Kiril
Prince of Preslav
Prince Regent of Bulgaria
Tenure28 August 1943 – 9 September 1944
MonarchSimeon II
Born(1895-01-17)17 January 1895
Sofia, Principality of Bulgaria
Died1 February 1945(1945-02-01) (aged 50)
Sofia, Kingdom of Bulgaria
Names
Kyril Heinrich Franz Ludwig Anton Karl Philipp
HouseSaxe-Coburg and Gotha-Koháry
FatherFerdinand I of Bulgaria
MotherMarie Louise of Bourbon-Parma
ReligionRoman Catholic

Prince Kiril of Bulgaria, Prince of Preslav (Bulgarian: Кирил, принц Преславски, German: Kyrill Heinrich Franz Ludwig Anton Karl Philipp Prinz von Bulgarien; 17 November 1895 – 1 February 1945) was the second son of Ferdinand I of Bulgaria and his first wife Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma. He was a younger brother of Boris III of Bulgaria and a prince regent of the Kingdom of Bulgaria from 1943 to 1944. He was sentenced to death by the People's Court and executed on the night of 1 February 1945.

Biography

Royal Monogram of Prince Kiril of Bulgaria

He was born on 17 January 1895 in Sofia as the second son of Ferdinand I of Bulgaria and his first wife, Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma.

In September 1936, Prince Kiril accompanied King Edward VIII on a whistle-stop tour of Iceland. Present at the death of his brother, Tsar Boris, on 28 August 1943, Prince Kiril was appointed head of a regency council by the Bulgarian parliament, to act as Head of State until the late Tsar's son, Simeon II of Bulgaria, became 18.

Prince Kiril, with the widowed Tsaritsa, Giovanna of Savoy, daughter of the Italian king, led the state funeral for his brother Tsar Boris III on 5 September 1943 at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia, thereafter proceeding across the city to the main railway station where the funeral train waited to take the body to the 12th-century Rila Monastery in the mountains. Thereafter the three consecutive governments made efforts to extricate themselves from Bulgaria's agreements with Germany, notably that which permitted their use of the railway to Greece and the German troops stationed along it for protection. A Bulgarian delegation travelled to Cairo in an attempt to negotiate with the United States and the United Kingdom but failed, the latter refusing to meet them without the participation of the Soviet Union.

Despite Sofia's continuous diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union, on 5 September 1944, that country declared war on Bulgaria, and on 8 September Soviet armies crossed the Romanian border and the Danube. The Fatherland Front, a coalition of the Communist Party, the left wing of the Agrarian Union, the Zveno group, and a few pro-Soviet politicians who had returned from exile in the Soviet Union, executed a Soviet-backed military coup on 9 September and seized power.

In late January 1945 Prince Kiril was sentenced to death by the People's Court. On the night of February 1, 1945 he was executed at Sofia Central Cemetery along with former Prime Minister and Regent Professor Bogdan Filov, Regent General Nikola Mihov, and a range of former cabinet ministers, royal advisors and 67 MPs.

On August 26, 1996, the Supreme Court overturned the sentences of February 1, 1945, which sentenced the three regents, ministers, and councilors to death.

Honours and arms

Decorations[1]
Arms
Coat of Arms of Prince Kiril
of Bulgaria

Ancestors

References

  1. ↑ Justus Perthes, Almanach de Gotha (1922) p. 33
  2. ↑ Federico Bona. "I Cavalieri dell'Ordine Supremo del Collare o della Santissima Annunziata" (in Italian). Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  3. ↑ Acović, Dragomir (2012). Slava i čast: Odlikovanja među Srbima, Srbi među odlikovanjima. Belgrade: Službeni Glasnik. p. 533.
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Literature

  • Bulgaria in the Second World War by Marshall Lee Miller, Stanford University Press, 1975.
  • Boris III of Bulgaria 1894–1943, by Pashanko Dimitroff, London, 1986, ISBN 0-86332-140-2
  • Crown of Thorns by Stephane Groueff, Lanham MD., and London, 1987, ISBN 0-8191-5778-3
  • The Betrayal of Bulgaria by Gregory Lauder-Frost, Monarchist League Policy Paper, London, 1989.
  • The Daily Telegraph, Obituary for "HM Queen Ioanna of the Bulgarians", London, 28 February 2000.
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