Princess Marie of Liechtenstein (b. 1959)


Princess Marie of Liechtenstein is the eldest daughter of Prince Henri, Count of Paris, Duke of France and his former wife Duchess Marie Thérèse of Württemberg. She is the wife of Prince Gundakar of Liechtenstein, a great-grandson of Prince Alfred of Liechtenstein.

Youth

Her paternal grandfather, the Comte de Paris, head of the Orléanist House of France, received a letter of congratulations upon the princess's birth from General Charles de Gaulle. Baptised 17 days after her birth by Maurice, Cardinal Feltin, the Archbishop of Paris, in the chapel of the Archdiocese, her god-parents were two of her grandparents; Philipp Albrecht, Duke of Wurttemberg and Isabelle d'Orléans, Duchess of Guise.
Princess Marie's early childhood was spent in Paris where, from October 1959 to April 1962, her father worked at the Secretariat-General for National Defence and Security as a member of the French Foreign Legion. Transferred from there to a garrison in Germany, in the beginning of 1963 his family joined him at Bonifacio in Corsica where he took up a new assignment as military instructor.
Returning to civilian life in 1967, the Count of Clermont and his family briefly occupied the Blanche Neige pavilion on his father's Manoir du Coeur-Volant estate at Louveciennes in 1967, before renting an apartment of their own in the XVe arrondissement. For some months in that year Marie attended a private, parochial day school in Paris, before being sent to boarding school at Cours Dupanloup in Boulogne-sur-Seine in 1968 and Sacré-Coeur de Saint-Maur. In 1972 she boarded at a Dominican establishment in Fribourg during the family's residence in Corly while Clermont managed public relations for the Geneva office of a Swiss investment firm.
Upon receiving her bac, Marie enrolled at the Institut Catholique de Paris where she obtained a language interpretation degree in German and English after completing the Institut Supérieur d'Interprétariat et de Traduction curriculum. She also earned a professional degree through the Franco-German and Franco-English Chambers of Commerce, as well as a DEUG in German.

Career

As the eldest of five children, two of whom are intellectually disabled, much of Princess Marie's professional and volunteer work has been in behalf of children with special needs. In 1981 she spent several months serving needy children in Brazilian favelas through a Foi et Lumiere programme. Afterwards, she worked a year in Paris for a Catholic periodical. In 1984 Marie moved back to Geneva to organise the Enfants et Jeunes de la rue programme as part of the , conducting outreach in various countries, including Colombia and Brazil.
Transferred by BICE back to Paris, the princess became head of the Commission on Special Medical-Pedagogical Services, which sponsors humanitarian conferences in Europe and the developing world.

Marriage

While on work assignment in Rio de Janeiro in September 1988, Marie attended a dinner hosted by Princess Isabel of Brazil, where she met their mutual cousin Prince Gundakar of Liechtenstein. Fifth cousins as great-great-great grandchildren of Maximilian I of Bavaria, both also descend from France's "Citizen-King", Louis Philippe d'Orléans.
Born in Vienna in 1949, Prince Gundakar is a graduate of the Royal Agricultural College in England, having attended school as a child in Austria. After working six years in a Brazilian bank, he bought extensive farm lands in the Matto Grosso region. Thereafter he proceeded to spend four months a year in Brazil and the remainder in Austria, where he manages his 3500 hectare agricultural estate in Styria.
Marie and Gundakar encountered each other again in November 1988 at the wedding of two more mutual cousins, Duchess Mathilde of Wurttemberg and the Hereditary Count Erich von Waldburg-Zeil. More meetings in Europe followed. On 11 February 1989 the couple were received by Marie's paternal grandfather, Monseigneur the Count of Paris, at his Chantilly estate, after which the couple's betrothal was announced to the media. Although 250 guests attended the ceremony in Germany, absent were the Count of Clermont, the Count of Paris and all but two of Clermont's eight siblings; but the hostess Diane, Duchess of Wurttemberg, was present, as was her brother Prince Jacques, Duke of Orléans, and their mother, Madame the Countess of Paris.
This was the first marriage of a member of the House of Orléans into a reigning dynasty since the 1929 wedding of Princess Françoise of Orléans to Prince Christopher of Greece. Gundakar is a third cousin of his sovereign, Hans Adam II of Liechtenstein, and is in the line of succession to that principality's throne. Gundakar Albert Alfred Petrus of Liechtenstein is the eldest son of Prince Johann of Liechtenstein and Princess Clothilde of Thurn und Taxis. He has a twin sister, Princess Diemut, and five younger siblings.

Children

The couple have five children together:
Princess Marie Isabelle is a godmother to Infanta Maria Francisca of Portugal and to Princess Thérèse d'Orléans.

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