Toronto’s kind-hearted prince
Meet His Serene Highness, Prince Hermann Friedrich Fernando Roland zu Leiningen
TORONTO — Hermann Leiningen had a “simple” childhood growing up in Toronto in the 1960s. He went to French school, babysat to earn pocket money, played road hockey and loved the Toronto Maple Leafs completely, with a devotion to player statistics that, perhaps, foreshadowed his career in high finance. Summers were different. Summers meant Portugal and staying with his Nonna at her “big house.” There were trips to the beach with nannies, who would forget to put sunscreen on Hermann and his cousins, and where the adults could ignore the children and catch up on the family gossip: Who was living where, and marrying or divorcing whom. Who was sick or having babies, or going broke, and other scuttlebutt that Uncle Vladi, Uncle Beppo, Uncle Juanito and Uncle Simeon and Aunt Margarita might enjoy, but that young Hermann didn’t pay attention to.
“I didn’t even really know my family story until I got interested in the history in my teens,” Leiningen says. “None of my friends knew. I mean, I was told that I was born 50th in line to the British throne — but it didn’t mean anything to me.”
Hermann Leiningen, who these days commutes to Bay Street from Toronto’s western suburbs at 6 a.m., is the great-great-great grandson of Queen Victoria.
His relatives in Portugal were mostly royals in exile. Uncle Vladi was Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia; Uncle Juanito, the King of Spain; Uncle Beppo, King Umberto II of Italy; and Nonna, his beloved grandmother, the Queen of Bulgaria. She was banished from that country by the communists in 1946 three years after her husband, King Boris III, died mysteriously following a fiery meeting with Adolf Hitler.
Hermann Leiningen’s formal name is His Serene Highness, Prince Hermann Friedrich Fernando Roland zu Leiningen. And, technically, had his greatgreat-grandfather, Prince Alfred of the United Kingdom, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, been Victoria’s first-born son instead of her second, the 51- yearold banker might be sitting in Buckingham Palace today and some aristocrat named Charles Windsor might be sitting with me instead, in a National Post boardroom, discussing the wondrous duality of being an undercover Canadian prince.
“But that is not how it worked out,” Leiningen says, quietly, in an accent that is impossible to place — though not quite of this place — but not specific to anywhere in Europe either.
He travels frequently to London sowing business contacts for his latest role with the Royal Bank of Canada ( and which could see him move to England permanently).
Leiningen did, incidentally, bump into Prince Charles, his cousin several times removed, at a London art gallery recently and introduced himself. The two then spoke of the tangled family tree tethering them together.
“We are all related somehow,” he says.
He is referring to Europe’s aristocracy. Where marrying your first cousin — as Leiningen’s great-grandmother, Princess Victoria Melita of Great Britain did when she married Grand Duke Kirill of Russia — was a way of forming alliances and securing family fortunes.
It is now a source of comic material for Leiningen, a sharp wit who credits his involuntary “twitching” — that is a joke — to the intermarrying aspects of his genetic heritage.
Unfortunately, despite the rich genealogy, Leiningen is not rich. There was no family fortune to inherit, although there is a castle near Frankfurt, Germany, occupied by his first cousin, Andreas.
“I am always welcome there,” Leiningen says. “I like to joke that my family didn’t leave me any money. That is why I work for the bank for 12 hours a day.”
And he looks the part. His hair is slicked back, his face tanned, and his blue trousers nattily tapered — a hint of European styling that extends to his impeccable manners.
John Vermeeren has worked with the prince, whose professional title is Hermann F. Leiningen, Managing Director, Family Office and Institutional Investments, for 10 years. He didn’t know his colleague, now a good friend, was royalty until some mail arrived at the office addressed to a prince.
“He is not as muscular as I would have pictured, because when you think of a prince you think of Hollywood,” Vermeeren says. “But, when you really think about it, he does have an air about him, something distinctive.”
“There is no pecking order with Hermann. He makes time for everyone. And it is not insincere. It is not a means to an end.”
He is kind, is what he is. It is a character trait that has made him an unofficial celebrity around Toronto synagogues, where he occasionally gives talks and is recognized as a prince because of what his grandfather, King Boris III, did for Bulgaria’s Jews during the Second World War.
King Boris signed an alliance with Hitler. But within that deal with the devil, the king retained the moral courage to say no to the Nazi dictator when demands were made to hand over the country’s Jews. Bulgaria’s Jewish population increased over the course of the war, from 48,000 to 50,000.
King Boris died mysteriously in 1943, soon after a meeting with Hitler. Some believe he was poisoned by the Germans.
“He did something unique, and in the end it cost him his life,” his grandson says. “I don’t think you can be any braver than that.”
Princess Marie Louise of Bulgaria met Hermann’s father, Prince Karl of Leiningen, on the royal exiles circuit. Karl was captured by the Canadians during the war and had a romantic notion of Canada.
So he moved his family to Toronto. The marriage didn’t last, but the princess remained, later remarrying and moving to New Jersey, where she is active in the Bulgarian community, at home and abroad.
After a spell at an American military academy her son attended Queen’s University in Kingston, studying economics and history and keeping his royal ties to himself. At 22 he returned to Toronto after a stint in Manhattan.
His wife of 30 years, Deborah Cully, is a commoner. But their three daughters, Tatiana, Nadia and Alexandra, are princesses. (One a teacher, one a banking trainee and the youngest a student and part-time model).