Louis Ferdinand Victor Eduard Adalbert Michael Hubertus, Prince of
Prussia (German: Louis Ferdinand Victor
Eduard Adalbert Michael Hubertus Prinz von Preußen; 9 November 1907 – 26 September 1994) was a
member of the royal House of Hohenzollern and
the pretender for a half-century to the abolished German
throne. He was also noteworthy as a staunch opponent of the Nazi Party, a businessman, and a patron of the arts. Louis
Ferdinand was born in Potsdam as the third in succession to
the throne of the German Empire, after his father, German Crown Prince William and
elder brother Prince Wilhelm
of Prussia. The monarchy was abolished after Germany's revolution in
1918. When Louis Ferdinand's older brother Prince Wilhelm renounced his
succession rights to marry a member of the untitled nobility in 1933 (he was
later to be killed in action in France in 1940 fighting in the German army),
Louis Ferdinand replaced him as second in the line of succession to the defunct
German throne after the Crown Prince. Louis Ferdinand was educated in Berlin and deviated from his family's tradition by not
pursuing a military career. Instead, he travelled extensively and settled for
some time in Detroit, where he
befriended Henry Ford and became acquainted
with Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
among others. He held a great interest in engineering. Recalled from the United States upon his brother's renunciation of the
throne, he got involved in the German aviationindustry, but was barred by Hitler from taking any active part in German military
activities. Louis Ferdinand dissociated himself from the Nazis after this. He
was not involved in the 20 July Plot against Hitler in 1944 but was interrogated
by the Gestapo immediately afterwards. He was released
shortly afterwards. He married the Grand Duchess
Kira Kirillovna of Russia in 1938 in first a Russian Orthodox ceremony in Potsdam and then a Lutheran ceremony
in Huis Doorn, Netherlands. Kira was the second daughter of Grand Duke Kyril
Vladimirovich and Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The couple had
four sons and three daughters. His two eldest sons both renounced their
succession rights in order to marry commoners. His third son, and
heir-apparent, Prince Louis
Ferdinand died in 1977 during military maneuvers, and thus his
one-year-old grandson Georg Friedrich, Prince of
Prussia (son of Prince Louis Ferdinand) became the new
heir-apparent to the Prussian and German Imperial throne; Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia became
the pretender to the thrones and head of the Hohenzollern family upon Louis
Ferdinand's death in 1994. After the reunification of Germany, Louis Ferdinand
arranged to have the remains of several Hohenzollern members reinterred at the
imperial vault in Potsdam. Prince Ferdinand of
Hohenzollern, a member of the senior Swabian branch of the
Hohenzollern dynasty, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen,
is his godson.