Gottfried (Maximilian Maria) Prinz zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfürst, Ratibor und Corvey was an Austro-Hungarian army officer and diplomat during World War I.
Background
Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst was born in Vienna on 8 November 1867 to Lord High Steward Prince Konstantin of Hohenlohe-Schillingfürst (1828–1896) and was the brother of Konrad Prinz zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, who was Prime Minister of Austria in 1906 and who too would become Lord High Steward in 1917.
Education
Gottfried graduated from the Scottish Gymnasium and in 1887 entered the army as a hussar. From 1893 to 1895 he attended the War Academy, followed by duty with the General Staff. Gottfried was sent to St. Petersburg as captain and military attaché in 1902; five years later he retired in the grade of major from the army.
Career
Emperor Francis Joseph, in February 1913, entrusted Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst with a special mission to St. Petersburg designed to alleviate the strained relations arising out of the Balkan crisis in the winter of 1912/1913. The prince thereupon entered the Austro-Hungarian diplomatic corps, and on August 4, 1914, the emperor dispatched him to Berlin as ambassador. The forty-seven-year-old diplomat worked in the German capital as an enthusiastic supporter of the alliance of 1879, and he attempted to the best of his ability to maintain the alliance on the basis of equality. The deteriorating military fortunes of the Dual Monarchy greatly hampered his endeavors, however, and, in September 1916, the Germans forced Vienna to surrender to them strategic control over all the fronts. Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst was convinced by 1917 that military victory was out of reach, and he supported the clumsy attempts of Emperor Charles to bring about a separate peace. The ambassador retired from public service in 1918 and devoted his remaining years to horse racing. He died in Vienna on November 7,1932.
Connections
He married Archduchess Maria Henrietta, daughter of Archduke Friedrich who was the Supreme Commander of the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I, on 3 June 1908 in Baden.