Heinz Holzhauer’s scientific contributions

More often than not, spouses have similar social and economic backgrounds. This is a timeless rule that also applied to the highest class of nobility, as may be expected. Yet only in Germany, a prince whose mother was not on a par with the father was disqualified from succession to the throne, even excluded from the aristocratic family. Although the general civil law applies to the German high nobility since 1919, among themselves and in relation to the highest international nobility of the former and still existing monarchies, the old principles still have a certain validity. Thus now, in the house Wettin - one of the oldest European dynasties - the last remaining male descendant of the Albertine branch, which used to be sovereign, is fighting for the continuity of his house and for his position as head of the house, as his father had married a commoner. And rightly so, as the author explains with arguments from legal history, the applicable civil law and the nature of the "post-monarchic law of nobility".