Does anyone know anything about the ancestry of Julie Hauke, Princess of Battenberg ? Her father was supposed to be a Jewish street peddler named Morris Hock, a.k.a. Maurice Hauck, later Moritz Hauke...

I had heard that Lord Louis MOUNTBATTEN had a Jewish Rheinland ancestress and I suppose Julie is the one. I think Philip ZIEGLER wrote about it in his biography of MOUNTBATTEN. Do you want me to post your message on the Jewish Genealogy of Great Britain Mailing List?

Regards
Alice Josephs

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>Does anyone know anything about the ancestry of Julie Hauke, Princess of Battenberg ? Her father was supposed to be a Jewish street peddler named Morris Hock, a.k.a. Maurice Hauck, later Moritz Hauke...

I've checked the archives for the Usenet newsgroup called alt.talk.royalty about this (the subject of Prince Philip's Jewish ancestry comes up now and then in that newsgroup) and found the following information.

Countess Julie von Hauke was born in Warsaw in 1825, and died at Schloss Heiligenberg, near Jungenheim in 1895. She was created Countess of Battenberg in 1851, and later created Princess of Battenberg in 1858. Julie was a Roman Catholic who converted to the Evangelical faith in 1875.

Her father was (Johann) Moritz, Count von Hauke (Hauck), a general in the service of the Russian empire. He was raised to the Russian nobility in 1826 (whence his title "Count"). Moritz, who was born in 1775, and died in 1830, was *not* a Jewish street peddler. His father, Friedrich Karl Hauke, was a lyceum headmaster. (A lyceum is roughly equivalent to a high school.) It does not follow that a headmaster would have a "street peddler" for a son.

Moritz's wife was Sophie Lafontaine (born in Warsaw in 1790, and died there in 1831). Her parents were Franz Anton Leopold Lafontaine (an Austrian army surgeon) and Maria Theresia Kornely. This Maria Theresia was Hungarian, as stated on tombstone, which is in a Roman Catholic cemetery in Warsaw. (There isn't any mention of a conversion, and it is assumed that she was Catholic, not Jewish.)

According to genealogist William Addams Reitwiesner, there isn't any solid information about Maria Theresia's ancestors, nor is there any evidence to support a Jewish ancestry for her. There are those who say her father was a certain Jewish fellow by the name of Nathan Adelkind. However, when you trace Adelkind's background, it goes "no further than an undocumented assertion by Adalbert Brauer". According to Reitwiesner, "Brauer published his version of the parentage of Theresa Kornely, namely that she was a daughter of a Joseph Kornely, a baptized Jew who had been born Kornely Adelkind, which would make Julie Hauke either 1/8 or 1/4 Jewish. When asked for evidence, all Brauer could say was that this was the story as he had heard it, and that the evidence had been either destroyed or suppressed. No evidence to support this view has been produced either." (Source: From: William Addams Reitwiesner (wrei@127.0.0.1) / Subject: Re: MARKUS DE KORNELY?????????????????????? / Newsgroups: alt.talk.royalty / Date: 13 Oct. 1997)

In conclusion, it would seem that Countess Julie von Hauke does not have Jewish ancestors.

OMgosh,
Please get in touch with me. I am looking for Julia's siblings and the same information on this board has been handed down to me and a cousin. We are suppose to be descendants of this line somehow. We are doing the research now. We are also doing dna. However the Church does not except dna anyway. We want to put the pieces of this puzzle together. You must be a link. Please email me superplainumx@yahoo.com