END OF A GERMAN PRINCE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 168, 15 July 1916, Page 15

END OF A GERMAN PRINCE.

KILLED BY WOMAN- IIE BETRAYED,

Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobnrg, who has just died In a hospital at Vienna while undergoing an operation intended to repair iv a measure the injuries which he sustained through the dashing of a. bottle ot vitriol in his face, was the only son or Prince Philip of £axe-Coburg-Cobary, and of his divorced wife, Princess Louise ot Belgium—a grandson therefore of the late King Leopold. Prince Leopold twice visited the United States and Canada within the last ten years, and was entertained quite extensively in both countries. He was a captain of the Ninth Kegiment of Austrian Hussars, and while in America exposed his former regimental comrade, Prince Victor of Thurn-and-Taxis, who had been forced to leave both the army and the dual empire under extremely unsavoury circumstances.

Last autumn a woman who had b«en betrayed by Prince Leopord under a promise of morganatic marriage, and who was the daughter of a Government official holding the rank of Councillor of the Court ot Vienna, when sl-.e found herself abandoned, and destitute, attacked him with vitriol, a bottle of which she hurled in his face. One eye, his nose, and one of Uis ears were completely destroyed by the corrosive liquid, as well as a portion of the lips, one cheek and the temple being badly scarred.

Immediately after attacking him, the girl, who had entreated him in vain to provide for her welfare, committed suicide in his presence. From that time until his death he was in the hands of surgeons.

His only sister, married to the dissipated brother of the German Empress, Duke Ernest Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, has no children, and has always been an object of considerable unfriendliness on the part of her sister-in-law, the Kaiscrin, owing to her refusal to become a convert from the Roman Catholic Church to Lutheranism.