ALMANACH DE GOTHA

Evening Post, Issue 88, 12 April 1924, Page 16

ALMANACH DE GOTHA

.^AMOUS /ROYALTY BOOK-CEASES .'■^ PUBLICATION. /

iSgpad^Jhe.^lAlijffinaeli, dejGotha. sift-vived,! '■jm, year "1924;%k could' have "celebf ated" ,||sj!one and .sixty-first birthday. jJEMi'lnore than century and a half this vLmo:&,:whb*.o;£^ f with -precise, data. the -marriages,- births,-, deaths, and throne-changings of Old World mouarchs, says the "New York Times." The ■ issue of 1919 carried a mournful preface on the difficulty -.of gathering'reliable facts from a war-torn world. The medium in which the Gotha worked was Kings, and Kings were pass-'1 ing. As the medium diminished, the pulse of the Almanach de Gotha grew wea&er. It has now. ceased: . Hundreds of ;ival publications have tried to'supplant the Gotha since its first appearance in 1763, but without; sue-, cessi.'Of:;the biography of rulers it-re-mained^'stem arbiter. Did. at not-- for years'«!lgnofe"tthe%in'ight}/;';Empetor' Napoleoj asd refuse $ sully;.its'pages with the ,^nje >,of;.«oneSnpt^.,born;;.of , ;: kingly ■stock? 'Napoleon endeavoured to ' suppress the, 1808 edition,' and his threat to' confiscate the Almanach's valuable coli'ec- ; tion of archives finally carried 'bis name .into the regal red and gold volume. :■'. America was-'first/considered worthy of notice when the Gotha gave a paragraph to.the author of the Monroe Doctrine. James Monroe was the first American President to be thus honoured. Always this despotic tome stressed .the fact that American women who married great' nobles were 'hot of equal birth: • Only one, it claimed, could boast of having "married a full-fledged sovereign and shared with him his throne. This was Alice Heine, of New. Orleans, ■whose first linsband was the Due de Richelieu. She took for her second, husband the Prince of Monaco, whose gambling tables made him one' of the world's richest men. The Gotha has been called the cemetery of dethroned 'monarch's': It .is the ■ only place where Kings' and Queens con-/ tinue to figure after having been deprived of their crowns. To all the world .Hohenzollern is now,plain Citi-, ■ zen/-William; but not tov-the Almanach de Gotha, which in its last issue writes Aim down "William Hohenzollern, for-, -nierly German Emperor, King of'Prus-' ■ sia."- /'. ' ( ■'" '■ „•';• /:;•.'/./* The world citizen lias had no place in this exclusive record of princelings whose pedigrees stretch back to practically the /beginning of time. Still: there are those who claim that the Almanach was not /what it used- to be; that it has been' let-,, ting down its bars the- last few : :y.earSj to some whose positions- were less/ex/ alted than those -first" four," moharchs,' Louis XV. . of France, Catherm'e®the' Great of Russia,, Empress-Maria Theresa o? Austria, and^ George- Hi. of Great. Britain, appearing in its'pages., ... ■ y.- ' ■ . .This historicbook- has -languished since the beginning of. the „y?ar, "for. at that time _ many •of thef 'leading families of Belgium, i?farice, Russia/and, Great Britain withdrew' their, patrpnagei^-'feeling that they- could- not/support- a.--publica-^ tion issued in Ge'rmany-and e'dite'd^by/ ..Germa^. This undoubtedly/hastened) the end of the famous publication", Which has for so many -years rested "at .'the el--bows of':potentates and anibasasdors. '.' ■ '■■ \ ' ' • '■■•'•'■. '-'■■'■■ ' '. .'■■■■■■■■■