Prince Alexander Ferdinand of Prussia


Prince Alexander of Prussia was the only son of Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia and his wife Princess Alexandra Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.

Family and early life

Prince Alexander of Prussia was born on 26 December 1912 to Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia and his wife Princess Alexandra Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. August Wilhelm was a younger son of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
His parents divorced in 1920 and his mother remarried less than two years later; custody of the young prince was awarded to Alexander's father.
Alexander attended the 1932 wedding of the Swedish prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten with Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the former duchy of Coburg; it was the first time that a member of the German imperial family had entered the duchy since it became a republic, or specifically a part of Bavaria in November 1919 after the ruling duke, Carl Eduard, had ended his reign on 14 November 1918.

Nazi party and military career

As of November 1939, Prince Alexander was a first lieutenant in the Air Force Signal Corps, stationed in Wiesbaden.
Like his father, who became a prominent supporter of the Nazi party, Alexander also became an early supporter. Prince August had secret hopes that Chancellor Adolf Hitler "would one day hoist him or his son Alexander up to the vacant throne of the Kaiser". The support father and son gave to the emerging party caused strong disagreements among the Hohenzollerns, with Wilhelm II urging them both to leave the Nazi party.
In 1933 Alexander quit the SA and became a private in the German regular army. In 1934, Berlin reports leaked out that the prince quit the SA because Hitler had chosen 21-year-old Alexander to succeed him as "head man in Germany when he no longer can carry the torch". The report went on to say however that Joseph Goebbels was expected to oppose the prince's nomination.
Unlike many German princes who became the targets of Hitler's mistrust and were removed from their commands in the military, Alexander was the only Hohenzollern allowed to remain at his post.

Marriage

On 19 December 1938 in the Dresden garrison church, Alexander non-dynastically married Armgard Weygand, daughter of Major Friedrich Weygand and Karla Franziska Oheim. She was the widow of a major in the German Air Force, and was originally from Wiesbaden, where Alexander Ferdinand was stationed. As the marriage had not been dynastically approved, none of his relatives attended the ceremony, but fellow officers served as witnesses.
They had one son:
Prince Alexander Ferdinand died on 12 June 1985 at Wiesbaden.

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