Item: i104744

Authentic Coin of:

Yugoslavia - Peter II: King: 9 October 1934 - 29 November 1945
1938 Silver 50 Dinara 31mm (15.00 grams) 0.750 Silver (0.3617 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 24
ПЕТАР II КРАЉ ЈУГОСЛАВНЈЕ, Head of King Peter II right.
Crowned heraldic double-headed eagle; 19-38 across fields; 50 ДИНАРА below.
Edge Lettering: БОГ ЧУВА ЈУГОСЛАВИЈУ (Translation: God protects Yugoslavia).

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Peter II (Serbo-Croatian: Petar/Петар; 6 September 1923 - 3 November 1970) was the last King of Yugoslavia, and the last reigning member of the Karađorđević dynasty which came to prominence in the early 19th century.

Peter II was the eldest son of Alexander I of Yugoslavia and Maria of Romania. His godfather was the British king George VI.

Prince Peter was initially tutored at the Royal Palace, Belgrade, before attending Sandroyd School then in Cobham, Surrey where Reed's School now stands. When he was 11 years old, Prince Peter succeeded to the Yugoslav throne in 1934 upon the assassination of his father King Alexander I in Marseille during a state visit to France. In view of the new monarch's young age, a regency was set up under his father's cousin Prince Paul.

World War II

Although King Peter II and his advisors were utterly opposed to Nazi Germany,^{[citation needed]} Regent-Prince Paul declared that the kingdom of Yugoslavia would join the Tripartite Pact on 25 March 1941. Two days later, King Peter, at age 17, was proclaimed of age, after a British-supported coup d'état.

Postponing Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany simultaneously attacked Yugoslavia and Greece on 6 April 1941. Within a week, Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary and Italy invaded Yugoslavia, and the government was forced to surrender on 17 April. Parts of Yugoslavia were annexed by Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary and Germany. In the remaining parts of the kingdom of Yugoslavia, Croatia and Serbia, two Nazi-puppet governments were installed.

Peter left the country with the Royal Yugoslav Government's ministers following the Axis invasion. Initially the Yugoslav king and his government ministers went to Greece en route to British-ruled Jerusalem in Palestine, and then Cairo in Egypt. In June 1941, King Peter arrived in London where he joined numerous other governments in exile from Nazi-occupied Europe.

The King completed his education at Cambridge University before being commissioned in the Royal Air Force. In 1942 he made a diplomatic visit to America and Canada, where he met American President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. The whirlwind tour was unsuccessful in securing Allied support for the exiled Yugoslav monarchist cause. Roosevelt and Churchill had already engaged the support of the Communist Yugoslav Government in the Allied effort to defeat Nazi Germany, with a view to ending the hostilities.

Marriage

The Chicago Tribunal reported on 1 August 1943 about the royal romance in London between King Peter and Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark that: "The princess, a pretty, dark-haired girl, used to serve waffles and coffee to American officers and nurses over a snack bar at the London Red Cross club. There she met King Peter, a slender young man in naval uniform who often dropped in to listen to the music of a United States infantry band". Peter married his third cousin, Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark in London on 20 March 1944. They had one son, Crown Prince Alexander, who was born on 17 July 1945.

Deposition and exile

Though the war ended, Peter was not allowed to return home. He was deposed by Yugoslavia's Communist Constituent Assembly on 29 November 1945. After that, he settled in the United States. As a king without throne living in Chicago, Peter was something of a novelty for Americans, and addressed various civic groups, for example in 1949 it was reported that the "young, modern, democratic monarch who refused to accept the situation in his country" spoke to the Kohler Woman's club in Sheboygan on the subject of "My kingdom for freedom". In 1951, Peter went on the James Melton Festival TV show, where he was described as a "sad-eyed youth" who was "a flop as a TV personality" whose was noticeably nervous before the TV cameras.

Peter filed for divorce in 1953. He hired attorney René de Chambrun, the son-in-law of Vichy France Prime Minister Pierre Laval. However, the couple reconciled in 1955. The actress Ilka Chase who met the former king and queen Alexandra on the French Riveria, and wrote:

"Much of his behavior in futile pursuit of his lost throne was so shabby, ill-advised, and stupid as to seem incredible. I should think the poor devil would hate to see it in black and white, but apparently he did squander his entire fortune, accumulate staggering debts, desert his wife, lie to her, try to have their son taken from her, and in general behave in a manner far from loveable. But she loved him. After estrangement and desertion they once more are reunited and are living in a four room apartment in Cannes, when I went to call on them. They are candid in explaining that their income is from Serbians living in exile who contribute weekly whatever they can spare so that their king and queen may maintain a home."

In 1956, Queen Alexandra published a memoir, For the Love of a King, which one American reviewer described as: "an impatient regret for the waste of talent and enormous sums of money such a useless upbringing permits and a sturdy swing toward that funny system derided by Europeans as the American way of life. In this time of agonized reappraisal of the evils of P.S. 102, the self-satisfaction this book will induce among its alumni is well worth reading it for." In 1959, the Chicago Tribunal reported about Peter's visit to the Chicago suburb of Waukegan: "The 34 year old monarch was greeted in a drizzling rain by Mayor Robert Sabonjian and City Clerk Howard Guthrie and taken thru a marine engine plant and the city's new Thomas Jefferson Junior High school. He was treated to a dinner of Lake Michigan trout, with sturgeon and smoked chubs as appetizers, and pronounced the meal "most exquisite." The former king also met Waukegan's weather prophet, Mathon Kryitsis, a fisherman who for many years has forecast the severity of the winter by gauging the depth at which perch are feeding".

From 1962 to his death he served as the Royal Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem in the United States.^{[citation needed]} In 1963, Alexandra who was suffering from serve depression tried to commit suicide. As the Chicago area had a substantial Yugoslav immigrant population, Peter spent much of his exile in Chicago, where he maintained ties with anti-communist Serbian emigres, especially with the Serbian National Defense Council. However, the non-aligned movement of the Third World nations which had as one of its leaders, Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia, was felt to be useful for American foreign policy in the Cold War as being disruptive to the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe. In 1963, Peter told the Chicago Tribunal: "The state department has told me that I am a guest in your country, and so I must not discuss American foreign policy towards Yugoslavia." Instead, Peter frequently attended various civic events in the Chicago area, speaking at a fundraiser for the Knights of Malta in 1964, hosting the local meeting of the Alliance Francaise in 1965, attending a memorial for General Draja Milhailovich at the Milhailovich Memorial Home in 1966 and in 1967 attending an event for the Knights of Malta where he knighted "50 persons from Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin". In 1967, Peter took on a job for the first time in his life, working for the Sterling Savings & Loan Association in Los Angeles." When asked about the press if working for a living would hurt his image as a king, Peter replied: "I think it raises my stature a little."

After many years of suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, he died in Denver, Colorado, on 3 November 1970, after a failed liver transplant.

He was interred in Saint Sava Monastery Church at Libertyville, Illinois, the only European monarch so far to have been buried in the United States. In the 1980s, the American soap opera Dynasty was dubbed into Serbo-Croatian and shown on Yugoslav television. As one of the stars of Dynasty, the actress Catherine Oxenberg, was a member of the House of Karadjordjevic, this sparked immense national pride in Serbia and by 1990 led to a major revival of popular interest in the House of Karadjordjevic, which was ironically exploited by the Communist regime of Slobodan Milosevic to burnish its nationalist line.

Return of remains and state funeral

On 4 March 2007, former Crown Prince Alexander announced plans to have his father's remains repatriated to Serbia. Peter II had chosen St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Monastery as his interim resting place because of the extenuating circumstances that afflicted his homeland.^[23] After talks with the Serbian government, the move was confirmed in January 2013 with the burial place being the Royal Family Mausoleum in Oplenac.

On 22 January 2013, Peter's remains were returned to Belgrade, Serbia. He lay in state in the Royal Chapel in Dedinje before being buried in the Royal Family Mausoleum at Oplenac on 26 May 2013 along with his wife, Queen Alexandra. His mother, Queen Marie, and his brother, Prince Andrej, lie nearby. The Serbian Royal Regalia were placed over Peter's coffin. Present at the return ceremony were the Prime Minister Ivica Dačić, Peter's son Alexander with his family, and Serbian Patriarch Irinej.^[2][26] The latter openly advocated for the restoration of the Serbian monarchy.

Yugoslavia (Serbo-Croatian: Jugoslavija/Југославија, Slovene: Jugoslavija, Macedonian: Југославија) was a country in Southeast Europe during most of the 20th century. It came into existence after World War I in 1918^[i] under the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by the merger of the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (itself formed from territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire) with the formerly independent Kingdom of Serbia. The Serbian royal House of Karađorđević became the Yugoslav royal dynasty. Yugoslavia gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris.^[2] The country was named after the South Slavic peoples and constituted their first union, following centuries in which the territories had been part of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary.

Renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929, it was invaded by the Axis powers on 6 April 1941. In 1943, a Democratic Federal Yugoslavia was proclaimed by the Partisan resistance. In 1944, the king recognised it as the legitimate government, but in November 1945 the monarchy was abolished. Yugoslavia was renamed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia in 1946, when a communist government was established. It acquired the territories of Istria, Rijeka, and Zadar from Italy. Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito ruled the country as president until his death in 1980. In 1963, the country was renamed again as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY).

The constituent six socialist republics that made up the country were the SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SR Croatia, SR Macedonia, SR Montenegro, SR Serbia, and SR Slovenia. Serbia contained two Socialist Autonomous Provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo, which after 1974 were largely equal to the other members of the federation. After an economic and political crisis in the 1980s and the rise of nationalism, Yugoslavia broke up along its republics' borders, at first into five countries, leading to the Yugoslav Wars.

After the breakup, the republics of Serbia and Montenegro formed a reduced federation, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), which aspired to the status of sole legal successor to the SFRY, but those claims were opposed by the other former republics. Eventually, Serbia and Montenegro accepted the opinion of the Badinter Arbitration Committee about shared succession. Serbia and Montenegro themselves broke up in 2006 and became independent states, while Kosovo proclaimed independence in 2008.