Landgrave Moritz von Hessen (1926-2013)

It is always sad when hearing about the death of a royal or noble you have seen several times. Landgrave Moritz von Hessen died on 23 May of a lung disease in a hospital in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, aged 86. The funeral will be held at the Johanniskirche in Kronberg im Taunus on 3 June (noon). The private funeral will be held afterwards. He will be missed a lot by his family and friends. The newspapers already report lots of royals and nobles will attend the funeral.

Moritz was born at Racconigi Castle, Italy, as son of Landgrave Philipp von Hessen († 1980) and Princess Mafalda of Savoy. His mother died in the concentration camp of Buchenwald in 1944. In 1964 he married Princess Tatiana zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg. The couple divorced in 1974 after having had four children: Mafalda (* 1965), Donatus (* 1966), Elena (* 1967) and Philipp (* 1970). The Landgrave is survived by his former wife, his four children, two children-in-law, ten grandchildren, and his sister Elisabeth.

The last time I saw Landgrave Moritz von Hessen he still looked pretty healthy to me. Older but not frail. He was one of these people you thought would simply always be there. I was present – of course not as a guest – when both his sons got married. And like me he was in Potsdam when Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia and Princess Sophie von Isenburg got married in August 2011. I of course had seen him arriving at the wedding. But we were accidentally staying at the same hotel also and the day after the wedding I came downstairs to have breakfast in the small breakfast room. He was eating at another table together with some other royals. Quite strange now to imagine that was our last “meeting”. I never spoke a word to him, but he seemed to be quite a nice person.

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