The thirteen-year-old Princess Yvonne Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn takes a swig from a bottle while Prince Alexander, just twelve, sits with a half-smoked cigarette. Taken aboard the yacht of Bartholomé March off Majorca in 1955, the photographer was Princess Marianne “Manni” Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn — the mother of Yvonne and Alexander — who’s known by her photographic soubriquet of “Mamarazza”.
Princess Manni was born in Salzburg in 1919, the eldest of nine children of Friedrich Baron Mayr-Melnhof and his wife Maria Anna Countess von Meran.
Studying at Munich during the war, she met Prince Ludwig zu Sayn-Wittgenstein who was on leave from the front, and the pair were engaged within days. Married in 1942, their daughter Yvonne was born in December of that year with Alexander following a year later. When the war ended the castle at Sayn was severely damaged by bombs, and the family considered emigrating to Brazil before they decided to stay, rebuild, and put their farms back in order.
Car accident after the baptism of Prince Albrecht of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein, 14 May 1950. The driver Prince Ludwig zu Sayn-Wittgenstein with Princess Beatrix zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein, Hella Princess of Bavaria, and Princess Clementine von Croy. Prince Ludwig was later killed in a car accident in 1962.
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