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Head of the House of Hohenzollern: Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia

Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, is head of the formerly royal Prussian line of the House of Hohenzollern [1][2]. The house's website calls him "Chef des Hauses Hohenzollern", head of the House of Hohenzollern [3]. The Swabian line has its own head, Karl Friedrich, Prince of Hohenzollern [2]. This page covers the Prussian headship, using only the sources listed at the end. Unlike the Romanov or French cases, no rival claimant to this headship appears in our sources.

Birth and family

Georg Friedrich was born in Bremen on 10 June 1976 [1]. He is the only son and eldest child of Louis Ferdinand Prince of Prussia (1944–1977) and Countess Donata of Castell-Rüdenhausen (1950–2015) [1]. His father was the third son of Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia (1907–1994), who was himself a grandson of Emperor Wilhelm II [1][4]. According to the house's website, Georg Friedrich, like Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, is a direct descendant of Queen Victoria. The link runs through Victoria's eldest daughter, Empress Victoria, mother of Wilhelm II [3].

He went to school in Bremen and Oldenburg and completed his education at Glenalmond College in Scotland [1].

Head of the house since 1994

Georg Friedrich succeeded his grandfather Louis Ferdinand as head of the Royal House of Prussia on 26 September 1994 [1].

His position as heir rested on family arrangements that the German courts examined in detail. According to the Federal Constitutional Court [4]:

• In 1938, Crown Prince Wilhelm, eldest son of Wilhelm II, made an inheritance contract with his second son, Louis Ferdinand. The contract named Louis Ferdinand sole prior heir, with later heirs chosen by male primogeniture.
• The contract excluded anyone who did not come from, or did not live in, a marriage that met the principles of the old house constitution of the Brandenburg-Prussian house. This was the equal-marriage clause.
• In 1981, Louis Ferdinand made a will naming his grandson Georg Friedrich, son of his third son, who had died in 1977, as sole heir to his entire estate.

Louis Ferdinand's eldest son challenged the arrangement [4]. He had renounced his rights, in notarised deeds, on marriages described as not equal, in 1961, 1967 and 1976 [4]. The lower courts ruled at different stages:

• The Hechingen court first held the equal-marriage clause void as contrary to public morals [4].
• In 1998 the Federal Court of Justice held the clause valid [4].
• The Hechingen Regional Court, in 2000, and the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court, in 2001, then found against the eldest son [4].

On 22 March 2004, the Federal Constitutional Court set aside the 1998, 2000 and 2001 decisions. It held that they violated the eldest son's fundamental right to freedom of marriage under Article 6(1) of the Basic Law, and sent the case back to the Hechingen Regional Court [4]. The court noted that, since the end of the monarchy, the house laws had become void in constitutional terms. It said the equal-marriage principle "can no longer fulfil its original constitutional function", the regulation of succession to the throne [4]. The outcome of the later proceedings is not set out in our sources, and GOTHA does not state it.

Marriage and heir

In 2011 Georg Friedrich married Princess Sophie of Isenburg. The civil wedding took place in Potsdam on 25 August 2011, and the religious wedding at the Church of Peace in Potsdam on 27 August 2011 [1]. The castle's family history notes that Sophie, Princess of Prussia, now leads the Kira Foundation, founded in 1952 by Louis Ferdinand and Princess Kira. The couple and their four children live in Potsdam [2].

The house's website reports Georg Friedrich visiting sites with his sons Carl Friedrich, Louis Ferdinand and Heinrich [3].

Hohenzollern Castle and the 2025 settlement

Since 1 January 2026, Georg Friedrich has been sole owner of Hohenzollern Castle, after his cousin Karl Friedrich transferred his one-third share [2][5]. By tradition, the Prussian flag flies over the castle when the head of the house is present [2].

For decades the family and the German state disputed the ownership of many art objects. On 13 June 2025, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media announced that the settlement between the public authorities and the House of Hohenzollern had taken effect [6]. Its core is a non-profit Stiftung Hohenzollernscher Kunstbesitz (Foundation for Hohenzollern Art Property). All objects whose ownership had been disputed pass to it, and it keeps them permanently in the public collections of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the German Historical Museum [6]. Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer said the agreement ended "after a hundred years" a dispute dating from the transition from monarchy to republic [6].

The foundation's council met for the first time on 9 February 2026. Georg Friedrich attended as deputy chairman, and the public authorities hold the majority [7]. It was also agreed that further records from the Hohenzollern house archive would be transferred to the Prussian Privy State Archives [7].

Licence: contains material adapted from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). This article is released under the same licence. Primary and institutional sources are summarised or briefly quoted.