Albrecht, Duke of Bavaria (Albrecht Luitpold Ferdinand Michael; 3 May 1905 – 8 July 1996) was the son of the last crown prince of Bavaria, Rupprecht, and his first wife, Duchess Marie Gabrielle in Bavaria. He was the only child from that marriage who reached adulthood. His paternal grandfather was Ludwig III of Bavaria, the last king of Bavaria, who was deposed in 1918.
Life
thumb|262px|right|Albrecht with his younger half-brother, [[Prince Heinrich of Bavaria (1922–1958)|Prince Heinrich, in 1922.]]
Following the First World War, Albrecht's grandfather King Ludwig was deposed. Albrecht and the family temporarily moved from Bavaria to the Austrian Tyrol.
In September 1943, the German Army occupied Italy and the former crown prince went into hiding in Florence. In October 1944, after Germany had occupied Hungary in March, Albrecht and his family were arrested by the Gestapo in the Erdődy mansion in Doba, Hungary, and deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Towards the end of the war, they were interned with other special prisoners, including the family of General Paulus, in a former hotel on Lake Plansee (Tyrol), but had to remain there under military guard even after they were liberated by the United States Third Army. After a while, Albrecht and his family fled to Linderhof and hid there with a forest ranger. Finally, together with numerous refugees from Hungary, they moved into an outbuilding of Leutstetten Castle near Starnberg, which was occupied by an Allied commission, where after some time the former crown prince also returned from Rome.
Since 1949 Albrecht lived at Berg Palace (Bavaria), southwest of Munich on Lake Starnberg, in relative seclusion until the end of his life. His son Franz remembers: “He came back after being away for many years, having previously experienced a decade of severe disappointments - including on a human level. He came back to a country where almost all of his real friends had been murdered or fallen. And he had mostly bad memories of some of the people who had survived and whom he met back then... For him, many places were contaminated by the Nazi era. He came back to a Bavaria that was no longer his Bavaria. The resulting isolation accompanied him throughout his life.”
Albrecht became head of the deposed royal family of Bavaria with the death of his father on 2 August 1955. As head of the House of Wittelsbach, Albrecht was also Grand Master of the Wittelsbach House Orders, the Order of Saint George, the Order of St. Hubert and the Order of Theresa. On Christmas Eve 1952, Albrecht of Bavaria was invested in the Knights' Order of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem; he was president of its Bavarian Order Province.
The Duke appeared in public on important occasions. In order to remain present, he established the annual receptions by the head of the House of Wittelsbach at Nymphenburg Palace, which are still held today, to which around 1,500 guests from state politics, municipalities, churches and sciences, art and medicine as well as friends and relatives are invited.
In 1959 Albrecht, in an official ceremony, returned the Greek crown jewels (originally made for a Bavarian prince who reigned as Greece's first modern monarch, King Otto) to the Greek nation, accepted by King Paul of Greece. Together with his son Franz and a daughter, he had taken part in the ship tours organized by King Paul of Greece and Queen Frederica in 1954 and 1956, which became known as the “Cruises of the Kings” and were attended by over 100 royals from all over Europe.
In 1980 Albrecht presided over sumptuous ceremonies in Bavaria celebrating the 800th anniversary of the ascension of the House of Wittelsbach to the Bavarian throne.
Albrecht was a prolific hunter and deer researcher, collecting 3,425 sets of antlers, now partially shown in a permanent exhibition on his research activities in the former royal castle at Berchtesgaden. He also wrote two books on "the habits of deer" he was also the dynastic representative and heir-general of England, Scotland and Ireland's last Stuart king, James II and VII, deposed in 1688.
Marriages and children
thumb|200px|Coat of arms of the Counts Drashkovich of Trakostjan
Albrecht married Countess Maria Draskovich of Trakostjan (8 March 1903 in Vienna – 10 June 1969 in Wildbad Kreuth) on 3 September 1930 in Berchtesgaden. She was the only child of Count Dionys Maria Draskovich of Trakostjan (1875–1909) and his wife, Princess Juliana Rose von Montenuovo (1880–1961) (a great-granddaughter of Marie-Louise of Austria, sometime Empress of the French), belonging to a family of an ancient Croatian nobility known since 1230 and made Imperial counts in 1631. Although the couple were related, both sharing descent from Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor and Albrecht's father allowed the wedding, a Wittelsbach family council concluded that the marriage was non-compliant with the dynasty's marital tradition as set out in its historical House laws, After the death of his father in 1955 he changed his style to Herzog von Bayern (Duke of Bavaria).
As head of the House of Wittelsbach, Albrecht was traditionally styled as His Royal Highness the Duke of Bavaria, of Franconia and in Swabia, Count Palatine of the Rhine.
Dynastic honours
- Württemberg Royal Family: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Order of the Crown, Special Class
- Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Family: Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, 1953
Foreign honours
- : Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre
- : Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Principality of Liechtenstein, Grand Star