BROKEN ROMANCE

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 118, 21 May 1934, Page 7

BROKEN ROMANCE

TRAGIC SUICIDE. King Zog's Former Lover Found Shot Dead. FATAL INFATUATION. (United P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Received 11.30 a.m.) . LONDON, May 20. The "Daily Express" Athens correspondent reveals the tragic love affair of the Baroness von Tropp, known as the "blonde Venus," and King Zog of Albania.

The Baroness was found to-day with a bullet in her brain on a lonely beach in Phaleron Bay. She left her Viennese husband a year ago and went to live with Zog at Tirana.

Here she met Kemal Bey, a. marshal at the King's Palace, and fell in love with him. Zog, furious ( at this, issued a regulation forbidding civil servants to marry foreigners, while Kemal Bey was sent to Athens as Albanian Minister. The. Baroness later secretly followed Kemal Bey to Athens, although she told King Zog she was going to Corfu. Finally, fearing she would blast Kemal Bey's career, the Baroness committed suicide.

Following a military alliance between Italy and Albania in 1927, despite strong opposition from Yugoslavia, Achmed Bey Zogu, absolute ruler of the country of which he was President and hereditary chieftain of one of the most powerful Moslem clans, caused a Constituent Assembly to proclaim him King on September 1, 1928. He dropped the final "u" of his name, and was picturesquely proclaimed "Zog 1, Mbretti i Shqiptarvet," or, translated, "Bird 1, King of the Sons of the Eagle." In Albanian the word "zog" means "bird," and the native name for the country means "Land of the Kagle." He is guarded chiefly by his "Red Hussars," remnants of the thousands of White Russians with whose aid he crossed the frontier in 1924 and drove out the pro-Italian President, Monsignor Fan Noli, who was also strongly in favour of a pact with the Soviet. A sore point with King Zog is the half-million Albanians in Yiigoslavia,~\to whose suzerainty he lays implicit claim.