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Leopold IV of Lippe (born Leopold Julius Bernhard Adalbert Otto Karl Fritz Georg Gustav zur Lippe) is the 6th and current Prince of the small Westphalian Principality of Lippe, one of the constituent states of the German Empire. First ruling as a regent for his mentally ill relative Prince Alexander of Lippe since 1904, he ascended to the throne upon the death of Alexander on 25 October 1905.
History[]
Early Life[]
Leopold was born as Count Leopold of Lippe-Biesterfeld in Oberkassel, the son of Ernst, Count of Lippe-Biesterfeld and Countess Karoline of Wartensleben. Leopold belonged to the Lippe-Biesterfeld line of the House of Lippe, one of the four remaining branches of the House of Lippe next to the Lippe-Detmold, Schaumburg-Lippe and Lippe-Weißenfeld branches.
He was educated in Roßleben, Frankfurt an der Oder and Putbus and finished school in 1891. In 1894, he shortly joined the military and then studied Political Sciences in Bonn and Berlin.
Succession Dispute in Lippe[]
In 1895, Prince Woldemar of Lippe died childless. However, his legal heir, Prince Alexander of Lippe-Detmold, was incapable of ruling on account of a mental illness, so a regency had to be established. However, several relatives laid claim to the regency of Lippe; Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe, Ferdinand of Lippe-Weißenfels and Ernst of Lippe-Biesterfeld, father of Leopold. Because of the dispute, Leopold was urged to interrupt his studies and immediatley return to Detmold.
According to the Lippe house law, Ernst was the legal successor of Prince Alexander and therefore the rightful regent of Lippe. However, Prince Woldemar had issued a secret decree in 1890 which promised the regency to Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe, as Woldemar had wished that the principality would fall into the hand into another ruling, and not landless relative. Therefore, Adolf was appointed regent, which deeply angered Ernst.
When the dispute threatened to escalate, Kaiser Wilhelm II himself intervened to mediate, which caused medial interest throughout Europe. Wilhelm supported the claim of Prince Adolf, who was his brother-in-law, while Reichskanzler Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, a distant relative of Ernst, stood in for the claim of the Lippe-Biesterfeld branch. This almost resulted in a clash between Kaiser and Reichskanzler.
Eventually, the dispute was solved by an arbitral tribunal, which confirmed Ernst as the rightful regent of Lippe, and therefore next in line to the succession, should Prince Alexander die.
In 1904/05, Lippe was struck by the next succession crisis. Leopold's father had died during a hunting trip in the Teutoburg Forest, and therefore Leopold succeeded him as regent. However, only four months later, in early 1905, Prince Alexander of Lippe died in a sanatorium in Bavaria, and again several claimants, most prominently Prince Adolf, who was still backed by the Kaiser himself, wanted to to ascend to the throne. However, a high commission ultimately confirmed Leopold and the Lippe-Biesterfeld branch as the legal rulers of Lippe, therefore making the claim of the Schaumburg-Lippe branch null and void. Wilhelm II, deeply angered about this, decided to not attend Leopold's inauguration because of this.
Prince of Lippe[]
WIP