I personally think that there are adoptions and adoptions. While I believe the way Mario Max behaves in a lot of things are very, very tacky to say the least, his mother is legally married to a prince of Schaumburg-Lippe which regards Mario Max as a son. That is different from the Frederic of Anhalt-situation in my opinion who had never a kind of real family relation with the von Anhalts.
There have been princes who raised their wife's children from a first marriage to a commoner as their own and introduced them to their circle of friends, ending in noble marriages for these adoptive children.
From: http://home.foni.net/~adelsforschung2/adelsadoption.htm, a German historical study about such adoptions in their historical context:
About the possibilities of Adoptions in the kingdom of Prussia pre 1918:
Was die landesherrliche preußische Adelspolitik bei den Adoptionen von Nichtadeligen durch Adelige bis zum Jahre 1918 betraf, so umfaßte sie mengenbezüglich vermutlich jährlich nur etwa zwei bis drei Fälle. Als Motive zu einer Annahme an Kindesstatt wurden häufig langjährig schon bestehende Verhältnisse von Pflegekindern zu Pflegefamilien angeführt, auch der Wunsch nach Nachkommen oder Nachfolgern war wichtig oder die rechtliche Absicherung von »Patchworkfamilien«, bei denen der Stiefvater die Kinder der ersten Ehe seiner Frau zu adoptieren wünschte. [52] Vereinzelt aber war auch die sittenwidrige reine Namensübertragung gegen Entgelt beabsichtigt, wie noch zu zeigen sein wird.
The Prussian law made a difference between acceptable adoptions of non-noble persons by nobles and non-acceptable. Acceptable was if a noble in need of an heir or a stepfather raising the children of his wife from her first marriage wished to adopt a non-noble person. In this case the king or the responsible ministry could grant in the name of the king the right to convey title and rank of the adopter to the adoptee. That happened 2-3 times a year. Non-aceptable was the transfer of a title if it was only about money, not securing the family.
So comparing Mario Max and his family to that terrible Robert Lichtenberg (aka "Frederick of Anhalt") is not fully fair when you view the historic usus from the times of German and Austrian monarchy. Today the methods of legitimation and transfer of noble names are different but it was possible back in times when we still had a monarchy. And it's a fact: Mario-Max is the son of prince Wilhelm's wife and he regards him in public as the son he himself has not. So in Prussia it would have been possible to adopt Mario-Max and have him elevated to the rank of a real prince of Schaumburg-Lippe.
Though I see your point. Just wanted to put that historically in perspective in regard to why Mario-Max believes he has a right to more than being just a name bearer. He is bad, but not a complete fraud.
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