Reykjavík Grapevine - 23.05.2014, Blaðsíða 38

Premium Quality Vegetarian Food
THE GREEN CHOICE
Grænn Kostur is the perfect downtown
choice when you are looking for wholesome
great tasting meals.
• Vegetarian dishes
• Vegan dishes
• Bakes and soups
• Wholesome cakes
• Raw food deserts
• Coffee and tea
graennkostur.is | Skólavörðustíg 8b | 101 Reykjavík | tel.: 552 2028 | Opening hours: Mon - Sat. 11:30 - 21:00 | Sun. 13:00 - 21:00
1.790 kr
.
Vegetari
an Dish
of the D
ay
In his 1952 memoir, the German noble-
man Prince Friedrich Christian of Scha-
umburg-Lippe unveiled the details of
a meeting he had with three Iceland-
ers in Berlin during the spring of 1938.
The meeting had taken place at the
offices of the Reich’s Ministry of Pro-
paganda, headed by the top-ranking
Nazi Joseph Goebbels. At the meeting,
the three Icelanders asked the prince,
a staff member at the ministery, if he
would like to be the King of Iceland.
The prince writes: “In the spring of 1939 I sub-
mitted for my resignation from the ministry. My
intention was to leave the public service and move
to the countryside. I wanted to become a provin-
cial administrator. I would probably have submit-
ted for my resignation earlier if we wouldn’t have
received a remarkable opportunity the year prior.
At that time a group of patriotic and distinguished
Icelanders travelled to Berlin. In Iceland the goal
was to form a new independent kingdom.”
Through the Act of Union with Denmark signed
on December 1, 1918, The Kingdom of Iceland was
at the time recognised as a fully sovereign state in
union with Denmark through a common monarch.
As the nation’s full independence seemed a likely
outcome in the near future there were Iceland-
ers who thought that the country should remain
a monarchy. The most prominent of these monar-
chists was the composer Jón Leifs, who resided in
Germany for years. He thought that a continental
king in independent Iceland would bring strength
and prosperity to the country. And there was an
obvious precedent: Norway had chosen to offer
Prince Carl of Denmark the crown after getting
independence from Sweden in 1905. He became
King Haakon VII of Norway, a popular king. So
while the concept of a king of Iceland sounds sur-
real for modern Icelanders it was a logical step for
some in the 1930s.
Prince Schaumburg-Lippe
Contemplates The Offer
“My godfather, Christian X of Denmark, was also
the king of Iceland,” writes the prince of Schaum-
burg-Lippe who was apparently a product of the
finest European nobility stock.
“Now Icelanders wanted their own king, de-
spite the fact that many were socialists. A new
king would have to be in the right age, have a son
and be from a reigning monarch family. In this
regard the variety was probably the best in Ger-
many. I had no idea about this until one day I was
asked if I would be interested in undertaking this
task.”
“The longer I thought about it with my wife, the
more convinced we became that it was a good
idea. In due time I could therefore tell the Icelan-
dic envoy that I would accept their offer. But as a
condition I would have to get the consent of Ger-
many’s Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler.”
Shortly after meeting with the Icelanders,
Prince Schaumburg-Lippe paid a visit to Goeb-
bels’s summerhouse in the outskirts of Berlin. On
a quiet night they sat before the fireplace, slowly
adding firewood and sipping on Curaçao.
“Not surprisingly he was interested in the of-
fer I had received and therefore I enjoyed his re-
action. He was like a happy child, proud that his
own staff member had been made such an offer.
He was very eager to make it happen,” the prince
writes in his memoir before going on to describe
how Goebbels started smiling and making fun of
the whole affair.
“Prince Schaumburg, have you already writ-
ten your first speech as king? Don’t you need a
Propaganda Minister? Could I offer myself to the
post?” Hitler’s Propaganda Minister said, laugh-
ing.
After World War II broke out in September
1939, the matter fell by the wayside. According to
Prince Schaumburg-Lippe, Nazi Germany’s For-
eign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop did not like
the idea.
The Offer Is Swiftly Forgotten,
As Is The Prince
Scholars are now almost sure that the three
Icelanders who offered the prince the crown of
Iceland were Jón Leifs, the aforementioned com-
poser and the writers Guðmundur Kamban and
Kristján Albertsson. None of them had any au-
thority to offer a kingship to anybody and their
intentions were unclear. They must have thought
that if Germany would win the war that Iceland
would be secure with a German king.
Iceland gained independence in 1944 and
chose to have a president. Since then the idea of
a king has never been suggested with any real in-
tention.
Prince Friedrich Christian of Schaumburg-
Lippe continued to work for the Nazi regime until
its surrender in 1945. He was captured by the Al-
lies but was not convicted of war crimes. Instead,
he testified in the Nuremberg trials of 1946. He
was part of a German nobility that had lost all
real power after World War I and who the Nazis
used as puppets in their regime to give it more
charm. Like many of these aristocrats, Prince
Schaumburg-Lippe had no real influence in the
Third Reich.
His bid to become the king of Iceland was
swiftly forgotten. He wrote several letters to the
Icelandic government asking if the offer still stood
and if not that he could be given a title in Iceland,
perhaps Graf von Reykjavík, Count of Reykjavík.
Nobody seemed to care about him and didn’t
even bother to write him back. In 1973, he final-
ly decided to pay a visit to his lost kingdom and
sailed to Iceland on a cruiser.
In his book about the prince from 1992, Örn
Helgason writes about this visit:
“It seems that he still expected something
from Icelanders. His hopes were however totally
squashed. The prince was not welcomed in Ice-
land. Officials, who he tried to turn to, received
him coldly and wanted to ignore him. Others said
they were sick at home to avoid him. Even the
papers, that have nearly always been completely
polarised, joined forces to remain silent about his
voyage, even though many much smaller things
have been considered newsworthy. Few foreign-
ers have shown as much interest in the country or
had a bigger agenda as this German nobleman.”
Prince Friedrich Christian of Schaumburg-
Lippe died in 1983.
The Nazi King Of Iceland
In 1938 a mysterious meeting took place in which a
German prince was offered the Kingdom of Iceland
38 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 06 — 2014LEMÚRINN
Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe with
Adolf Hitler.
Prince Friedrich Christian of
Schaumburg-Lippe was a staff
member of the Propaganda Ministry
when he was asked to be the king
of Iceland.
Lemúrinn is an Icelandic web magazine (Icelandic for the native primate of Mad-
agascar). A winner of the 2012 Web Awards, Lemúrinn.is covers all things strange
and interesting. Go check it out at www.lemurinn.is
Words
Helgi Hrafn Guðmundsson