PRINCE’S LOVE LETTERS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 80, 28 December 1929, Page 20

PRINCE’S LOVE LETTERS

COUNTESS’S BLACKMAIL

The love-letters of the late Prince Julius Ernest of Lippe (a principality of North-Western Germany), were once worth more than £160,000. That at least was the view of the House of Lippe just before the war began, when the prince was about to ascend the throne of his little State. These letters, written to the beautiful Countess Bubener Von Lititz, would, if published, have placed the prince and his family in a disagreeable position. It seemed, therefore, worth a very comfortable fortune to get-.them out of the hands of the charming recipient. When it was decided to pension off the countess with £200,000, it was arranged that she should at once be given £38,000 in cash and that the remaining £162,000 should be paid as soon as she handed over all the compromising documents in her possesSi ° n - , . XV Then came the war, and when the couptess was asked for the letters, they were in the safe of a! bank in England. The family, most handsomely, proceeded to pay her the interest on the £162,000, and even when the prince died in 1918, the payments were continued for another four years. The countess recently began legal proceedings to force the Princess Maria of Lippe, the sister of the late prince, to pay over the part of the sum due to her, and the case came before the Supreme Court at Leipzig. The Countess lost, the court holding that it was against good morals to make a business of love letters. It held that the financial arrangement of 1914 was actually based on blackmail and that therefore the Countess’s'claim could not be established. The prince has been in his grave 11 years, the House of Lippe has lost its "throne, and what now happens to these faded letters is a matter of little interest. ■