The Diamond Duke

On August 26th, 1873, a Times correspondent described Geneva as “literally in transports at the good luck which had befallen her.” The occasion for this exuberance was the death at the age of sixty-nine from cerebral congestion some days earlier of the ex-Duke Charles of Brunswick, and the announcement that all his landed and personal property, including his jewels and the property retained in Brunswick since 1830, was bequeathed by him to the City of Geneva.

The value of the real property was estimated at £1,000,000; gold and jewels amounted to some 30,000,000 francs, while a telegram from Prince Bismarck to the German Consul stated that the Duke’s personal property in Germany was worth 65,000,000 francs. There were, therefore, some grounds for effusion on the part of a city normally so little given to it.