Carol Victor, Hereditary Prince of Albania (Karl Viktor Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Günther von Wied, 19 May 19138 December 1973), was the only son of

William, Prince of Albania Prince Wilhelm of Wied (German: ''Wilhelm Friedrich Heinrich Prinz zu Wied'', 26 March 1876 – 18 April 1945), reigned briefly as sovereign of the Principality of Albania as Vilhelm I from 7 March to 3 September 1914, when he left for exile. Hi ...

, and briefly heir to the

Principality of Albania The Principality of Albania ( al, Principata e Shqipërisë or ) refers to the short-lived monarchy in Albania, headed by Wilhelm, Prince of Albania, that lasted from the Treaty of London of 1913 which ended the First Balkan War, through ...

. He held the title of ''Hereditary Prince of Albania''. He was also styled Skënder, in homage to

Skanderbeg , reign = 28 November 1443 – 17 January 1468 , predecessor = Gjon Kastrioti , successor = Gjon Kastrioti II , spouse = Donika Arianiti , issue = Gjon Kastrioti II , royal house = Kastrioti , father ...

, the national hero.

Early life

Birth and family

Carol Victor was born on 19 May 1913 in

Potsdam Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of B ...

Kingdom of Prussia The Kingdom of Prussia (german: Königreich Preußen, ) was a German kingdom that constituted the state of Prussia between 1701 and 1918.Marriott, J. A. R., and Charles Grant Robertson. ''The Evolution of Prussia, the Making of an Empire''. Re ...

, as Prince Charles Victor of Wied (german: Karl Viktor Prinz zu Wied). He was the second child and only son of Prince William Frederick of Wied (1876–1945), son of

William, Prince of Wied , house =Wied-Neuwied , father =Hermann, Prince of Wied , mother = Princess Marie of Nassau , birth_date = , birth_place =Neuwied, Duchy of Nassau , death_date = , death_place =Neuwied, Kingdom of Prussia William V, Pri ...

, and

Princess Marie of the Netherlands , house = Orange-Nassau , father =Prince Frederick of the Netherlands , mother =Princess Louise of Prussia , birth_date = , birth_place =Wassenaar, Netherlands , death_date = , death_place =Neuwied, Kingdom of Prussia Pr ...

, and his wife,

Princess Sophie of Schönburg-Waldenburg Sophie Helene Cecilie of Schönburg-Waldenburg (21 May 1885 – 3 February 1936) was Princess of Albania from 7 March to 3 September 1914 as the wife of Prince Wilhelm. In 1906 she married Wilhelm, second son of the Prince of Wied. When her hu ...

(1885–1936), daughter of Victor, Hereditary Prince of

Schönburg-Waldenburg Waldenburg is a town in the district Zwickau in Saxony, Germany. The castle was owned by the House of Schönburg from 1378 until 1945. The pottery town of Waldenburg lies in the valley of the Zwickauer Mulde. The environment is characterized by fo ...

and his wife, Princess Lucia of

Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg was one of several imperial counties and later principalities ruled by the House of Sayn-Wittgenstein. Most of the former county is located in the present district of Siegen-Wittgenstein (in the modern state of North ...

. Through his paternal grandmother he was related with the

Dutch Royal Family The monarchy of the Netherlands is a constitutional monarchy. As such, the role and position of the monarch are governed by the Constitution of the Netherlands. Consequently, a large portion of it is devoted to the monarch. Roughly a third of ...

. His great-grandparents were

King William I of the Netherlands William I (Willem Frederik, Prince of Orange-Nassau; 24 August 1772 – 12 December 1843) was a Prince of Orange, the King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg. He was the son of the last Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, who went ...

and

King Frederick William III of Prussia Frederick William III (german: Friedrich Wilhelm III.; 3 August 1770 – 7 June 1840) was King of Prussia from 16 November 1797 until his death in 1840. He was concurrently Elector of Brandenburg in the Holy Roman Empire until 6 August 1806, wh ...

. He had some remote Albanian ancestry through his mother, being a descendant of Ruxandra

Ghica The Ghica family ( ro, Ghica; sq, Gjika; el, Γκίκας, ''Gikas'') was a noble family active in Wallachia, Moldavia and in the Kingdom of Romania, between the 17th and 19th centuries. The Ghica family produced many voivodes of Wallachia and M ...

, daughter of

Grigore I Ghica Grigore I Ghica (1628 – 1675), a member of the Ghica family, was Prince of Wallachia between September 1660 and December 1664 and again between March 1672 and November 1673. His father was George Ghica, ruler of Moldavia (1658–59) and ruler ...

Prince of Wallachia This is a list of rulers of Wallachia, from the first mention of a medieval polity situated between the Southern Carpathians and the Danube until the union with Moldavia in 1859, which led to the creation of Romania. Notes Dynastic rule is hard t ...

Hereditary Prince of Albania

On 7 March 1914, appointed by the Great Powers of Europe, his father William was created

Prince of Albania This article includes a list of Albanian monarchs. Albania was first established by the Progon family in 1190, with Progon, Lord of Kruja as the nation's first monarch. Princes of Arbanon (1190–1256) House of Progon * Progon (1190–1198) *Gji ...

. After his father became Prince, he held the title of Hereditary Prince of Albania. With Albania in a state of civil war since July 1914, Greece occupying the south of the country, the great powers at war with one another, the regime collapsed, and so all of his family left the country on 3 September 1914 originally heading to

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

. Despite leaving Albania his father insisted that he remained head of state. In the spring of 1924, the Albanian parliament debated the form of government and Milto Tutulani, a senator, appointed Prince William, his son Carol Victor or a Briton as a monarch (Milto Tutulani, Raporti i grupit monarkist të komisionit të statutit, Tiranë, 1924 ''in Michael Schmidt-Neke, Entstehung und Ausbau der Königsdiktatur in Albanien: 1912 - 1939, page 140'').

Education

Carol Victor first attended the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich, after that studied law at Tübingen, Munich, Königsberg and Würzburg universities. His doctoral thesis on criminal procedure was published in Stuttgart in 1936 (Die alternative Feststellung im Strafrecht; ''Würzburger Abhandlungen zum deutschen und ausländischen Prozessrecht, Heft 30,

Kohlhammer Verlag W. Kohlhammer Verlag GmbH, or Kohlhammer Verlag, is a German publishing house headquartered in Stuttgart. History Kohlhammer Verlag was founded in Stuttgart on 30 April 1866 by . Kohlhammer had taken over the businesses of his late father-in-law ...

, 1936''). He was a keen swordsman and enjoyed skiing. In 1937, Swire described him as a young man of great ability, with his father's good nature (Swire, Zog's Albania, page 202).

World War II

During the Second World War, Carol Victor served as an officer in the German army in Romania, and in the autumn of 1941 there was speculation that the Germans, who had occupied Kingdom of Serbia, including the Kosovo with Albanian majority, would use him to rally Albanians to the German cause. This worried Mussolini's Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, to such extent that in November 1941, he accused the Germans of aiming to construct a new Albanian state led by Prince Carol Victor, which would be anti-Italian and whose militia would take oath directly to Hitler. There appeared to be little truth to Ciano's fears, and the Germans reassured him they had no such ambition for the prince (Fischer, Albania at War, 1939 - 1945, page 86). At the time of second/third Battle of Cassino he belonged to the 44th Infantry Division (Manfred Schick, Monte Cassino: Ein Rückblick nach 60 Jahren). On the death of his father, on 18 April 1945 at Predeal, near Sinaia, in Romania, he succeeded as Head of the Princely House of Albania (Wied) and Sovereign Grand Master of the Order of the Black Eagle although he made no public claim to the throne of Albania. Less than a year his father's death, both his uncles William Frederick (''6. Fürst zu Wied'') and Victor, former German ambassador to Sweden (''1933 -1943'') died. Also in 1945, his uncle Günther (''5. Fürst von Schönburg-Waldenburg''), Sophie's brother, was expropriated without compensation and interned at Rügen island (Sächsische Biografie). His sister,

Princess Marie Eleonore of Albania Princess Marie Eleonore of Albania, Princess of Wied (Marie Eleonore Elisabeth Cecilie Mathilde Lucie Prinzessin von Wied; 19 February 190929 September 1956) was the only daughter of William, Prince of Albania and his wife Princess Sophie of Sch� ...

(''Princesha e Shqipërisë'') died in a communist internment camp at Miercurea Ciuc, Romania, on 29 September 1956, without issue.

Later life

In 1952, Carol Victor wrote a bibliographical survey of his ancestor the German explorer, ethnologist and naturalist Maximilian of Wied (''Proceedings of the 30th International Congress of Americanists'', held at Cambridge, pages 193 - 194). Later he wrote "Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, sein Leben und seine Reisen" ''in Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, unveröffentliche Bilder und Handschriften zur Völkerkunde Brasiliens'', Josef Röder and Hermann Trimborn (editors), Bonn, Ferdinand Dümmler, 1954), pages 13 – 25. In 1960, Carol Victor left the Munich society ''"Freunde des Balletts"'', of which he was president since its foundation in 1956 (Der Spiegel 19/1960). The following year he published the book: ''"Königinnen des Balletts: Zweihundert Jahre europäisches Ballett"''.

Marriage

On 8 September 1966, whilst living in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, Carol Victor married the English-born widow Eileen de Coppet (née Johnston), whose first husband had been Captain André de Coppet (1892 - 1953). They had no children; de Coppet was in her forties when the marriage occurred. Carol Victor and Eileen lived later in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London. Carol Victor died seven years later without issue in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

.Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, editor, Burke's Royal Families of the World, Volume 1: Europe & Latin America (London, U.K.: Burke's Peerage Ltd, 1977), page 6. Hereinafter cited as Burke's Royal Families of the World, Volume 1 He was buried at

Neuwied Neuwied () is a town in the north of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, capital of the District of Neuwied. Neuwied lies on the east bank of the Rhine, 12 km northwest of Koblenz, on the railway from Frankfurt am Main to Cologne. Th ...

. His widow lived on until 1985.