Prince Paul Karadjordjević

Prince Paul Karadjordjević (born April 27 [April 15, Old Style], 1893, St. Petersburg, Russia—died September 14, 1976, Paris, France) was the regent of Yugoslavia in the period leading into World War II.

Paul’s uncle was King Peter I of Serbia, and Paul’s mother was a Russian princess of the Demidov family. He was educated in Geneva and Belgrade, and in 1910 he moved to Britain to attend the University of Oxford. His studies were interrupted by military service in the Balkan Wars and World War I, however, and he did not earn a degree until 1921. An intelligent and urbane individual, Paul moved easily within the upper echelons of British society, and, although he was a member of the Karadjordjević family, he was not burdened with political duties in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. In 1923 he married Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark; Prince Albert, duke of York (later George VI) served as his best man. Shortly thereafter Paul was named viceroy of Croatia, but he continued to devote much of his time to travel and artistic pursuits. He was an avid art collector, and, when the Museum of Contemporary Art was founded in Belgrade in 1929, Paul himself donated many works by European masters from his private collection. In 1935 the Museum of Contemporary Art was merged with the Museum of Art and History, and the new institution was renamed the Prince Paul Museum in recognition of his patronage.

When Yugoslavia’s king Alexander I was assassinated (October 9, 1934), Paul was appointed regent for his 11-year-old nephew, Peter II. Alexander had instituted a royal dictatorship that coincided with the establishment of Yugoslavia in 1929, and, although Paul did not fully restore democratic rights, he made moves in that direction. He encouraged talks between the government and opposition leaders in Croatia, which led to the Sporazum (“Agreement”) of August 26, 1939. The Sporazum granted a great deal of autonomy to Croatia, but it generated resentment among the Serbian leadership.

As war engulfed Europe, Paul’s sympathies lay with the British-French entente (in addition to the personal ties that he had developed during his time in England, his brother-in-law was the duke of Kent), but he tried to maintain a course of neutrality. The collapse of the Little Entente had diminished Yugoslavia’s regional influence, and Paul was soon forced to submit to Adolf Hitler’s demands and align his country with the Axis powers. On March 27, 1941, two days after signing a treaty with Germany, Paul was deposed by a conspiracy led by Gen. Dušan Simović and other air force officers. Paul fled to Greece, where he was captured by British forces. He spent the remainder of the war interred in Kenya and South Africa. After the war, he was declared an enemy of the state by the communist Yugoslav government, but he was not made to stand trial for war crimes by the Allies. He settled in Paris in 1949 and spent the remainder of his life in exile.

In December 2011 Paul was rehabilitated by a Belgrade court, and his 1945 conviction was quashed. Under Serbian law, his heirs were entitled to seek restitution for property seized as a result of that conviction. In September 2012 the bodies of Paul, Princess Olga, and their son Prince Nicholas were disinterred from a cemetery in Lausanne, Switzerland. On October 6, 2012, they were reburied with state honours in the mausoleum of the Karadjordjević dynasty in Topola, Serbia.