PHOTO boutiques DE PRESSE ORIGINALE PRINCE CAROL ROUMANIE FUTUR ROI VINTAGE ABDIQUÉE 1930-1940

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Product Name: PHOTO boutiques DE PRESSE ORIGINALE PRINCE CAROL ROUMANIE FUTUR ROI VINTAGE ABDIQUÉE 1930-1940
Type：Photograph Featured boutiques Person/Artist：Prince Year of Production：1930 Original/Licensed Reprint：Original Country/Region of Manufacture：United States

PORINCE CAROL ROUMANIA MEASURING 6X8 INCHES FROM 1919 LATER KING CAROL II ROMANIA VINTAGE ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPH OF

Carol II reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until his abdication on 6 September 1940. Carol was the eldest son of Ferdinand I and became crown prince upon the death of his grand-uncle, King Carol I in 1914.

Carol II

King Carol II

(b.1893 - d.1953)

The most disputed among the four Kings of Romania is, without a doubt, King Carol II. Many considered him responsible for the disintegration of Romania at the beginning of WWII. He was the one to be the first dictator in the twentieth century Romania. His private life was scandalous and outraged even the most loyal partisans of the monarchy.

Son of Prince Ferdinand and Princess Maria, Carol was born on October 3rd, 1893 at Sinaia, being the first Romanian King to be born in Romania. He was baptized, according to the Constitution in orthodox rite. I n Carols early years, King Carol I took care of his education, preparing him for his duties as heir of the throne. The young Carol proved to be an intelligent student with an overflowing personality.

Troubles however, were just around the corner. Once King Ferdinand acceded to the throne, Carol becomes at 21 the heir of the throne. At the same age he becomes senator by law in the Romanian Parliament. During the WWI, while the government and the Roy al Family were in refuge at Iasi, he deserts from the army and run away with his mistress, Ioana (Zizi) Lambrino, daughter of an army major. They secretly married in Odessa. A huge scandal followed. Carol was sent to the Horaita-Neamt Monastery and later the Court of Ilfov declared the marriage null. Despite all these, Carol continued to see his lover and thus Mircea, the illegitimate son of Carol was born in 1920. Carol was sent away in a long trip to end the relationship with Ioana Lambrino.

One year later, Carol met Elena, the daughter of King George and Queen Sofia of Greece. They married the same year and on October 25 their son Mihai, future King of Romania, was born. The relations between Prince Carol and Pr incess Elena ruined short after that and they distanced from each other.

Soon after that Carol meets Elena (Magda) Wolf Lupescu. He falls in love with her. She will dominate his entire life from then on. They ran to Paris to live together. Carol takes the name of Carol Caraiman. Another scandal follows. This time King Ferdi nand decides to withdraw Carols privileges and names Mihai as his successor to the throne.

In 1927 King Ferdinand dies. Mihai becomes King of Romania and the Regency is formed to rule until Mihai will be 21. The Regency was formed of Prince Nicolae - Mihais uncle, Miron Cristea - The Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, and Gheorghe B uzdugan - the president of the High Court of Justice. Not long after that the later one passed away and George Sarateanu took his place.

In 1930 however, Carol returns and just two days later, on June 8 Carol is proclaimed King of Romania in front of the Parliament.

The return of Carol was greatly facilitated by the political situation in the country. Under the reign of King Ferdinand the universal vote was introduced. This led to a proliferation of political parties. Before that, there were two political parties in Romania: the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party. After the WWI the situation changed. The Conservative Party was disintegrated and dozens of other parties took its place. The Liberal Party that formed the government, led by Ionel Bratianu opposed for a while to Carols return.

Shortly after Ferdinands death, Bratianu passed away too. The government lost its influence in the political arena. The Regency had little influence too. In 1928 the Peasants Party took the power, against the liberals. Despite its popularity, the new government could not do much to improve the political situation, being faced with the consequences of the world economic crisis.

On this background the idea that Carol would be the person who could end the fights between the parties and the political instability. On June 6, 1930 Carol returns incognito to Bucharest and two days later the Parliament abrogates the laws that forbad e Carol to become the heir of the throne. He became King Carol II of Romania. It was the first time in history that the father succeeded his son to the throne.

Despite the promises made to the Prime Minister, Carol does not end the relationship with Elena Lupescu. He brings her back to Romania and forces Queen Elena to leave the country.

Carols reign lasted for ten years, between 1930 and 1940. These years meant for Romania a strong economic growth following the world economic crisis on one hand. On the other hand, Carols reign brought the disintegration in 1938 of the parliamentaria n democracy in Romania. The establishment of Carols Royal Dictatorship was facilitated by both the internal and international political situation. In the 30s dictators already ruled most of the countries on the continental Europe. In Romania the people were strongly disappointed by the political parties. In addition right wing extremist movements flourished in those times. The most important one was The Legionary Movement, led by Horia Sima and Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu. Violence was a current practice to end political arguments. Two Prime Ministers were killed by the legionnaires under the reign of Carol II. Meanwhile a new war was about to emerge in Europe.

Under these circumstances in 1938 Carol established a personal dictatorship regime without much opposition. He outlawed all the political parties, establishing a new unique one. His dream to be "The King of National Resurrection" was not to become real ity. He surrounded himself with a camarilla of dubious persons, most of them introduced by his mistress Elena Lupescu.

The following two years brought a lot of bad fortune to Romania. In 1940, following a treaty between Hitlers Germany and Stalins USSR, Romania lost Basarabia and Northern Bucovina to USSR and northwestern Transilvania to Hungary. All this happened wi thout a single gun to be fired. Carol found himself without internal or external political support, facing rallies throughout the country militating against him. The people considered him responsible for the loss of the above-mentioned territories and for the violence in the political life in the country. Thus, in September 1940 Carol gives up most of his decision-making powers in favor of General Ion Antonescu who becomes the head of state. More than that, the next day, on September 6, 1940 Antonescu for ces Carol to abdicate and Mihai becomes for the second time King of Romania. He was only 19. Antonescu is the actual new ruler of Romania.

Carol leaves Romania for good on September 7, 1940 together with his mistress Elena Lupescu, in a special train. He took with him lots of treasures from Romania, among which there were 41 paintings by artists such as Tizian, El Greco, and Grigorescu. H e lived for several years in some South American countries. After that he settled in Portugal.

During the WWII and immediately after that he had some unsuccessful attempts to regain the throne, contacting even the Soviets. They only caused some trouble to King Mihai during the negotiations with the allies. The Romanian political personalities an d parties, with the esception of Gh. Tatatrescu, did not give any support or attention to Carol on these attempts.

After all, Carol marries Elena Lupescu in 1949. He dies in 1953 of cancer. Elena Lupescu who outlived him for almost 25 years inherited his huge fortune. Carol II rests in the chapel of Portugal Kings in Estoril.

Carol II, (born Oct. 15, 1893, Sinaia, Rom.—died April 4, 1953, Estoril, Port.), king of Romania (1930–40), whose controversial reign ultimately gave rise to a personal, monarchical dictatorship.

The eldest son of King Ferdinand I, Carol became crown prince upon the death of his great uncle, King Carol I (October 1914). His domestic life was a constant source of scandal, marked as it was by a morganatic marriage with an officer's daughter, Zizi Lambrino; a second unhappy marriage to Helen, daughter of King Constantine I of Greece; and a continuing liaison with a Jewish adventuress, Magda Lupescu—an affair that finally obliged him to renounce his rights to the throne and go into exile (1925).

Carol II

Carol II.

George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital file no. LC-DIG-ggbain-26331)

Although he was officially excluded from the Romanian succession by an act of January 1926, as well as by his father's will, Carol returned in 1930 and replaced the regency that had governed for his young son Michael. He took the royal oath on June 8, 1930. During his reign he promoted the development of a modern economy, encouraged cultural initiatives of all kinds, and maintained the postwar alliances with France and French allies in eastern Europe. Flamboyant and energetic, an admirer of the authoritarian methods of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, he gradually undermined the already uncertain bases of Romanian democracy. In February 1938—to counter the growing political menace of the chief national fascist group, the Iron Guard—he proclaimed a dictatorship. In December 1938, to supplant the then disbanded political parties and provide a program of social reform, he established the Front of National Rebirth (Frontul Renașterii Naționale) with himself as head. After Romania was divested of territory in Transylvania, Dobrogea, Bukovina, and Bessarabia by Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union in 1940, he was forced to abdicate (Sept. 6, 1940) in favour of his son Michael and to once again seek exile. He married Lupescu in July 1947.

King Carol spent his last years in exile in Mexico and Brazil before buying a villa at Estoril in Portugal. His sudden death there of a heart attack, aged fifty-nine, removed from the scene a Ruritanian figure, who was appropriately the subject of a biography by Barbara Cartland. Dashing, wilful and reckless, a lover of women, champagne and speed, Carol drove racing cars and piloted planes, and on state occasions appeared in operetta uniforms with enough ribbons, chains and orders to sink a small destroyer.

The kings of Romania were originally Hohenzollerns from Prussia. Carol, born in a fairy tale, Zenda-like castle in the Carpathian Mountains, was the son of King Ferdinand and the notorious Queen Marie, a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria. In his twenties he was introduced to a Russian princess with a view to marriage, but they did not take to each other. Instead in 1918, to his familys consternation, he secretly married Zizi Lambrino, a generals daughter. Carol was packed off to a monastery and she was returned to her family. After a time they were permitted to see each other again, and she bore him a son, but he had other liaisons and in 1921 he was persuaded to renounce her and marry Princess Helen of Greece, who also gave him a son, Michael.

Still busily womanising, Carol now found the love of his life, the red-haired, green-eyed Magda Lupescu, low-born Jewish wife of an army officer. Carol ran off to Italy with her in 1925, renounced his right to the throne and took her to live with him in Paris. Princess Helen divorced him in 1928.

Meanwhile, King Ferdinand died in 1927, succeeded by the five-year-old Michael, with a council of regency. There was much talk in Bucharest of Carols possible return. After consultations with army officers and politicians, he flew to Romania in 1930 and to popular rejoicing seized the throne. Michael was given the title Grand Voevod of Alba Julia and restored to the nursery. Magda Lupescu was installed in a mansion in Bucharest and loaded down with expensive jewellery.

The situation would have taxed a heavyweight. The creation of a Greater Romania after the First World War had fuelled rival nationalist tensions, the court and the whole political system were riddled with corruption and the Romanian fascist party, the Iron Guard, partly financed by the Nazis, denounced the King as a weakling dominated by his Jewish whore and swore to be rid of her and every Jew in the country. Hitler wanted to draw Romania into the German orbit to get his hands on its oil. He succeeded and in 1940, with a mob baying in the street for his blood, Carol was forced to abdicate in favour of Michael. He took Magda into exile again, along with servants, three poodles and two pekinese and his stamp collection. He and Magda had to lie on the floor of their carriage when the Iron Guard fired on their train nearing the Yugoslavian border. They spent time in Spain and Portugal before going to Mexico. He had to sell part of the stamp collection to raise funds. The two were married in 1947, when he thought she was dying, but in fact she outlived him by twenty-five years, living on until 1977. Finally in 2003 Carols remains were taken back from Lisbon to Bucharest to be reinterred.

King Carol II of Romania was born at Peleş Castle in Sinaia, Romania, on October 15, 1893, the eldest son of the future King Ferdinand I of Romania and Princess Marie of Edinburgh. He had five younger siblings:

Princess Elisabeta, Queen of the Hellenes (1894-1956), married King George II of Greece, no issue

Princess Maria, Queen of Yugoslavia (1900-1961), married King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, had issue

Prince Nicholas (1903-1978), married (1) Ioana Doletti, no issue (2) Thereza Lisboa Figueira de Mello, no issue

Princess Ileana, Archduchess of Austria (1909-1991) – married (1) Archduke Anton of Austria-Tuscany, had issue; (2) Dr. Stefan Issarescu, no issue

Prince Mircea (1913-1916), died from typhoid fever at age 3

Carol (right) with his mother and sister, Elisabeta, 1895. source: Wikipedia

King Carol II was the first King of Romania to be born in Romania, and the first member of the Romanian royal family to be brought up in the Orthodox faith. His predecessors were both born in Germany and had been permitted to remain members of the Roman Catholic church.

Carol with his great-uncle, King Carol I. source: Wikipedia

From a very early age, Carol was raised primarily by his great-uncle and great-aunt, King Carol I and Queen Elisabeth. The King felt that Carol's parents were unable to raise their son in a proper way. Ferdinand and Marie were young, and Marie had already had several affairs which contrasted with the strict moral attitudes of the King. The result was a virtual tug-of-war between Carol's parents and the King and Queen, which left him, according to one historian, “both spoiled and deprived of love.”

Despite the King's efforts to raise Carol in his own militaristic image, the young prince soon found that he preferred to spend his time chasing women and partying with his friends. By the time he was 19, he had already fathered two illegitimate children. In 1913, the King had him commissioned in the Prussian Guards, in hopes of curbing his hedonistic lifestyle. He later took his seat in the Romanian Senate upon reaching his maturity.

Carol and Zizi Lambrino, c1919. source: Wikipedia

On August 31, 1918, Carol married Joanna “Zizi” Lambrino, the daughter of a Romanian general, at the Cathedral Church of Odesa, Ukraine. The marriage had not been sanctioned by the King, nor was it welcomed by the Romanian people. The marriage was annulled seven months later, but the couple continued to live together, and the following year, in January 1920, they had a son – Mircea Gregor Carol Lambrino (later known as Prince Mircea Grigore Carol of Romania).

Carol and Helen, 1921. source: Wikipedia

The following year, on March 10, 1921, Carol married his second-cousin, Princess Helen of Greece, the daughter of King Constantine I of the Hellenes and Princess Sophie of Prussia. They had one son:

King Mihai of Romania (1921 – 2017) – married Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma, had issue

Arranged to help form an alliance between Romania and Greece, the marriage was never a happy one, and the two of them were horribly mismatched. Helen was very aristocratic and refined, while Carol continued his partying ways and indulged in numerous affairs. In 1925, he began a relationship with Elena “Magda” Lupescu. She was the daughter of Jewish parents but had been raised Roman Catholic, as her mother had converted in her youth. Her father had converted to Orthodoxy. Magda had married a Romanian army officer in 1919 but was later divorced. It is speculated that she was still married when she first met Carol in 1923, but this is uncertain. Other sources state her divorce took place in 1920.

Carol made no efforts to hide his affair, and it quickly caused great controversy in Romania. Knowing that the Romanian constitution barred him from marrying her, on December 28, 1925, Carol renounced his rights to the Romanian throne. Once ratified by the parliament, this left his young son Mihai the as heir-apparent.

On July 20, 1927, King Ferdinand died, and Mihai became King of Romania at just six years old. Several months later, Carol asked Helen for a divorce. After initially refusing, she was later advised to agree and their marriage was formally dissolved on June 21, 1928.

In early June 1930, Carol quietly returned to Romania to negotiate with the Prime Minister for his return to the throne. On June 7th, following a coup, Carol's early renunciation was voided, and he was restored as King of Romania, replacing his young son. Despite taking an oath to uphold the 1923 Constitution, King Carol had no intention of doing so. From the beginning, he attempted to increase his powers, with the intent of establishing a dictatorship. In a reign riddled with political in-fighting, Carol often pitted the political parties against each other, for his own gains.

After discovering a plan to bring the anti-Semitic party into power, King Carol suspended the constitution on February 10, 1938, proclaiming martial law and suspending civil liberties. He dismissed the Prime Minister and appointed the head of the Romanian Orthodox Church as his replacement. With the fear of impending war, King Carol tried to play both sides of the fence. He appealed to Britain for help, offering to place Romania under their economic influence, while also visiting Hitler in Germany, attempting to improve relations between the two countries. At the onset of war, Carol declared neutrality, violating both the 1921 treaty with Poland and the 1926 treaty with France. It wasn't until May 1940, seeing that France was losing the battle, that Carol aligned with the Axis powers.

The following month, he was forced to cede several regions to the Soviet Union, knowing that the Romanian forces were no match for the Red Army. Further land was lost in August 1940, as a result of the Second Vienna Award. With no support from the Romanian people, and the Romanian forces refusing to follow his orders, King Carol II was forced to abdicate on September 6, 1940, in favor of his son, Mihai.

Carol went into exile, settling in Mexico with Magda Lupescu. They bought a home in Mexico City, where he attempted to organize a movement to overthrow General Antonescu. Several attempts to regain the throne failed, as he had no political support.

Carol and Magda Lupesco. source: Wikipedia

Carol and Magda moved to Brazil in 1944, where they married on June 3, 1947. They soon moved to Estoril, Portugal, where he would live in exile for the remainder of his life. King Carol II died suddenly of a heart attack on April 4, 1953, in Estoril, Portugal. His remains were placed in the Royal Pantheon of the House of Braganza at the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora in Lisbon, Portugal. His wife Magda was also buried there when she died 24 years later. In 2003, their remains were brought back to Romania and buried in a chapel outside the Curtea de Argeş Monastery in Argeş, Romania. His son, the former King Mihai who had not seen his father since 1940, did not attend.

Prince Carol Caraiman of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was born at Peles Castle near Sinaia, in Prahova County, Romania in 1893. His father was Crown Prince Ferdinand, his mother was Crown Princess Marie (originally of Edinburgh), and his great uncle was King Carol I of Romania. Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom was his great-grandmother on the maternal side of his family. Unlike the German elders on the paternal side of his family, he was born in Romania, he learned Romanian as his first language, and he was raised in the Romanian Orthodox faith. His childhood was somewhat unhappy, having been the object of a tug-of-war between his great uncle and his mother, each wishing to assert each of their own influence in his upbringing. In 1913, he was commissioned an officer into the 1st Prussian Guards regiment by King Carol I, who disapproved of his womanizing; he would fail to become disciplined in the eyes of the king. In fact, he would remain a womanizer for the rest of his life. His father was crowned King Ferdinand I on 10 Oct 1914, and subsequently Prince Carol was made the Crown Prince. In Nov 1914, he joined the Romanian Senate in accordance with the provisions of the 1866 Constitution of Romania, which guaranteed him a seat in the Senate upon reaching maturity. In 1918, he married Joanna Marie Valentina "Zizi" Lambrino, daughter of Colonel (later General) Constantin Lambrino, descendent of a Byzantine imperial family; the marriage was annulled in the following year, although they continued to live together. In 1921, he married Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark, who would be known in Romania as Crown Princess Elena. This was a political arrangement, and the resulting marriage was unhappy, especially with Crown Prince Carol engaging in extramarital affairs. The most scandalous of his affairs involved Elena "Magda" Lupescu, wife of Romanian army officer Ion Tampeanu; when this affair became known, political pressure and attacks on his morality ultimately led to his renouncing of the throne. He made his son (by Helen/Elena) Mihai the Crown Prince. In 1925, he moved to Paris, France, where he would live openly with Lupescu. In 1928, his marriage with Helen/Elena officially ended in a divorce.

ww2dbaseIn Jun 1930, Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu staged a coup détat, ousting King Mihai I. Immediately, as secretly planned, Carol returned to Romania, where he was crowned King Carol II. As the new monarch, violating terms of the constitution, he was personally involved with the nations governance. Domestically, he keenly promoted national cultural institutions. In the international arena, he strengthened ties with France in order to guarantee Romanian borders against possible foreign aggression, especially from Hungary, which had territorial disputes with Romania. As a means to secure personal power, he carefully balanced the various political parties so that he could reign supreme. In the mid-1930s, the Nazi Party of Germany began organizing ethnic Germans in Romania, and at the same time built relationships with right-wing Romanian organizations such as the National Christian Party and the Iron Guard; these actions aroused suspicions in King Carol II. As relationships between Germany and Hungary improved, he increasingly looked to France for support. In 1936, as France failed to respond effectively against the German re-militarization of Rhineland, he began to improve relations with Germany, winning a German promise of neutrality in the Romanian-Hungarian territorial disputes. In Dec 1937, Romania and Germany signed an economic treaty that placed Romania within the German economic sphere of influence, but King Carol II was keen on maintaining the military alliance with France to counter any potential German-Hungarian joint aggression. In Dec 1937, King Carol II swore in Octavian Goga, of the National Christian Party, as the new prime minister. King Carol II had hoped the appointment of Goga meant Germany would be pleased with Gogas affinity to Germany and Goga, viewed as incompetent by the king, would be easy to control. Furthermore, by installing a member of the National Christian Party, he wished to deal a strike against the growing Iron Guard party. While Goga was wielded as a puppet on some matters, King Carol II paid little attention to Gogas systematic persecution of Romanian Jews; this led to a wave of international protests. When Goga finally realized that he could not out-maneuver the king and cut his puppet strings, Goga and the National Christian Party began to coordinate their efforts with the Iron Guard. Alarmed, King Carol II suspended the constitution and seized emergency powers. With civil liberties suspended, he fired Goga and replaced him with Romanian Orthodox Patriarch Elie Cristea who was totally loyal to him. Moving to eliminate the Iron Guard, he imprisoned its leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and many Iron Guard members. As the Iron Guard responded with a terror campaign against the government, King Carol II ordered the execution of all Iron Guard leaders already in captivity, which was carried out after sundown on 30 Nov 1938. Meanwhile, he courted both the United Kingdom (France having been deemed weak) and Germany in an effort to minimize the risk of Hungarian aggression in the future. The discussions with the latter also secured good prices for Romanian oil being exported to Germany. In Dec 1938, he established the National Renaissance Front and made it the only legal political party in Romania. During the same month, through the newly appointed Foreign Minister Grigore Gafencu, he began courting Poland. In Mar 1939, upon the death of Patriarch Cristea, he appointed Armand Calinescu as the new prime minister. Beginning in early 1939, Germany began pressuring Romania to effective give the control of its oil fields to Germany, which King Carol II rejected, with support from Britain.

ww2dbaseThe Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of Aug 1939 alarmed King Carol II, seeing the two major powers aligning with each other. When the European War began with the German-Soviet joint invasion of Poland, he declared neutrality despite urgings from Poland and France, knowing Romania could do little in a war against any of the two giants. He did, however, order his troops to turn a blind eye to Polish troops fleeing through Romania as a small friendly gesture toward Poland. On 21 Sep 1939, with German urging, Iron Guard members assassinated Prime Minister Calinescu. In response, King Carol IIs supporters rounded up nine suspects, all Iron Guard members, and executed them without trial. In the subsequent week, a total of 242 Iron Guard members were executed, all without trial. After these executions, King Carol II thought he had effectively tamed the Iron Guard by eliminating its leadership, and allowed its members to join the National Renaissance Front by Apr 1940. As Germany completed its conquest of France and the Low Countries, King Carol II, who had been balancing between the Axis and the Allies, began to favor the Axis. The series of German victories also increased the popularity of the Iron Guard, whose German connection was not a secret. In Jun 1940, the Soviet Union demanded territory from Romania, and he conceded; this was a major blow to his prestige. In Jul 1940, he publicly announced Romanias intentions to befriend Germany and appointed Iron Guard member Ion Gigurtu as the new prime minister. In the same year, he accepted Italo-German-brokered territorial concessions to Hungary to secure German favor. This would become the action that completely discredited him in the eyes of the Romanian people. Demonstrations demanding his abdication began in early Sep 1940, and within days he would be forced to transfer a great part of his powers to newly appointed Prime Minister General Ion Antonescu. Although initially content with a less powerful king, Antonescu changed his mind within hours of his appointment and demanded King Carol IIs abdication, which took place on 6 Sep 1940. King Mihai I returned to the throne.

ww2dbaseTogether with Lupescu, Prince Carol exiled to Mexico and then to Portugal. He had hoped to established a government-in-exile in Mexico City, but he had nearly no support from among the Romanian expatriates in the Americas. In 1947, he married Lupescu in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; his new wife would claim the title Princess Elena von Hohenzollern after the wedding. When a Romanian National Committee was set up to oppose the Communist regime that ousted King Mihai I, the committee refused Prince Carols request to join. He passed away in Estoril, Portugal in 1953. His son King Mihai I did not attend his funeral. His remains were initially located at the Royal Pantheon of the House of Braganza in Lisbon, Portugal, but in 2003 they were relocated to the Curtea de Arges monastery in the lower Carpathian Mountains, the traditional burial place of Romanian royalty, although they were buried outside the cathedral as Lupescu was not of royal lineage. King Mihai I again did not attend the 2003 ceremony, instead dispatching his daughter Princess Margarita and son-in-law Prince Radu.

ww2dbaseSource: Wikipedia

Last Major Revision: Feb 2017

Carol II Timeline

15 Oct 1893Prince Carol of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was born at Peles Castle near Sinaia, in Prahova County, Romania.

31 Aug 1918Crown Prince Carol married Joanna Marie Valentina Lambrino at the Cathedral Church of Odessa, Ukraine.

29 Mar 1919The marriage between Crown Prince Carol and Joanna Marie Valentina Lambrino was annulled.

8 Jan 1920Crown Prince Carols son Prince Mircea Gregor Carol Lambrino was born in Bucharest, Romania.

10 Mar 1921Crown Prince Carol of Romania married Princess Helen (Elena) of Greece and Denmark in Athens, Greece.

28 Dec 1925Crown Prince Carol renounced the throne to Romania.

7 Jun 1930Prince Carol reneged his renunciation for the throne and returned to Romania.

8 Jun 1930Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu of Romania engineered a coup détat, ousting King Mihai I. Prince Carol, Mihais father, declared himself King Carol II and made Iuliu Maniu his head of government.

10 Feb 1938King Carol II suspended the 1923 Constitution of Romania and seized emergency powers.

11 Feb 1938King Carol II announced the new 1938 Constitution of Romania, which concentrated powers in the throne.

30 Nov 1938During the night, under King Carol IIs orders, leaders of the Iron Guard party in captivity in Romania were executed.

6 Mar 1939King Carol II appointed Armand Calinescu as the Prime Minister of Romania.

13 Nov 1939King Carol II of Romania offered to mediate peace between Germany and the western powers.

15 Mar 1940In Romania, King Carol II granted amnesty to members of the fascist Iron Guard party after they swore allegiance to him.

13 Jun 1940King Carol II allowed the Iron Guard to join the National Renaissance Front political party of Romania.

1 Jul 1940King Carol II of Romania renounced the guarantees given to him by the United Kingdom in 1939 and announced that hence-forward his countrys alliegance would be with Germany.

2 Jul 1940King Carol II invited a Germany military mission to be established in Romania to train Romanian troops.

4 Jul 1940King Carol II swore in Iron Guard member Ion Gigurtu as the new Prime Minister of Romania.

5 Sep 1940King Carol II swore in General Ion Antonescu as the new Prime Minister of Romania, and transferred a great part of the thrones dictatorial powers to him.

6 Sep 1940King Carol II abdicated the throne of Romania.

3 Jun 1947In exile, King Carol II of Romania married his mistress Magda Lupescu in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

He fathered four children two of them with a schoolgirl, deserted his regiment, had dinner with Hitler, was awarded the Order of the Garter, left Romania in a train under a hail of bullets with 100 suitcases including priceless Old Masters, was married in a hotel room in Rio and died in Estoril aged 59. His dubious political record, and the company he kept, denied him his dearest wish, to spend the war years in the USA.

Maria Martini, a high school student, who may well have been a minor, gave him a son and a daughter, who were immediately adopted. But four other women played a decisive role in the life of King Carol II of Romania. Zizi Lambrino, his first wife and a commoner, also provided him with a son, Carol, in a morganatic marriage contracted in Ukraine. His legitimate wife, Elena of Greece, was the mother of ex-King Mihai, whose behaviour throughout his long life has been impeccably correct.

Carol's mother, Queen Marie, Queen Victoria's granddaughter, burnished her reputation as a mix of Florence Nightingale and Princess Diana with the maimed and the wounded on the battlefield of the First World War by bringing back Transylvania from the Versailles Peace Conference. Promiscuous in the extreme, there were even doubts about the parenthood of one of her children. Relations between her and Carol were strained and those with his siblings were not much better. He spent much of his royal dictatorship (1930-1940) in family squabbles and rotating prime ministers.

He met Elena Lupescu, the love of his life, in 1925. With her alabaster skin, green eyes and Titian hair, she came from a converted Jewish family in Iasi. Cunning, greedy and ambitious, she was to be by Carol's side until his death in 1953.

Neither a good king nor a decent human being, Carol acquired the reputation of being the most corrupt crowned head of 20th century Europe. Destroying his country's parliamentary form of government, he led the country to chaos and dismemberment, although the Great Depression can be blamed for much, together with the sinister and murderous Iron Guard, a nationalist, anti-Semitic movement with its roots in the Orthodox Church.

The Hitler-Stalin Pact overwhelmed Carol. Romania lost Northern Transylvania, Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia. He was forced to leave the country by the syphilitic “Red Dog” Antonescu, a Romanian Army career officer, who went on to compound Romania's woes by joining Hitler in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Romania lost two armies and a third of a million men.

Carol and Lupescu spent the war years wandering about South America before settling in Portugal. Carol tended his stamp collection and lived a life of luxury before dying of a heart attack in 1953. His coffin was kept amongst the tombs of Portuguese kings in the Cathedral of Sao Vicente de Fora in Lisbon, draped in a fading Romanian royal flag, before it was buried in the Cathedral of Curtea de Arges in 2003. Lupescu was buried separately. Carol and Mihai never met again.

Given such a life it would be difficult to write a bad book about Carol, the Playboy King. Paul Quinlan has written a very good one.

Carol II (15 October 1893 – 4 April 1953) reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until his abdication on 6 September 1940.

Carol was the eldest son of Ferdinand I and became crown prince upon the death of his grand-uncle, King Carol I in 1914. He was the first of the Hohenzollern kings of Romania to be born in the country; both of his predecessors had been born in Germany and only came to Romania as adults. As such, he was the first member of the Romanian branch of the Hohenzollerns who spoke Romanian as his first language, and was also the first member of the royal family to be raised in the Orthodox faith.[1]

He possessed a hedonistic personality that contributed to the controversies marring his reign, and his life was marked by numerous scandals, among them marriages to Zizi Lambrino and Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark, daughter of King Constantine I of Greece. His continued affairs with Magda Lupescu obliged him to renounce his succession rights in 1925 and leave the country. Princess Helen eventually divorced him in 1928.

King Ferdinand died in 1927 and Carols five-year-old son ascended the throne as Michael I. Carol then returned to Romania in 1930 and replaced his son and the regency that had been in place. His reign was marked by re-alignment with Nazi Germany, adoption of anti-semitic laws and ultimately evolved into a personal dictatorship beginning in 1938. On 6 September 1940, he was forced by his Prime Minister Ion Antonescu to leave the country and withdraw abroad into exile. He was succeeded by his son Michael.[2]

Contents

1Early life

2Early marriages and love affairs

3Controversies surrounding Magda Lupescu

4Return to the throne

5Personality cult

6The Manipulative King

7The 1937 election and the Goga government

8The Royal Dictatorship

9World War II

10Road to Abdication

11Exile

12Remains returned to Romania

13In popular culture

14Ancestry

15See also

16References

17External links

Early life

Crown Prince Carol of Romania in 1918.

Carol was born in Peleș Castle. Carol grew up under the thumb of his dominating grand-uncle, King Carol I, who largely excluded his parents, the German-born Crown Prince Ferdinand and the British-born Crown Princess Marie, from any role in bringing him up.[3] Romania in the early 20th century had a famously relaxed "Latin" sexual morality, and the British Princess Marie of Edinburgh who despite or perhaps because of her Victorian upbringing ended up "going native", having a long series of affairs with various Romanian men with whom she could obtain more emotional and sexual satisfaction than she could with Ferdinand, who fiercely resented being cuckolded.[4] The stern Carol I felt that Marie was unqualified to raise Prince Carol because of her affairs and her young age, as she was only seventeen when Carol was born, while Marie regarded the King as a cold, overbearing tyrant who would crush the life out of her son.

Additionally, the childless Carol I, who had always wanted a son, treated Prince Carol as his surrogate son and thoroughly spoiled him, indulging his every whim. Ferdinand was a rather shy and weak man who was easily overshadowed by the charismatic Marie, who become the most loved member of the Romanian royal family. Growing up, Carol felt ashamed of his father, whom both his grand-uncle and mother pushed around.[5] Carols childhood was spent being caught up in an emotional tug-of-war between Carol I and Marie, who had very different ideas about how to raise him.[6] The Romanian historian Marie Bucur described the battle between Carol I and Princess Marie as one between traditional 19th century Prussian conservatism as personified by Carol I versus the 20th century liberal, modernist and sexually liberated values of the "New Woman" as personified by Princess Marie.[6] Aspects of both Maries and Carol Is personalities were present in Carol II.[6] Largely because of the battle between the King and Marie, Carol ended being both spoiled and deprived of love.[6]

King Carol I of Romania with his nephew the future King Ferdinand and grand-nephew Prince Carol.

Early marriages and love affairs

During his teenage years, Carol acquired the "playboy" image that was to become his defining persona for the rest of his life. Carol I expressed some concern at the direction that Prince Carol was taking, as the young Princes only serious interest was stamp collecting and he spent an inordinate amount of time drinking, partying, chasing after women; young Carol fathered at least two illegitimate children by the teenage schoolgirl Maria Martini by the time that he was 19. Carol rapidly become a favorite of gossip columnists around the world owing to the frequent photographs that appeared in the newspapers showing him at various parties with him holding a drink in one hand and a woman in the other.[7]

In order to teach the Prince the value of the Prussian virtues, the King had the Prince commissioned as an officer into a Prussian guards regiment in 1913.[3] His time with the 1st Prussian Guards regiment did not achieve the desired results, and Carol remained the "playboy prince". Romania in the early 20th century was an intensely Francophile nation, indeed perhaps the most Francophile nation in the entire world as the Romanian elite obsessively went about embracing all things French as the model for perfection in everything. To certain extent, Carol was influenced by the prevailing Francophilia, but at the same time he inherited from Carol I, in the words of the American historian Margaret Sankey, a "profound love of German militarism" and the idea that all democratic governments were weak governments.[3]

Crown Prince Carol training during World War I with a Chauchat machine gun

In November 1914, Carol joined the Romanian Senate, as the 1866 Constitution guaranteed him a seat there upon reaching maturity.[8] Known more for his romantic misadventures than for any leadership skills, Carol (Romanian for "Charles") was first married in the Cathedral Church of Odessa, Ukraine, 31 August 1918 (under the occupation of the Central Powers at that time), to Joanna Marie Valentina Lambrino (1898–1953), known as "Zizi", the daughter of a Romanian general, Constantin Lambrino. The fact that Carol technically had deserted as he left his post at the Army without permission to marry Zizi Lambrino caused immense controversy at the time.[9] The marriage was annulled on 29 March 1919 by the Ilfov County Court. Carol and Zizi continued to live together after the annulment. Their only child, Mircea Gregor Carol Lambrino, was born 8 January 1920.

Carol next married Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark, who was known in Romania as Crown Princess Elena, on 10 March 1921 in Athens, Greece. They were second cousins, both of them great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria, as well as third cousins in descent from Nicholas I of Russia. Helen had known Carols dissolute behaviour and previous marriage, but was undeterred, being in love with Carol. The intention behind this arranged marriage was to help organise a dynastic alliance between Greece and Romania. Bulgaria had territorial disputes with Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia and all three of the latter states tended to be close during the interwar period owing to their shared fears of the Bulgarians. Helen and Carols only child, Michael, was born seven months after their marriage, sparking rumours that Michael was conceived out of wedlock. Apparently close at first, Carol and Helen drifted apart. Carols marriage with Princess Helen was an unhappy one, and he frequently engaged in extramarital affairs.[9] The elegant wallflower Helen found the bohemian Carol, with his love of heavy drinking and constant partying, rather too wild for her tastes.[9] Carol disliked royal and aristocratic women, whom he found too stiff and formal for his tastes, and had an extremely marked preference for commoners, much to the chagrin of his parents.[9] Carol found low-born women to have the qualities that he sought in a woman, such as informality, spontaneity, humor and passion.[9]

Controversies surrounding Magda Lupescu

The marriage soon collapsed in the wake of Carols affair with Elena "Magda" Lupescu (1895?–1977), the Roman Catholic daughter of a Jewish pharmacist and his Roman Catholic wife. Magda Lupescu had formerly been the wife of Army officer Ion Tâmpeanu. The National Liberal Party, which dominated Romanias politics, made much of Carols relationship with Lupescu to argue that he was unqualified to be king. One of the leading figures of the National Liberals was Prince Barbu Știrbey—who was also Queen Maries lover—and Carol had a strong dislike of Știrbey, who had humiliated his father via his indiscreetly disguised relationship with Marie, and hence of the National Liberals.[10] Knowing that Carol was ill-disposed towards them, the National Liberals waged a sustained campaign to keep him from the throne.[11] The campaign waged by the National Liberals had less to do with disgust with Carols relationship with Madame Lupescu than with an effort to remove a potential "loose cannon", as Carol made it clear when he succeeded to the throne that he would not be content to let the National Liberals dominate politics in the way that the previous Hohenzollern kings had.[11]

As a result of the scandal, Carol renounced his right to the throne on 28 December 1925 in favour of his son by Crown Princess Helen, Michael (Mihai), who became king in July 1927. Helen divorced Carol in 1928. After renouncing his right to the throne, Carol moved to Paris, where he lived openly in a common-law relationship with Madame Lupescu.[12] The National Liberal Party was largely a vehicle for the powerful Brătianu family to exercise power and, after the National Liberal Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu died in 1927, the Brătianus were unable to agree upon a successor, causing the fortunes of the National Liberals to go into decline.[13] In the 1928 elections, the National Peasant Party under Iuliu Maniu won a resounding victory, taking 78% of the vote.[13] As Prince Nicolae, the chief of the Regency Council that governed for King Michael, was known to be friendly with the National Liberals, the new prime minister was determined to dispose of the regency council by bringing back Carol.[13]

Return to the throne

Oath of Carol II in front of parliament, 8 June 1930

Returning to the country on 7 June 1930, in a coup détat engineered by National Peasant Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu, Carol was recognized by the Parliament as king of Romania the following day. For the next decade he sought to influence the course of Romanian political life, first through manipulation of the rival Peasant and Liberal parties and anti-Semitic factions, and subsequently (January 1938) through a ministry of his own choosing. Carol also sought to build up his own personality cult against the growing influence of the Iron Guard, for instance by setting up a paramilitary youth organization known as Straja Țării in 1935. The American historian Stanley G. Payne described Carol as "the most cynical, corrupt and power-hungry monarch who ever disgraced a throne anywhere in twentieth-century Europe".[14] A colorful character, Carol was in the words of the British historian Richard Cavendish:

"Dashing, wilful and reckless, a lover of women, champagne and speed, Carol drove racing cars and piloted planes, and on state occasions appeared in operetta uniforms with enough ribbons, chains and orders to sink a small destroyer."[15]

The Romanian historian Maria Bucur wrote about Carol:

"Of course, he loved luxury; being born to privilege he expected nothing less than the grand lifestyle he saw in the other courts of Europe. Yet his style was not outlandish or grotesque like Nicole Ceaușescus unique brand of kitsch. He liked things large but relatively simple-his royal palace testifies to that trait. Carol's true passions were Lupescu, hunting and cars and he spared no expense on them.

Carol liked to present an impressive and populist persona to the public, wearing garish military uniforms adorned with medals, and to be the benefactor of every philanthropic endeavor in the land. He loved parades and grandiose festivals and watched them closely, but he was not taken in by these events as more than shows of his power; he did not take them as a show of sincere popularity as Ceaușescu did during his later years.[16]

Carol had a populist style, depicting himself as the defender of the common man against the corrupt Francophile elites (especially the National Liberals) mixed in with generous elements of nationalism and Eastern Orthodoxy.[17] Carols tendency to throw together populism, authoritarianism, a vaguely xenophobic nationalism and Orthodoxy superficially resembled the style of the Iron Guard, albeit Carols message was far less passionate than that of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, "the Captain" who preached a message of ferociously xenophobic ultra-nationalism, intense Orthodox mysticism, extremely violent anti-Semitism, a populist disdain for all the elites and a glorification of death in the service of the cause as the most beautiful, glorious, noble and erotic experience in the entire world.[17] Codreanu, a man with death fetish had made the Iron Guard into a macabre death cult and often sent his followers out on what were clearly suicidal missions. After committing murders, Iron Guardsmen rarely attempted to flee and instead waited to be arrested as they wanted to be executed for their crimes. Many found the way that Legionaries went to their executions positively giddy and joyful about the prospect of their own deaths, happily proclaiming their deaths were the happiest moment of their life a deeply eerie experience. Carol regarded Codreanus death fetish together with his claim that the Archangel Michael had told him that God had chosen him to save Romania as evidence that Codreanu was "crazy".

Carol had sworn in his coronation oath to uphold the constitution of 1923, a promise he had no intention of keeping and right from the start of his reign, the king meddled in politics to increase his own power.[14] Carol was an opportunist with no real principles or values other than the belief he was the right man to rule Romania and that what his kingdom needed was a modernizing dictatorship.[18] Carol ruled via an informal body known as the camarilla comprising courtiers together with senior diplomats, army officers, politicians and industrialists who were all in some way dependent upon royal favor to advance their careers.[19] The most important member of the camarilla was Carols mistress Madame Lupescu whose political advice Carol greatly valued.[19] Maniu had brought Carol to the throne out of the fear that the Regency for Michael I was dominated by National Liberals who would ensure that their party would always win the elections.[19] Madame Lupescu was deeply unpopular with the Romanian people, and Maniu had demanded that Carol return to his wife, Princess Helen of Greece as part of the price of being given the throne. When Carol broke his own word and continued to live with Madame Lupescu, Maniu resigned in protest in October 1930, and was to emerge as one of Carols leading enemies.[19] At the same time, Carol return had prompted a break in the National Liberals with Gheorghe I. Brătianu breaking away to found a new party, the National Liberal Party-Brătianu that was willing to work with the new king. Despite his dislike of the National Liberals, Manius enmity towards Carol left the king with little choice, but to enlist as his allies the break-away factions of the National Liberals against the National Peasants who demanding that Carol banish Lupescu and return to Princess Helen of Greece.

The "Red Queen" as Lupescu was known to the Romanian people on the account of the color of her hair was the most hated woman in 1930s Romania, a woman whom ordinary Romanians saw in the words of the British historian Rebecca Haynes as "the embodiment of evil".[19] Princess Helen was widely viewed as the wronged woman while Lupescu was seen as the femme fatale who had stolen Carol away from the loving arms of Helen. Lupescu was Roman Catholic, but because her father was a Jew, she was widely viewed as Jewish. Lupescus personality did not win her many friends as she was arrogant, pushy, manipulative and extremely greedy with an insatiable taste for buying the most expensive French clothes, cosmetics and jewelry.[20] At a time when many Romanians were suffering from the Great Depression, Carols habit of indulging Lupescus expensive tastes caused much resentment with many of Carols subjects grumbling that the money would have been better spent on alleviating poverty in the kingdom. Further adding to Lupescus immense unpopularity was she was a businesswoman who used her connections to the Crown to engage in dubious transactions that usually involved large sums of public money going into her pocket.[19] However the contemporary viewpoint that Carol was a mere puppet of Lupescu is incorrect and Lupescus influence on political decision-making was much exaggerated at the time.[20] Lupescu was primarily interested in enriching herself to support her extravagant lifestyle, and had no real interest in politics beyond protecting her ability to engage in corruption.[20] Unlike Carol, Lupescu had utterly no interest in social policy or foreign affairs and was such a self-absorbed narcissist that she was unaware of just how unpopular she was with ordinary people.[21] Carol by contrast was interested in the affairs of the state, and through he never sought to deny his relationship with Lupescu, he was careful not to display her too much in public as he knew that this would bring him unpopularity.[21]

Carol sought to play the National Liberals, the National Peasant Party and the Iron Guard off against each other with the ultimate aim of making himself master of Romanian politics and disposing of all the parties in Romania.[14] With regards to the Legion of the Archangel Michael, Carol had no intention of ever letting the Iron Guard come to power, but insofar as the Legion was a disruptive force that weakened both the National Liberals and the National Peasants, Carol welcomed the rise of the Iron Guard in the early 1930s and he sought to use the Legion for his own ends.[14] On 30 December 1933, the Iron Guard assassinated the National Liberal Prime Minister Ion G. Duca, which led to the first of several bans placed on the Legion.[22] The assassination of Duca, which was Romanias first political murder since 1862 shocked Carol, who saw the willingness of Codreanu to order the assassination of the Prime Minister as a sign that the egomaniacal Codreanu was getting out of control and that Codreanu would not play the role assigned by the king as a disruptive force threatening the National Liberals and National Peasant alike.[22] In 1934, when Codreanu was brought to trial for ordering Ducas assassination, he used as his defense that the entire Francophile elite were completely corrupt and not properly Romanian, and as such Duca as just another corrupt National Liberal politician deserved to die. The jury acquitted Codreanu, an act that worried Carol as it showed that Codreanus revolutionary message that the entire elite needed to be destroyed was winning popular approval. In the spring of 1934 after Codreanu was acquitted, Carol together with the Bucharest police prefect Gavrilă Marinescu and Madame Lupescu were involved in a half-hearted plot to kill Codreanu by poisoning his coffee, an effort that was abandoned before being attempted.[23] Until 1935, Carol was a leading contributor to the "Friends of the Legion", the group who collected contributions to the Legion.[24] Carol only stopped.

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