Wilhelm Heinrich Michael Louis Ferdinand Friedrich Franz Wladimir Prinz von Preussen (22 March 1940 – 3 April 2014) was a descendant of the Hohenzollern dynasty which ruled Germany until the end of World War I. His great-grandfather Wilhelm II was the German Emperor and King of Prussia until 1918. Although Kaiser Wilhelm died in exile and his family was stripped of much of its wealth and recognition of its rank and titles by the German Republic, Michael spent nearly all of his life in Germany.
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Biography
Michael was the second son of Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia, and Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna of Russia. Both of his parents lived their early years as members of ruling imperial families that were deposed before they reached adulthood, leaving them to adjust to life in straitened circumstances, in exile or under surveillance, and sometimes in flight from their ancestral nations. The Kaiser lived in the Netherlands under banishment from Germany when Michael was born. However, by the time Michael was ten years old, both his great-grandfather and grandfather had died, leaving his father as the Hohenzollern pater familias, whom German monarchists recognized as their rightful emperor and king. Michael was born in Berlin, but grew up in Bremen. He studied in Freiburg and worked later for several multinational corporations. He also wrote several history books.
Having made the decision to contract a non-dynastic marriage, he submitted to his father (then head of the family) a renunciation on behalf of himself and his future descendants to the family's claim to the defunct thrones of Imperial Germany and Royal Prussia, executed at Bremen on 29 August 1966. On 23 September 1966, he married in Düsseldorf Roman Catholic commoner Jutta Jörn (born in Gießen, 27 January 1943), an administrative assistant. The couple had two daughters together.