Mother Ida Wodianer | Name Elisabeth Gutmann | |
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Tenure 22 July 1929 – 25 July 1938 Father Wilhelm Isak, Ritter von Gutmann Spouse Franz I, Prince of Liechtenstein (m. 1929) Parents Wilhelm von Gutmann, Ida Wodianer People also search for Franz I, Prince of Liechtenstein | ||
Elisabeth von Gutmann (6 January 1875 – 28 September 1947) was Princess of Liechtenstein as the wife of Prince Franz I.
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Early life
Elisabeth (also known as Elsa) was born at Vienna, Austria-Hungary. She was the daughter of Wilhelm Isak, Ritter von Gutmann and his second wife Ida Wodianer. Her father was a Jewish businessman from Moravia. His coal mining and trading company, Gebrüder Gutmann, was in a leading position in the market dominated by the Habsburg monarchy. He and his brother were knighted in 1878 by Emperor Franz Joseph I. They were made knights of the Order of the Iron Crown which simultaneously meant being given a hereditary knighthood. Between 1891–1892 he was president of the Vienna Israelite Community.
First marriage
In January 1899 she was baptised on the name Elisabeth Sarolta and became a Catholic. A few days later, on 1 February 1899, Elisabeth was married in Vienna to Hungarian Baron Géza Erős of Bethlenfalva (1866–1908). He died on 7 August 1908. They had no children.
Second marriage
In 1914, she met at the relief fund for soldiers, Prince Franz of Liechtenstein. Prince Franz's brother Prince Johann II did not approve of this relationship. On 11 February 1929 Prince Franz succeeded his brother as Franz I, as his brother had died unmarried and childless. On 22 July 1929 Elisabeth and Franz I married at the small parish church of Lainz near Vienna. They had no children. The couple was the first Prince and Princess of Liechtenstein to make proper contact with the public by an active representation. As Princess, Elisabeth participated in official ceremonies, visited institution and the poor, and became quite popular. She founded Franz und Elsa-Stiftung für die liechtensteinische Jugend, an organisation for teenagers, which still exists. In addition, there was the Princess Elsa Foundation for hospitals. She was, however, identified by local Liechtenstein Nazis as their Jewish "problem". Although Liechtenstein had no official Nazi party, a Nazi sympathy movement had been simmering for years within its National Union party. In early 1938, just after the annexation of Austria into Greater Nazi Germany, 84-year-old Prince Franz I relinquished decision-making to his 31-year-old grandnephew, who would later succeed him as Prince Franz Joseph II.
Later years
After the death of her husband in 1938, she lived at Semmering Pass, until the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany, when she went into exile in Switzerland, where she died at Vitznau on Lake Lucerne in 1947.
She was the first princess who was buried not in Vranov, but in the new royal crypt next to the Vaduz Cathedral (previously she was buried near the pilgrimage chapel of Dux in Liechtenstein on 2 October 1947).