Authors: Jim Wilson
Stephanie finally met her prince at a hunt dinner given by her grande dame Princess Metternich. She was asked to play the piano and a young nobleman joined her at the keyboard. He was Prince Friedrich Franz von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, who was military attaché at the Austro-Hungarian Embassy in St Petersburg, then the Russian capital. According to Princess Stephanie’s MI5 file, during the First World War Prince Friedrich became involved in the murky business of spying as chief of German propaganda and director of German espionage in Switzerland.
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The courtship was swift and harmonious, but the betrothal was far from straightforward because Stephanie, then 23 although she passed herself off as only 17, was pregnant, and not by her prince! The royal family could not risk a scandal, but because of the impending birth the marriage could not be long delayed. So instead of a prominent show wedding in Vienna, which would normally have been the case, it was decided to arrange a quiet, almost covert marriage ceremony far away in London. Why was Prince Friedrich willing to go through with this arrangement? The answer was that by now Stephanie was reasonably well off. She had sufficient money to settle his not inconsiderable gambling debts, with more to spare to maintain a realistic lifestyle. And there was strong pressure in the royal family for the wedding to take place to avoid causing a public scandal. Naturally, the fatherhood of the baby was a close-kept secret.
The wedding was held with a minimum of publicity and fuss on 12 May 1914 in Westminster Cathedral, London’s Catholic cathedral. The required residence was fulfilled by a brief stay at the Ritz. As a marriage of convenience, it was not the kind of royal wedding one might have expected. Stephanie’s mother was the sole guest, and the necessary witnesses were pressed into service at short notice. They left the same day for honeymoon in Berlin. It was to have been followed by a visit to India where they were to be hosted by maharajas and go on tiger shoots, but they never reached the subcontinent because within weeks Europe was at war.
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Who was the father of the child the bride was carrying when she married her prince? He was also of high rank – Archduke Franz Salvator, Prince of Tuscany and son-in-law of the Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria and Empress Elisabeth. Stephanie had had a romantic liaison with the archduke from when they had first met in 1911, despite the fact that he already had ten children by his wife Archduchess Marie Valerie, youngest daughter of the emperor and empress. Stephanie’s wedding may have been kept low profile, away from the press, the public eye and gossiping tongues in the capitals of Austria and Hungary, but it gave her the title and the connections to enable her to scale the highest reaches of European society. She was now either related to, or acquainted with, the majority of the royal families in Europe.
Her ambition to become a princess had been achieved as Europe was about to embark on the First World War. Soon after the birth of her illegitimate son, Prince Franz Joseph Rudolf Hans Weriand Max Stefan Anton von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, Stephanie volunteered to undertake war service as a nurse and went back to Vienna for training. Meanwhile, her husband had joined his regiment. Using her contacts, she arranged to be posted to the Russian front where she worked in a field hospital at Lemberg, which had just been recaptured from the Russians. But she was no ordinary nurse; she was conspicuously accompanied wherever she went in the theatre of war by her butler and her chambermaid. This retinue ensured she did not last long nursing close to the front line. But in 1917, minus her servants, she accompanied the Austrian Army as a Red Cross nurse as they advanced to confront the Italians at the battle of Isonzo River. There she served in field hospitals and witnessed Austria’s defeat in June 1918 on the River Piave. When the Armistice came, it meant the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into which she had married. When the empire and its dual monarchy collapsed, Stephanie and her husband were both forced to choose whether to take up Austrian or Hungarian nationality, and both opted for Hungarian citizenship. Indeed, Stephanie held a Hungarian passport for the rest of her life.
Two years after the end of the First World War, the shot-gun marriage ended. On 20 July 1920 Stephanie’s divorce was formalised in Budapest. She was now free to do whatever she wanted, and she enthusiastically pursued a life of pleasure. She spent a great deal of time in Vienna, cultivating friendships among the rich and powerful, and making contacts amongst diplomats, ministers, aristocrats and the wealthy; international contacts which would prove of incalculable worth to her in future.
The 1920s were good to her. She spent time in Paris, in the south of France and in the fashionable cities of Europe, developing friendships and intimate relationships with a number of powerful and influential men, some of whom she seduced and manipulated shamelessly to fund her lifestyle. Among them were the Greek Consul General in Vienna, a rich American called John Murton Gundy and a married millionaire. In 1922 she moved to Nice accompanied by a group of friends, including the Count and Countess of Nyari. In Nice she was a frequent visitor to the casino. The Duke of Westminster was among those who fell for her charms and she had a lucrative relationship with John Warden, an immensely rich American businessman from the family who owned Standard Oil. Indeed, an FBI memorandum written in 1941, recording her background, refers to her reputation as a ‘gold digger’ and suggests she endeavoured to marry Warden.
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In 1925 she moved to Paris, taking an exclusive apartment at 45 Avenue George V, where she employed a household staff of nine servants. A near neighbour was the British insurance tycoon Sir William Garthwaite, another wealthy man who fell for her and kept her in the style she now demanded. As a change from life in Paris she would follow the sun to the playgrounds of the rich and famous – Monte Carlo, Nice and Cannes – where she was again a frequent visitor to the gaming tables. Part of the summer season was spent in Deauville on the Normandy coast, where a flirtation blossomed with Solomon ‘Solly’ Joel, principal shareholder of De Beers, the South African diamond company. No one could fault Stephanie in her choice of lovers! It was when she was in Monte Carlo, however, that Annabel Kruse introduced her, over the roulette tables, to Lord Rothermere. Stephanie was 36 and the newspaper tycoon 59. It was destined to be an introduction that would significantly shape both their lives over the next fifteen years, and, although neither could have known it at the time, have a crucial impact on international events as Europe moved inexorably towards bitter conflict, and as Hitler sought influential friends in Britain and propaganda for his fascist aims.
Princess Stephanie knew exactly what she was doing when, in 1927, she targeted Lord Rothermere using her friend Annabel as the go-between. The subsequent record of her life shows she was always ruthless in getting what she wanted. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States noted as much in an extraordinary memorandum sent to President Roosevelt after the start of the Second World War. It said that ‘she was reputedly immoral, and capable of resorting to any means, even bribery, to get her ends’.
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The FBI knew there was plenty of evidence from Europe and indeed America to support their conclusion. A 1938 British intelligence report had spelt out the potency and the danger of her manipulative skills in stark terms. ‘She is frequently summoned by the Führer who appreciates her intelligence and good advice. She is perhaps the only woman who can exercise any influence over him.’
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She was well aware it would take time before a relationship with the press baron paid the dividends she sought, but she seems to have instinctively known that here was a man whose friendship was worth cultivating and eventually exploiting, and she used her charm and intelligence to cement the friendship. Stephanie and Annabel had known each other for some years. They were close friends and in many ways shared some of the same characteristics. Much of the Kruses’ wealth, which financed their extravagant lifestyle, had been built from inherited money originating from Jack’s family’s banking business. But Kruse had multiplied his riches through the stock market; benefiting from tips which Rothermere generously passed on to him. Together the Kruses were, as one contemporary described them, the ultimate ‘golden couple’. With Jack Kruse and Annabel so obviously in Rothermere’s circle, it would have been clear to Stephanie that the route to the press baron’s attentions was through Annabel, who was a prominent member of his group of close friends. In his understandably defensive biography of his mother, Prince Franz Hohenlohe notes that Annabel had, a few years earlier, been Rothermere’s mistress and as such was adept at seeking his favours.
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Recalling that era many years later, Stephanie told her son that Jack Kruse, or ‘Jimmy’ as she knew him, was an extremely likeable man; blonde and handsome. She described Annabel as full of fun, tiny, slim and petite, even by the ‘boyish’ fashions of the 1920s. Annabel, she remembered, sparkled with life and laughed like a child. She was a captivating and exciting companion. The evident luxury of Annabel’s life, Stephanie said, was plain to see. Not content with having the finest silk sheets, pillow cases, nightgowns and underwear all handmade and embroidered with her initials, Annabel also had her stockings specially woven and with her name worked into the top. She remembered Annabel as possessing a kind of frenetic compulsion always to be active; a characteristic Stephanie sometimes found hard to understand. Later, it became clear where that supercharged energy came from – for years Annabel had been taking drugs.
Cunning and opportunistic, but radiating personality and charm, the princess cut a fascinating figure. It was not just her title and her confidence that impressed, it was the daring way she behaved. Few aristocratic, titled ladies in society had the nerve to openly smoke Havana cigars as Stephanie did. It was a habit she had picked up to avoid the stench of festering wounds when she was nursing on the front line in the First World War. But she added to the outrageous image by striking her matches on the soles of her shoes. Guided by Annabel, Rothermere fell for Stephanie despite the age difference of twenty-three years. Stephanie later noted that she thought she had made a conquest – but the meeting was to have a far greater impact on both of their lives than a passing flirtation.
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It was inevitable that they would continue to see each other since both enjoyed playing the tables at the casinos, and it was at the Monte Carlo Sporting Club that Stephanie again saw Rothermere for the meeting that changed both of their lives.
She found him on this occasion moody and depressed. Recalling the meeting later in conversation with her son, she said Rothermere appeared to be concerned at the lack of an interesting and significant news story which would give his newspapers a headline.
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Her response was to say she could give him a story guaranteed to sell his papers. Having aroused the press owner’s interest, he promised to invite her to his villa at Cap Martin so she could give him the details. He must have been suitably impressed and eager to hear what she had to say, because the following day she received a telephone call inviting her to lunch.
That 1927 meeting led to a close, ongoing relationship whenever the two were in Monte Carlo. Rothermere habitually spent up to four months a year on the Riviera and travelled frequently in Italy and Spain. He and Stephanie realised they shared a common interest in ballet. Rothermere was patron of the famous Diaghilev ballet company, and he was entranced by the beauty of some of its leading ballerinas. He fell for the charms of the famous Komarova, and in particular he admired the petite figure of Lydia Sokolova, the first English dancer in Diaghilev’s company. He was won over by the childlike nature of Alice Nikitina, another of Diaghilev’s prima ballerinas, and his fascination with her led to a long-lasting and largely platonic affair that persisted, on and off, almost until his death.
As well as a shared passion for ballet, Rothermere and the princess were both inveterate gamblers. In fact, in a colourful phrase she described Rothermere as ‘a fabulous plunger at the casino tables’ – in other words, someone who played for high stakes on a whim.
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Stephanie was a keen player of chemin de fer and baccarat, and she enjoyed some spectacular successes. In Cannes in 1928 she had a handsome winning streak that continued for days on end, which, according to her son, enabled her to pay every single bill over a period of sixty days solely with cash she won at the tables.
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Whenever she played she insisted on occupying a certain chair which she was convinced brought her luck. If that chair was occupied, she refused to play until it became available.
At lunch, following their meeting at the Sporting Club, the princess persuaded Rothermere that the
Daily Mail
should publish an article outlining the dire situation in Hungary, following the crude readjustment of the country’s boundaries after the peace settlement after the First World War. The Treaty of Trianon, signed in 1920, had been hastily concluded to resolve outstanding issues following the lengthy and tedious international arguments that had produced the Treaty of Versailles. It had imposed particularly unjust and damaging terms on Hungary, brutally partitioning the country. There were strong feelings over the unfairness of the treaty towards Hungary, and the resulting hardships being suffered by many hundreds of thousands of Hungarian nationals who, as a result of its terms, were excluded from their own country. Hungary had lost two-thirds of its territory under the treaty; the area ceded to Romania alone was larger than that left to Hungary. Countless families had suddenly found themselves citizens of a foreign nation whose language they did not speak and whose customs they did not share. They were divorced from their homeland and from their birthright. Before the First World War, Hungary had a population of 21 million; after 1920 its population was reduced to less than 8 million. The country was isolated, surrounded by hostile neighbours and defended by an army that was restricted by the treaty to no more than 35,000 men.