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When I originally posted these images, I was forthright about my suspicion that, though all the documentation that I'd been able to access identified the sitter in the above four photographs as Marie August of Anhalt, the wife of the Kaiser's youngest son, Prince Joachim, it just didn't look like it could be the same lady; I saw little or no resemblance to earlier, verified photographs of Marie Auguste. Thanks to an intrepid commenter, who identifies her as Karoline Kornelia Stockhammer, the second morganatic wife of Prince Joachim Albrecht of Prussia, a lesser member of the Prussian royal family, I now understand why.
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| The legitimate Princess Joachim, Marie Auguste of Anhalt. |
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| With her son, Karl Franz. |
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Princess Marie Auguste of Anhalt (10 June 1898, Ballenstedt – 22 May 1983, Essen), Princess Joachim of Prussia, later Baroness von Loën, daughter of Eduard, Duke of Anhalt and his wife Princess Louise Charlotte of Saxe-Altenburg. In 1916 she married Prince Joachim of Prussia, the youngest son of German Emperor William II, and they had one child, Prince Karl Franz. After the end of World War I and his father's abdication, Prince Joachim struggled to adjust to his altered status, and in 1920 the couple filed for divorce. In July of that same year, plagued by depression, he committed suicide. At his death, his brother Eitel Friedrich, took custody of his three-year-old nephew, claiming it as his right, as the legal head of the House of Hohenzollern. He accused Marie Auguste of being unfit, but the German courts returned Karl Franz to her full custody in 1921.
She remarried in 1926 to Johannes-Michael, Baron von Loën, a childhood friend, but they divorced in 1935. In her last years, she had financial difficulties, and "adopted" several adults, giving them a claim to her royal style in exchange for money. The best known of these adoptees, was Hans Robert Lichtenberg, who took the name of Frédéric, Prinz von Anhalt, and later married Zsa Zsa Gabor.
