Prince Christoph of Hesse


Prince Christoph of Hesse was a nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm II. He was an SS-Oberführer in the Allgemeine SS and an officer in the Luftwaffe Reserve, killed on active duty in a plane crash during World War II. His brother-in-law Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark fought on the British side and married the future Queen Elizabeth II after the war.

Birth

Prince Christoph of Hesse was born in Frankfurt, the fifth son of Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse and Princess Margaret of Prussia. He was a twin, with Prince Richard of Hesse. His father, Frederick Charles, a scion of the House of Hesse, was elected King of Finland in 1918, when Finland declared its independence after the collapse of the Russian Empire. However, the overwhelming Republican victories in the 1919 Finnish parliamentary election effectively ended any ambitions for a Finnish monarchy.
Christoph's mother was the daughter of Emperor Frederick III and of Victoria, Princess Royal. Prince Christoph was thus a great-grandson of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Christoph had several brothers, including Prince Philipp and Prince Wolfgang. His two eldest brothers, Friedrich Wilhelm and Maximilian, both died in World War I.

Career and death

Prince Christoph was a director in the Third Reich's Ministry of Air Forces, Commander of the Air Reserves, and held the rank of Oberführer in the SS. His brother Prince Philipp joined Hitler's SA. They were not the only family members to embrace Nazism; their mother "Mossy" invited Adolf Hitler to tea and flew the swastika from her home at Schloss Kronberg.
According to the historian Hugo Vickers, Prince Christoph became "disenchanted" with the Nazi Party by the time of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942. He told his mother: "The death of a certain dangerous and cruel man is the best news I had in a long time."
Prince Christoph served in the Luftwaffe Research Office and, in 1942, he joined the staff of a fighter unit, Jagdgeschwader 53. He was based primarily in Tunisia and Sicily, with missions to Malta.
After the Allied Invasion of Italy, Christoph was recalled to Germany, but was killed during his return. On 7 October 1943, his plane, a Siebel 104, collided with a hill in the Apennine Mountains 30 km southwest of Forlì, Italy. His body and the body of his copilot Wilhelm Gsteu were found two days later and were buried in a German military cemetery near Forlì. In 1953, the coffin was transferred to Kronberg im Taunus.

Family

Christoph married his second cousin, once removed, Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark on 15 December 1930 in Kronberg im Taunus, Germany. Princess Sophie was the youngest daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, and the sister of the future Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
The couple had five children:
Some years after Christoph's death, his widow married Prince George William of Hanover, a brother of Queen Fredrica of Greece and a grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II. She had a further three children.
Four years after Christoph's death, his widow's brother, Philip, married the future Queen Elizabeth II. Christoph's surviving children are first cousins of King Charles III.