In case it's not "permanent", some excerpts:
My 40-year friendship with Elisabeth, Germany's last Grand Duchess
In March, I attended the funeral of Germany's last Grand Duchess, HRH Hereditary Grand Duchess Elisabeth of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Duchess of Saxony, Landgravine of Thuringia, Countess Wettin. She was 98...As I had wanted to earn money by giving English lessons, I had put an advert...The first response was from a lady with almost indecipherable handwriting, signing herself Gräfin Wettin. At that time, my German was not up to knowing that Gräfin meant countess, but I went to meet her at a modest but elegant flat on the outskirts of the town, with lovely views of the Black Forest.
Elisabeth and her twin sister, Dorothée, were born to Baron and Baroness von Wangenheim on January 16 1912, in Tübingen in Baden-Württemberg.
The family subsequently lived at Behringen Castle in Thüringia. Her mother died in 1913 while giving birth to her younger brother, Jobst, who was to die at Stalingrad.
In October 1944, Elisabeth married Hereditary Grand Duke Karl-August of Saxe-Weimar at Wartburg Castle, which was owned by his family until 1922, and is best known as the setting of Wagner’s Tannhäuser. She bore three children, Princess Elisabeth in 1945, Prince Michael in 1946 and Princess Beatrice in 1948.
Just before giving birth to Elisabeth, she had to flee eastern Germany with her husband as the Red Army approached. They went to stay with the Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg at Weikersheim Castle. All the family’s extensive estates and property in eastern Germany were lost. As they had to use a small car to avoid attracting attention as they fled, they were only able to take a small number of possessions. Once, while I was having tea with the Grand Duchess in Freiburg, she turned over a silver plate that was numbered 44. “There used to be 200,” she said. As Germans living in the West were entitled to reclaim the property they had lost though Soviet occupancy, there was hope the family might do the same. Through negotiations with family lawyers and the German government, a settlement of several million euros was reached for the family, none of whom moved back to Thüringia to live, though they keep a hunting lodge there.
I loved the stories she told, including the one about her attending the reception of the wedding of Archduke Otto von Habsburg to Princess Regina of Saxe-Meiningen, a cousin of her husband. Apparently, as a congratulatory card was passed around to be signed, Empress Zita, who had a reputation for being frugal, hesitated with the pen until her son Otto said: “It’s all right, Mother. You can sign it. It is not a cheque!”
At the funeral service on an unseasonably warm day in Munich, which was attended by members of the imperial Hohenzollern and Preussen dynasties, a butterfly appeared from a bouquet of flowers and hovered over the coffin, which was covered with the flag of Thüringia. How the Grand Duchess would have enjoyed that. With special permission, a casket containing her ashes was interred at Wartburg Castle at a private ceremony in May.
My 40-year friendship with Elisabeth, Germany's last grand duchess - Telegraph - 2 August 2010
