crying while watching his relatives, including his sister. According to a column published that year in The Scotsman, the former duke had reestablished links with the Seaforth Highlanders, a British Army regiment of which he had once been colonel-in-chief, which was now stationed in Germany. The column commented that:On the occasion of a regimental ball, an invitation was sent to the Duke, with a note from the C.O. (Lieut.-Colonel P. J. Johnston) saying that, owing to the distance, it was doubtful if he would be able to attend, but it was the wish of all officers of the battalion that their old Colonel-in-Chief should be asked. The Duke replied that, although his health did not allow him to accept, he was deeply touched by the invitation, "renewing old connections which existed between the Seaforth Highlanders and myself for so many years, and which I honestly hope and wish will not be severed again". He said he would be pleased to receive as guest any comrade who should happen to pass Coburg, where he lives, and signed himself "Charles Edward. Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Duke of Albany."