Charles Edward Duke of Albania

Charles Edward (Leopold Charles Edward George Albert; 19 July 1884 – 6 March 1954) was at various points in his life a British prince, a German duke, and a Nazi politician.

He was the last ruling duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a state of the German Empire, from 30 July 1900 to 14 November 1918. He was later given multiple positions in the Nazi regime, including leader of the German Red Cross, and acted as an unofficial diplomat for the German government.

Charles Edward's parents were Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, and Princess Helen of Waldeck and Pyrmont. His paternal grandparents were Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Prince Leopold died before his son's birth. Charles Edward was born in Surrey, England, and brought up as a British prince. He was a sickly child who developed a close relationship with his grandmother and his only sibling, Alice. He was privately educated, including at Eton College. In 1899, Charles Edward was selected to succeed to the throne of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha because he was deemed young enough to be re-educated as a German. He moved to Germany at the age of 15. Between 1899 and 1905, he was put through various forms of education, guided by his cousin, German Emperor Wilhelm II.

Charles Edward ascended the ducal throne in 1900 but reigned through a regency until 1905. In 1905, he married Princess Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein. The couple had five children, including Sibylla, the mother of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. The Duke was a conservative ruler with an interest in art and technology. He tried to emphasise his loyalty to his adopted country through various symbolic gestures. Still, his continued close association with the United Kingdom was off-putting both to his subjects and to the German elite. He chose to support the German Empire during the First World War. He had a disability and assisted the Imperial German Army without participating in combat. He was deposed during the German Revolution like the other German princes. He also lost his British titles as a result of his decision to side against the British Empire.

During the 1920s, Charles Edward became a moral and financial supporter of violent far-right paramilitary groups in Germany. By the early 1930s, he was supporting the Nazi Party and joined it in 1933. He helped to promote eugenicist ideas which provided a basis for the murder of many disabled people. He was involved in attempting to shift opinion among the British upper class in a more pro-German direction. His attitudes became more pro-Nazi during the Second World War, though it is unclear how much of a political role he played. After the war, he was interned for a period and was given a minor conviction by a denazification court. He died of cancer in 1954.

Early life in Britain

Family

Charles Edward's father was Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, the youngest son of the reigning British monarch, Queen Victoria. Historian Karina Urbach described Leopold as "the most intellectual of Queen Victoria's children". Charles Edward's mother, Princess Helen, Duchess of Albany, was the daughter of the ruling prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont, George Victor, and the sister of Queen Emma of the Netherlands. Royal biographer Theo Aronson described her as a "capable, conscientious" woman, and a devout Christian. Leopold, who suffered from haemophilia, died after slipping and hitting his head months before Charles Edward's birth. Charles Edward was in no danger of being affected by haemophilia because a boy cannot inherit the condition from his father.

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the British royal family had developed close familial relationships with continental Protestant, and particularly German, aristocrats. Queen Victoria's immediate family belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; her deceased husband, Prince Albert, was the younger brother of the childless Duke Ernest II.[9] Ernest governed the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, one of the states in the federalised German Empire. Victoria and Albert's eldest daughter, Victoria, German Empress, was the mother of German Emperor Wilhelm II. Victoria and Albert's eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, was the heir apparent to the British throne. Thus it was their second son, Prince Alfred, who succeeded his uncle Ernest II in 1893. Aronson commented on a painting of the family commissioned to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887:

To each other, these impressive-looking figures might be known by such arch nicknames as Ducky or Mossie or Sossie, but among the group were a host of future kings, queens, emperors and empresses. In time, these direct descendants of Queen Victoria would sit on no less than ten European thrones. With good reason was the old Queen known as the 'Grandmama of Europe'. And in an age when it was still widely believed that monarchs were as important as they looked, it would be only natural ... [for a child to assume it was] the most powerful clan on earth.

Childhood

Leopold Charles Edward George Albert was born on 19 July 1884 at Claremont House near Esher, Surrey. He used the name Charles Edward. Leopold had wanted his firstborn son to be named after Charles Edward Stuart, an 18th-century claimant to the British throne. The infant was privately baptised at Claremont on 4 August 1884 after he fell ill. His baptism was publicly certified at St George's Church, Esher, on 4 December 1884. Charles Edward was brought up as a prince of the United Kingdom for the first 15 years of his life. He succeeded to his deceased father's titles at birth and was styled His Royal Highness the Duke of Albany. In addition to being the Duke of Albany, he was also the Earl of Clarence and Baron Arklow. He had a sister, Alice, who was a year and a half older. Being an intensely anxious child, he often looked to Alice for support, a habit that continued throughout his adulthood. The siblings were nicknamed "Siamese twins".

Theo Aronson described the Albany household at Claremont House as "cosy, comfortable, well-ordered". After her husband's death, the British Parliament had given Helen an annual grant from the civil list of 6,000 pound sterling. This did not make her as wealthy as she was during her marriage, but did allow her to employ several domestic servants, including a number responsible for the children. One of Charles Edward's childhood nannies referred to him as "delicate and sensitive, nervous and tiring". Medical experts consulted by the royal family believed that he had been permanently harmed by the grief which his widowed mother had suffered from during her pregnancy. No record of Charles Edward's own childhood memories exists, but Alice fondly recalled this period of their lives. Aronson commented that the environment where the two children were looked after was a "typical, late nineteenth-century nursery". He described it as:

... a small, self-contained world of early-to-rise, porridge for breakfast, vigorous hair-brushings, buttoned boots, holland pinafores, pick-a-back rides, stories, squabbles, tears, treats and punishments, bland nursery meals, walks to the lake to feed the wild ducks with squares of dry bread ... , little covered baskets holding soup or jelly or junket for the sick, pony rides in the park, baths filled with hot water from highly polished copper cans, firelight, lamplight, warming-pans, good-night prayers, nightlights.

Caring for the children was mainly the responsibility of their nannies, but they spent time with their mother for set periods each day. She taught the children practical skills, such as knitting, and gave them their Sunday school lessons. Helen read them literature by various well-known English and Scottish authors of the 19th century. She was an affectionate mother but also a strict one—insisting her children were brought up with stern discipline and encouraged to develop a sense of duty. Her son did not react well to this, becoming afraid of his mother and authority more generally. Charles Edward, his mother, and his sister were surrounded by members of the wider royal family in proximity to Queen Victoria. They frequently spent time with the Queen at her various estates. Charles Edward was described as Victoria's favourite grandchild. The boy and his sister often visited Balmoral Castle where they prepared for their future positions. Victoria enjoyed her grandchildren acting out dramatic scenes which reflected the religious values she wanted to inculcate in them. Lewis Carroll, a family friend, described Charles Edward as a "perfect little prince" who was well-trained in court etiquette and ceremony. Princess Helen also took her children on visits to her relatives in Germany and the Netherlands.

Public duties were a part of the royal family's functions, though Aronson suggests that they were naïve about the deeply unpleasant conditions in which much of the British population lived. Charles Edward's mother was—unusually for a German aristocrat—especially interested in social issues and, according to Alice, the children were encouraged to sympathise with others and engage in charitable work. Charles Edward developed an interest in military and royal occasions at a young age. He was given his first ceremonial position in the Seaforth Highlanders regiment of the British Army as a child. Victoria mentioned the five-year-old Prince wearing the "full uniform of the Seaforth Highlanders" in her diary. Shortly before his 13th birthday, Charles Edward participated in a parade for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The boy climbed on the roof of Buckingham Palace to see the assembled crowds before the event. He was described in contemporary press reports as being the most well-received participant.

Historian Hubertus Büschel indicates that the British royal family had high expectations for their young members' education. Charles Edward's first teacher was a governess called "Mrs Potts" who taught him together with his sister. The siblings developed a lifelong interest in history from her lessons where they were allowed to play-act historical scenes. He was then sent to school without his sister, studying in the privately funded public school system. Charles Edward attended two prep schools, firstly Sandroyd School in Surrey, and later Park Hill School in Lyndhurst. In a 1896 diary entry, Queen Victoria mentioned meeting the headmaster of the latter school "Mr Rawnsley" and his wife. She commented that: "All they said was most satisfactory. He seems to be very careful & kind." In 1898 the prince enrolled at Eton College and his mother hoped he would eventually go on to Oxford University. Eton College was a boarding school closely associated with the British elite. Press reports sometimes accused the boy of behaving self-importantly at school. He was happy at Eton and looked back nostalgically at his time at that school throughout his life. Aronson described the prince in his early teens as "small, blue-eyed, exceptionally handsome and highly strung". He was not expected to grow up to be a particularly prominent person.

First years in Germany

Selection as heir

Duke Alfred's only son, Prince Alfred, died in 1899. The Duke was in poor health and the question of who would be his successor became an issue for the family. Alfred was seen as an inadequate foreigner by many members of the German governing elite, and a number of German princes wanted to split up the duchy among themselves. Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, Victoria and Albert's third son, was initially heir presumptive. However, sections of the German press objected to a foreigner taking the throne, and Wilhelm II opposed a man who had served in the British army becoming ruler of a German state. Arthur's son, Prince Arthur of Connaught, was at Eton with Charles Edward. Wilhelm II demanded a German education for the boy, but this was unacceptable to the Duke of Connaught. Thus both Charles Edward's uncle and cousin renounced their claims to the duchy, leaving Charles Edward next in line. The prince was named heir under family pressure. There were reports in the American press that the younger Arthur had physically attacked Charles Edward or threatened to do so if he did not accept the position.

The boy seemed unhappy with the change of situation that had been imposed on him. Historian Alan R. Rushton quoted him as saying: "I've got to go and be a beastly German prince." Rushton suggested that the adults around him appear to have encouraged Charles Edward to embrace his new role. His sister remembered their mother saying "I have always tried to bring up Charlie as a good Englishman, and now I have to turn him into a good German". Field Marshal Frederick Roberts told him to "Try to be a good German!" However, both Büschel and Aronson interpret his mother's comment instead as an expression of frustration about the new situation. Only fourteen years old at the time, Charles Edward's young age—as well as his German mother and lack of his British father—meant that he was deemed able to assimilate into German society in a way an older man would not be. The local newspaper in Coburg praised the choice. There was significant public interest in Germany in what happened to Charles Edward. According to Rushton, some Germans felt "it was now important for the English boy to become a German man and leader of his adopted land". The prince was confirmed before leaving to go to Germany. Queen Victoria commented in her diary:

Beatrice gave me a full account of the ceremony. Poor Helen & Charlie had borne up well during the service, but were much overcome [by emotion] afterwards. It is very hard upon the poor child having to be uprooted like this, & it is naturally a great wrench for him, & for his mother it is really terrible to have her whole future deranged to give up for the time being her happy quiet home & to give up her fatherless boy to go into the unknown!

Marriage and children

As Charles Edward was considered to have an "ambiguous" attitude towards women, according to Urbach, his family decided he needed an arranged marriage at a young age. Wilhelm II chose his wife's niece, Princess Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, as the bride of Charles Edward. She was believed to be well-adjusted and loyal to Wilhelm's royal house. Her nationality was seen as important and Victoria Adelaide lacked any non-German or Jewish ancestry. The young man was told to propose to her and he obliged. A degree of affection did exist between the young couple. They married on 11 October 1905, at Glücksburg Castle, Schleswig-Holstein, and had five children. Zeepzat commented that they were happy, but Urbach indicated otherwise.

The couple had five children: 

• Prince Johann Leopold (1906–1972), 
• Princess Sibylla (1908–1972), 
• Prince Hubertus (1909–1943), 
• Princess Caroline Mathilde [fr] (1912–1983), and
•  Prince Friedrich Josias (1918–1998). 

As was expected for upper-class households at the time, caring for the children was largely delegated to the domestic servants. The family mainly spoke English at home, though the children learnt to speak German fluently. Hubertus was the Duke's favourite child. A profile of the family published in the British newspaper The Sphere in 1914, commented on the children:

The Coburg family are bright, happy children who lead a natural life, spending a great deal of their time in the open air in the fine grounds of their castle. They are very fond of riding. In the winter, which is a severe one in Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, they delight in ski-ing and other outdoor amusements suitable to snowy weather.

Urbach discussed the family in later years. She commented that Charles Edward's children were frightened of their father, who treated them "like a military unit". She noted that the family often appear unhappy in photographs. His younger daughter, Princess Caroline Mathilde, claimed that her father had sexually abused her. The allegation was backed by one of her brothers. Charles Edward was often disappointed by his children's choice of romantic relationships, at a time when he was trying to use strategic marriages to improve the diminished reputation of his royal house.

Early involvement with the Nazi Party

From 1929 onward, Charles Edward provided financial support to the Nazi Party. In 1932, Callenberg Castle was renovated with a Swastika added to a tower. The former duke was attracted by the party's militarism and anti-communism. Hitler had also expressed opposition to the expropriation of royal property. Charles Edward was a useful ally for the Nazis in the period before they gained power, with extensive links in Franconia and across Germany.

In 1929, his support contributed to Coburg becoming the first town in Germany to elect a Nazi Party council. The election had taken place due to a dispute about a Nazi supporter being dismissed from his job for attacking Jews. Charles Edward's visits to Nazi party events were covered in the local press, increasing the party's profile and prestige.

Following the election of the Nazi Party locally in 1929, politically motivated violence against their opponents became common and tolerated by the local police. The Jewish population of Coburg also experienced growing amounts of physical abuse and discrimination. Rushton writes that the former duke's publicly expressed beliefs and financial support contributed to the growth of hatred towards Jewish people in Coburg and Germany as a whole. It was widely known that Charles Edward and his wife were antisemitic. According to Rushton, Charles Edward would have been aware of the violent behaviour of the movements he was involved in but never objected. The First World War had convinced him of the merits of political violence.

The former duke and Waldemar Pabst established the "Society for Studying Fascism" in 1931. The organisation was meant to design a plan for governing Germany based on the example of Italian fascism. Mussolini's dictatorship interested Charles Edward and others like him. It seemed to them that fascism was a method of running a country which could merge the traditional aristocracy and a new elite. The former duke was elected leader of the National Klub in 1932. This was a social club which had a membership largely composed of businessmen who disliked the postwar system of government. He encouraged them to join the Nazi Party and by the end of the year 70% had done so. Also in 1932, he took part in the creation of the Harzburg Front, through which the German National People's Party and other groups with similar views became associated with the Nazi Party. He also publicly called on voters to support Hitler in the presidential election of 1932. While the Nazi party lost that election across Germany, they won in Coburg.

In 1932, Charles Edward's daughter Sibylla married Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten, the eldest son of the Crown Prince of Sweden and second-in-line to the Swedish throne. The marriage meant that Sibylla would be expected to become Queen of Sweden (which however did not happen). Charles Edward used the event as a public display of his ideology and to improve the damaged prestige of the Duke's family. More than a decade after the First World War it was a chance for them to appear important in international royal circles again. Coburg was decorated with Swedish and Nazi flags. 5000 men in Nazi uniforms marched outside Veste Coburg. Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring congratulated the marriage.

George V stopped Edward, Prince of Wales, from attending the wedding due to objections to Charles Edward's political views, although some of Charles Edward's British relatives did attend. In Sweden, which was in a politically unstable situation with a growing republican movement, the wedding became quite controversial due to the symbolism used and as Gustaf was known to have Nazi sympathies. The Swedish government were promised that some changes would be made to the programme for the event but these were not fulfilled.[The wedding received much coverage in the German and foreign press.

Membership in the Nazi party

In 1933, the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. Charles Edward started flying the Nazi flag over Veste Coburg. He formally joined the Nazi Party in March 1933; he also became an Obergruppenführer in the Sturmabteilung (Storm Division). Meanwhile, a temporary prison was established in the middle of Coburg where Jewish people and opponents of the regime were tortured. No effort was made to keep this secret. The former duke was quickly given various ceremonial titles along with holding positions on the boards of multiple businesses. A photo collection of senior figures in the new regime published by a German private company included him at number 43. Charles Edward stated publicly in 1934 that he would "blindly follow Hitler forever".

According to Urbach, the former duke became a "highly honoured" member of the party, appearing in photographs with its senior members and setting up an office in Berlin which he could use to form relationships. She wrote that he was proud of his Nazi Party membership and that the SA uniform allowed him to feel more like his pre-war self. He lost the right to use his SA uniform after the Night of the Long Knives, this upset him a great deal, but he accepted the politically motivated murders. He was later given a Wehrmacht general's uniform. Some figures within the Nazi Party were suspicious of the former duke, suspecting that he was motivated by ambition or wanted to restore the monarchy. He awarded his own personal medal to a number of Nazi supporters until being stopped by the regime in 1936.

Charles Edward was made president of the National Socialist Automobile Association, an organisation which provided vehicles for the German state, including those used to carry out the Holocaust. From 1936 to 1945, he served as a member of the Reichstag, representing the Nazi Party. In appointment diaries—which he kept from 1932 to 1940—he often expressed his enthusiastic support for the party. For instance, he recorded the results of the 1936 one-party election in detail and praised the outcome. Büschel commented that the former duke appeared to see himself as fully a German by this stage in his life. He described Charles Edward's lifestyle during the period;

... [The] importance that Carl Eduard had for the Hitler regime was evident in the luxury of apartments befitting his rank and the amenities of a large fleet of vehicles, diligent adjutants, administrators and servants as well as abundant foreign currency ... Carl Eduard lived more unmolested under National Socialism than in the Weimar Republic at the Coburg Castle and his numerous other castles. The dispute over properties in Thuringia and Austria, which had been confiscated by the state authorities after the end of the First World War, was soon resolved in favour of the ducal family, not least through the intervention of high-ranking National Socialist party members.

German Red Cross

On 1 December 1933, Charles Edward was appointed head of the Deutsches Rotes Kreuz (German Red Cross). Hitler approved the appointment because he knew the former duke well. He believed that Charles Edward was a supporter of the Nazis' ideas relating to race and eugenics. The former duke's appointment also reflected a historic tradition of aristocrats participating in humanitarian activities. His links to European royalty meant he was considered a useful figurehead for the organisation abroad. He was expected to share power with the German Red Cross's deputy leader Dr Paul Hocheisen. Over the early months of Charles Edward's presidency, a power struggle occurred between the two men as the President tried to assert his authority within the organisation. In the summer of 1934, the party largely transferred control over the German Red Cross to Hocheisen.

The organisation was quickly made to conform with the government's goals. Rushton commented that "Two years after the founding of the new regime, the DRK [German Red Cross] was remodelled into a paramilitary organization with the goal of providing support for soldiers in a time of conflict". The treatment of political prisoners in Germany—opponents of the Nazis who had been imprisoned after they came to power—became a topic of international discussion in the early years of the regime. After the Swedish Red Cross requested an investigation into the subject in 1934, the International Red Cross began to make enquiries. The German Red Cross claimed that conditions for the prisoners were better than their usual quality of life. Charles Edward helped arrange for his friend, President of the International Red Cross Carl Jacob Burckhardt, to make a tightly controlled tour of the concentration camps, including Dachau, in 1935. Burckhardt privately felt that the camps were "brutal", but his report was heavily censored and said that conditions were adequate. Burckhardt wrote to the former duke thanking him for organising the tour.

In 1937, Ernst-Robert Grawitz was appointed deputy leader to increase the organisation's links with the SS. Charles Edward was made "an officer of the chancellery of the Fuhrer", giving him access to private information on government business. The senior roles in the German Red Cross were increasingly filled by Nazi Party members, and members of the organisation were taught that "the Jews, Slavs, chronically ill, handicapped ... were nothing more than worthless". Charles Edward gradually became less prominent in public within Germany during the regime's early years and ceased to make domestic public appearances almost entirely after Grawitz's appointment in 1937. The regime was becoming increasingly radical and saw the former duke as a symbol of the past.

Second World War

Charles Edward was again on the opposite side of a war to his birth country when the Second World War broke out in 1939—there is no evidence that it caused him any distress or led him to doubt his political convictions. Although the former duke was too old for active service, his three sons served in the Wehrmacht. In 1941, he began to use a diary to note down news about the war, using different coloured pens for different sources of information. When his son, Hubertus, died in an air crash in 1943, he noted in the diary "Hubertus † fürs Vaterland" (Hubertus died for the Fatherland). He underlined the shorthand cross for death in the colour he used for reports from the Wehrmacht. In 1942, Charles Edward was asked by his relative Prince Eugene of Sweden to arrange for Martha Liebermann, an elderly Jewish woman, to be granted permission to emigrate to the United States. He did nothing to help and Liebermann later took her own life after being ordered to report for deportation to Theresienstadt Ghetto.

Charles Edward's support for Nazism grew more intense during the war years and never relented. Hitler considered making him King of Norway after the war. The former duke probably ceased to act as an informal diplomat after 1940. His health was declining and he appeared older than his years. He continued to wear uniforms and travelled to countries that were either occupied by Germany, members of the Axis powers or neutral. A 1941 edition of Les Actualités mondiales, a newsreel circulated in German-occupied France, discussed him visiting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and undertaking German Red Cross activities in France. Travelling abroad was a privilege afforded to few German civilians during the war years. It is unclear what Charles Edward was doing politically during that period, but he was being paid 4,000 Reichsmarks a month by the German government, from a fund Hitler had organised for associates that were useful to him. In 1940, Charles Edward helped mediate a diplomatic dispute between the British and German governments about the treatment of prisoners of war, stopping a number of prisoners on both sides from being shackled. In 1943, at Hitler's behest, Charles Edward asked the International Red Cross to investigate the Katyn massacre.

In April 1945, code breakers at Bletchley Park deciphered an order from Hitler stating that Charles Edward should not be allowed to be captured. According to Urbach, that meant Hitler wanted him killed. That month, Charles Edward agreed to the surrender of Veste Coburg to US forces. He gained their assistance in putting out a fire in the castle museum which had been started by the bombardment. He was on the US Army's list of suspected war criminals and was put under house arrest, until being moved to a prisoner of war camp in November. He was questioned and drank wine with his captors in one of the castle's sitting rooms. His interrogators saw him as ignorant, obnoxious and possibly mentally unstable. He said in an interview that he would accept an offer to participate in a new German government, made a series of demands relating to the idea, and claimed that "no German is guilty of any war crimes". The comments were deemed so useful for Allied propaganda that they were used in a radio broadcast in April 1945. He also expressed the view that it had been right to remove Jews from public life and that Germans were naturally unsuited to democracy.

Postwar period and death

Trial and final years

After the end of the Second World War, Charles Edward was interned by the American military authorities from 1945 to 1946. His sister lobbied for his release on health grounds. After his release, he and Victoria Adelaide moved into a cottage outside Callenberg Castle. The castle was being used as a home for refugees. Alice visited the couple in 1948; according to her account, they were impoverished and her brother was severely unwell with arthritis. She persuaded the authorities to let them move into part of one of his residences, closer to where her sister-in-law could buy food.

In April 1946, Charles Edward's daughter Sibylla gave birth to a son, Carl Gustaf, who at birth was third in the line of succession to the Swedish throne. In January 1947, Sibylla's husband died in a plane crash, and in October 1950, Gustaf V of Sweden died, at which point Charles Edward's grandson became Crown Prince of Sweden, later becoming King Carl XVI Gustaf.

Charles Edward's trial spanned four years and included two appeals. Alice and many other associates dishonestly spoke on his behalf, minimising his involvement in the regime. A year or so after the war, the priority of the Western Allies had shifted away from punishing former Nazis towards preparing their occupation zones to become part of the Western Bloc during the Cold War. In 1950 (or August 1949, according to his ODNB entry), the former duke was found by a denazification court to be a Mitläufer and Minderbelasteter (roughly: 'follower' and 'follower of lesser guilt'). The former duke's biographer Carl Sandler called the result a "farce". Charles Edward also lost significant property due to his participation in the Second World War. His property in Gotha, situated in the Soviet occupation zone, was confiscated and redistributed.

Charles Edward spent the last years of his life in seclusion, forced into relative poverty by the fines he had been required to pay by the denazification tribunal, and the seizure of much of his property by the Soviets. However, his lifestyle to a large extent returned to normal after his trial. In 1953, he was taken by ambulance and wheelchair to view the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom at a cinema in Coburg. He reportedly appeared to be close to crying while watching his relatives, including his sister. According to a column published that year in The Scotsman, the former duke had reestablished links with the Seaforth Highlanders, a British Army regiment of which he had once been colonel-in-chief, which was now stationed in Germany. The column commented that:

On the occasion of a regimental ball, an invitation was sent to the Duke, with a note from the C.O. (Lieut.-Colonel P. J. Johnston) saying that, owing to the distance, it was doubtful if he would be able to attend, but it was the wish of all officers of the battalion that their old Colonel-in-Chief should be asked. The Duke replied that, although his health did not allow him to accept, he was deeply touched by the invitation, "renewing old connections which existed between the Seaforth Highlanders and myself for so many years, and which I honestly hope and wish will not be severed again". He said he would be pleased to receive as guest any comrade who should happen to pass Coburg, where he lives, and signed himself "Charles Edward. Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Duke of Albany."

Death

Charles Edward died of cancer in his flat in Coburg on 6 March 1954, at the age of 69. He had reportedly told his son Friedrich Josias that Queen Victoria had always wanted him to be a "good German". His obituary in The Times commented that "... he was Hitler's man ... Whether, and to what extent, he was admitted to the inner council of the Nazi gang is as yet an open question." Representatives of various royal houses across Europe sent condolences but the British royal family did not comment.

Charles Edward's funeral was held on 10 March and presided over by a Lutheran dean who had been a church official under the Nazi regime. He said Charles Edward was a good man who had been manipulated by others and mistreated by the Allies. The former duke's death was officially mourned in Coburg. A civil servant who refused to fly a flag at half mast for his funeral was reported to the district council in Bayreuth and condemned by a member of the Parliament of Bavaria. Victoria Adelaide received many letters of support in the weeks after her husband's death, including from former senior Nazis. Charles Edward's burial took place on 12 October, watched by a crowd of well-wishers. He is buried at the Waldfriedhof Cemetery (Waldfriedhof Beiersdorf) near Callenberg Castle, in the Beiersdorf district of Coburg.