page_title: Prince Paul of Thurn and Taxis
section_title: Marriage, estrangement and death
hierarchical_section_title: Prince Paul of Thurn and Taxis / Marriage, estrangement and death
caption_attribution_description: English: The picture shows Maximilian Karl, 6th Prince of Thurn and Taxis and his second wife Princess Mathilde Sophie of Oettingen-Oettingen and Oettingen-Spielberg (center), together with their children. The picture was taken at the occasion of the 25th wedding anniversary on January 24, 1864, in Regensburg, Kingdom of Bavaria.
context_page_description: Paul Maximilian Lamoral, Prince of Thurn and Taxis, was the third child of Maximilian Karl, 6th Prince of Thurn and Taxis and his second wife Princess Mathilde Sophie of Oettingen-Oettingen and Oettingen-Spielberg. He was buried in Cannes, at the Cimetière du Grand Jas, Allée du Silence no. 33 under the name of Paul de Fels.
context_section_description: On 7 November 1866, Paul is released from his duties as aide-de-camp and transferred to an artillery regiment "under gracious recognition of his services". From midst November 1866, he started to drink without limits and in a state of turmoil and distress ended up with the Jewish soubrette Elise Kreuzer of the Actien-Volkstheater.
  After their final break up Paul would never see Ludwig again. In January 1867, Paul retired from the Bavarian army under peculiar circumstances, which were later termed as "desertion" by Minister of War Siegmund von Pranckh in 1872. Using the alias "Rudolphi", Paul moved to Wankdorf near Bern, Switzerland, together with Elise where their son Heinrich, named after Elise's father Heinrich Kreuzer, a known opera singer, was born on 30 January 1867.
  After Paul received notice that his parents had tasked the Bavarian police to trace their son in order to convince him to abandon Elise, they moved to Mannheim or Ludwigshafen in August 1867. In October 1867, Paul took up an engagement at the municipal theatre of Aachen under the name “Herr von Thurn” together with Elise.
  1867 was a very challenging year for the Thurn and Taxis family. Paul's sister Amalie died on 12 February 1867 at the age of 22 and his half-brother, Maximilian Anton Lamoral, the Hereditary Prince of Thurn and Taxis, died on 26 June 1867 at the age of 36. With the annexation of the Free City of Frankfurt am Main - where the Thurn-und-Taxis-Post had its headquarters -  by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1866 during the Austro-Prussian war, the era of the Thurn and Taxis family's postal monopoly ended on 1 July 1867 with the handover to Prussia.
  In 1868, Prince Paul von Thurn und Taxis was forced by his family to marry Elise morganatically, and thereafter was disowned by them, stripped of all his titles, rank and birthrights against an annual pension of 6000 florin. Paul kept writing to Ludwig but without any reply. In the end he begged the King to give him a title. On 19 June 1868 Ludwig inscribed him upon the list of the nobility of Bavaria as Herr Paul von Fels. However, his later petition for conferment of hereditary nobility was declined on 10 December 1869 at the request of the Bavarian Ministry.
  Paul tried to reconnect with Richard Wagner as a diary entry of Cosima Wagner on 11 April 1869 shows:"...Hans reporting nothing but bad things from Munich; on top of that a letter from Paul of Fels (formerly Prince Taxis), who wants an appointment of some kind, and, in order to secure it, tells us a lot of gossip! At three o’clock a boat trip with the three little ones and R."
  Paul started a new attempt to reconcile with his father and visited him together with Elise on 3 August 1869 in Schloss Donaustauf, obviously to no avail. Paul then became an actor at the Zurich theatre in Switzerland, but ended his acting career after being hissed off the stage.
  After his father died on 10 November 1871, his sister-in-law, Helene of Thurn and Taxis, became the unofficial head of the family until her son, Maximilian Maria, the Hereditary Prince, became of age on 24 June 1883. Known for her diplomatic skills, she tried to reconnect Paul to King Ludwig II  and, according to newspaper reports of 1874, Paul was to regain his family name and become the Marshall of the Royal Palace Herrenchiemsee and Master of the Revels to King Ludwig II. However, this was not realized for unknown reasons.
  From 1874 to 1878, Elise was the prima donna at the municipal theatre of Freiburg im Breisgau. According to Baring-Gould she "exacted from her husband that, whenever she acted, he should throw a bouqet on to the stage at her feet, and get his friends to do the same".
  Shortly after, Paul came down with tuberculosis and went with his wife to Lugano, where he grew worse. Elise formed a liaison with a Prussian officer, staying at the same hotel, and eloped with him, "leaving her husband, who had given up so much for her, to die unbefriended" on 10 March 1879 in Cannes.
  In 1879, Paul's widow, under the name of Frau Elisabeth von Fels, joined the Municipal Theatre in Lübeck togeth
caption: Prince Paul of Thurn and Taxis (top) together with his family at the occasion of the silver wedding anniversary of his parents on 24 January 1864.
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