A Brief History of The
Almanach de Gotha
The Gotha Book entered the language in its own right with
the phrase 'all the Gotha was there'.
Historically the Gotha has charted the Ruling Royal and Princely Houses of
Europe; only coming
to an
end with the Soviet occupation of the former Saxon Duchy of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha in the
Year 1945 after nearly 182 years of Royal listing.
The Almanach de Gotha made its
debut in Saxe-Coburg in 1763, the Court which during
the 1760's under Duke Friedrich III and later under Duke
Ernest II attracted the likes
of Voltaire and which in the mid 1800's produced Prince Albert as consort for Queen
Victoria. The Gotha's own familiar crown was stamped on the cover of what was to become
the ultimate power
register of the ruling classes. Unmoved by government decrees or
bribes, those not included in its pages found
themselves thwarted, Pretenders claims
left in ruins, by the publisher who would not compromise itself for
either inclusion
- or exclusion. Napoleon's reaction was typical. On 20 October 1807 the Emperor wrote
to his Foreign Minister, de Champagny :'Monsieur de Champagny, this year's Almanach de
Gotha is badly done.
I protest. There should be more of the French Nobility I have
created and less of the German Princes who are
no longer sovereign. Furthermore, the
Imperial Family of Bonaparte should appear before all other royal dynasties,
and let it
be clear that we and not the Bourbons are the House of France. Summon the Minister of
the Interior
of Gotha at once so that I personally may order these changes'.
Unmoved, the Almanach de Gotha
simply produced two editions the following year, the first
the extremely rare "Edition for France - at
His Imperial Majesty's Request" and the other
"The Gotha - Correct in All Detail" Historically
the Gotha was the determining instrument
when it came to matters of protocol. Not only were orders of precedence easily
checked,
but marriages between parties not listed in the same Gotha section were often considered
unequal
at some courts, participants thereby loosing dynastic privileges and sometimes
title and rank. The term morganatic
applied to the marriage; it derived from the High German
morgangeba, a gift by a groom to his bride on the morning following
their wedding. It indicated
that this was the full and only entitlement that the wife could expect from her
new husband.
Morganatic marriages were often called 'left hand marriages' due to the fact that inequality in
rank required the groom to use his left hand instead or the right during the wedding ceremony.
Some dynastic house laws in existence today continue to exclude members who marry a
spouse from outside the Gotha Part One or Part
Two families. Dynasts loose all rights
and refrain from the adoption of ancestral titles. In some German families
this can
still mean forfeiture of estates and property. However in a number of recent cases,
marriages have been contracted which clearly fall well beyond the scope of what could
be described
as equal, but the head of the family at the time has been able to rely
on obscure sub-clauses of family law
which allows discretionary permission for such
marriages to take place within the set family
house law concerned. 
Listings are now in genealogical
order and the issue of morganatic marriages and the
marriages themselves are now listed in the main body of
the family entry from which
they derive. There are sensible reasons for this. Previously when many more families
were reigning new titles were created and a listing under a new line, in Part Three,
placed the new generation
according to rank. It was decided, however, after careful
deliberation, that the Gotha should now retain family
entries intact where they continue
using the same name. However where an individual has renounced his rights
or becomes
a non-dynast as a result, we have marked this fact against the entry where it is the
wish
of the head of the family that we do so. In this way dynastic breaches are still
clearly distinguished. Historically
there has been a divergence of opinion on the
question of morganatic marriages. Whilst some families believed
the matter to be an
issue of sacred proportions, others, such as Queen Victoria regarded it as ridiculous.
Only on one occasion in Britain
did the question arise, uniquely the letters patent
issued on the creation of the Dukedom of Windsor provided
for the rank and style of
Royal Highness for the Duke alone and not his wife or any subsequent issue. But that
itself followed the earlier constitutional ruling by Prime Minister Baldwin, on the
advice of lawyers,
who was clear that the wife of a King was the Queen. It is
understandable why, previously a sustained and concerted
effort has been made by a
caste to preserve and enhance its own status by means of a highly complex an obscure
set of rules. This did of course occasionally lead to confusion.
The late Princess Alice, Countess
of Athlone once recounted that at formal receptions at
the Imperial Court at Berlin, Royal Highnesses were
shepherded by the chamberlains into
a room by themselves and were presented to the Kaiser and Kaiserin before
the other royals.
Princess Alice recalled that her cousin Princess Pauline of Wurttemberg (Royal Highness,
Part I Princess) was so furious at being separated from her husband the Prince of Wied
(Part II Prince
but having only the rank of Durchlaucht, that is a Serene Highness, its
meaning can best be literally described
as "not the same") that she never returned to Court.
Princess Alice by contrast, the daughter of
one of Queen Victoria's sons, Part I Princess)
but married to Prince Alexander of Teck (Queen Mary's brother
but only a Part III Prince)
found the situation hilarious.
At the end of World War Two when the Soviets occupied
Gotha they immediately stormed the
factory where the presses were housed and within five days, in a public
display of protest,
destroyed, by burning, most of the genealogical and heraldic archives. Since the books
contained detailed references to the Romanov Dynasty, the attempt to obliterate history was
made against these
milestones. But the fate of the entire archive still remains a mystery,
what was to the Soviets a classic symbol
of a degenerate bourgeois society, was in any
case a substantial archive of Genealogy on European Royalty and
Nobility. 
