Prince Albrecht of Urach

Prince Albrecht of Urach (18 October 1903 – 11 December 1969) was a German nobleman, artist and wartime author, journalist, linguist and diplomat. Background He was the third son of Wilhelm Karl, Duke of Urach (1864-1928), a German general in the First World War who was briefly chosen as king of Lithuania. His mother was Amalie (1865-1912), daughter of Karl-Theodor, Duke in Bavaria and a niece of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Amalie's sister was the Queen of the Belgians. The Urach family are a morganatic branch of the royal family that ruled the Kingdom of Württemberg until 1918. They lived in Stuttgart and at Lichtenstein Castle, and paid frequent visits to Monaco before 1914. His father's mother was Princess Florestine of Monaco (1833–98), and so he was named after her nephew Prince Albert I of Monaco. His father was next but one in line to Monaco's throne up to the 1911 Monégasque Revolution, as Albert I had no legitimate grandchildren. Even before the First World War, France could not tolerate a possible U-boat base so close to Toulon, and preferred a descent from Albert's son Prince Louis, who had had a career in the French army for many years. Louis therefore adopted his natural daughter, Charlotte, to ensure a pro-French succession, and Monaco signed a concessive treaty with France in July 1918. Though he was the third Von Urach son, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune Prince Albrecht was in Paris in March 1930, unsuccessfully trying to persuade the French Foreign Office to accept him as the respectable and legitimate heir of Prince Louis after the recent divorce of Louis' daughter and son-in-law. Artist Following the German defeat in 1918, Albrecht studied art in Stuttgart under Arnold Waldschmidt and Christian Landenberger, and then in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in 1927–30, while living on the Île de la Cité, developing an expressionist style. He then exhibited in 1930-32 at the Leicester and Redfern galleries in London, Galerie Bonaparte in Paris and at Blomquist in Oslo, but could not make a living from painting with the start of the Great Depression, and took up freelance photography. His artistic friends included Willi Baumeister and Fernand Léger. His signature on his paintings was usually "AvU". His artistic output resumed in the 1950s.