SPENDTHRIFT BARON.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 932, 30 November 1933, Page 1

SPENDTHRIFT BARON.

Von Eckhardstein Dies in Holland. LONDON, November 15. The death has occurred at The Hague, Holland, of Baron Eckhardstein, the first husband of Lady Weigall, wife of Sir Archibald Weigall, former Governor of South Australia. The “ Daily Mail ” says that Baron von Eckhardstein might have come out of a Ouida romance. He was a member of one of the oldest and proudest German families. While attached to the German Embassy in London, he was a close friend of King Edward. The only blot on his splendour was that he had very little money. At his wedding at St. Albans Cathedral, in 1894, King Edward, then the Prince of Wales, was present, and gave the bride a jewelled watch. The bridegroom, of herculean build, wearing the white and gold uniform, high jackboots and golden helmet, of the Brandenburg Cuirassiers, looked the embodiment of romance, but the subsequent legal proceedings showed that within two hours of the ceremony, while the train was en route to London, he so bullied his bride that he reduced her to tears. Gambling Debts. Later he demanded, with threats of desertion, violence and suicide, enormous sums to pay his gambling debts, and meet his lavish personal expenditure. Sir J. Blundell Maple paid £70,000 of his son-in-law’s stock exchange debts. Altogether a dozen years of matrimony cost the Baroness and Sir Blundell Maple a quarter of a million. The Baroness entered a successful suit for separation in England, alleging cruelty and misconduct. The Baron I entered a suit in Germany alleging dis- i obedience, which he was unable to prove. Baron von Eckhardstein’s career then ended. He had been a consistent worker for Anglo-German friendship. His denunciation of the antiEnglish clique in Berlin, which was urging war, landed him in gaol, from which he was released only after the Armistice. The Baroness von Eckhardstein married Sir Archibald Weigall in 1910. Sir Archibald was Governor of South Australia from 1920 to 1922.