Wilhelm of Wied leaves Albania

On 3 September 1914 Prince Wilhelm of Wied, the ruler of Albania, left his country. With his wife, Princess Sophie, and part of the government, he boarded an Italian ship in the port of Durrës (according to some sources it was the Misurata) and sailed towards Venice. After only six months of rule he left the country sunk in rebellion and chaos.

A prince appointed by the powers

Albania had declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in November 1912, during the First Balkan War. The great powers recognised the new state in 1913 and decided that it would be headed by a monarch of their own choosing. The choice fell on Wilhelm of Wied, a German aristocrat and Prussian army officer with ties to the courts of Berlin and Bucharest. The prince knew neither Albania nor its language. He arrived in Durrës, the provisional capital, on 7 March 1914. The Albanians called him mbret, meaning king, although he himself used the title of prince.

The new Principality of Albania was weak from the first day. It had neither an army nor money, and order was kept by a gendarmerie commanded by Dutch officers. In the south the Greek population of Northern Epirus proclaimed autonomy. The neighbours, as well as Italy and Austria-Hungary, competed for influence in the country.

Rebellion

The prince’s most dangerous opponent proved to be his minister of war and foreign affairs, Essad Pasha Toptani, an ambitious landowner who himself aspired to power. In May 1914 he was accused of conspiracy, arrested and forced to leave for Italy. At the same time a rising of Muslim peasants broke out in central Albania, led among others by Haxhi Qamili. The rebels demanded the return of the Sultan’s rule and refused to recognise a Christian prince from Germany. They took control of much of the country and came right up to Durrës. On 15 June the Dutch officer Lodewijk Thomson, one of the commanders of the gendarmerie, was killed in the fighting for the town.

War and departure

The outbreak of war in Europe sealed the prince’s fate. The powers that had chosen him found themselves on opposite sides of the front, and the money to keep the state going stopped coming in. Austria-Hungary wanted Albania to provide troops to fight Serbia. Wied refused, citing the country’s neutrality, guaranteed by the powers, and lost what remained of his support in Vienna and Berlin. By now he controlled only the area around Durrës.

On leaving, the prince did not abdicate. In a proclamation to the Albanians he announced that he had found it necessary to absent himself temporarily. He never returned. During the war he served in the German army, and he did not renounce his rights to the Albanian throne until his death in 1945.

Significance

After the prince’s departure Albania broke up into spheres of influence. In the autumn Essad Pasha returned to Durrës and took power in the central part of the country. The Greeks occupied the south, and in the autumn and winter of 1914 the Italians occupied the island of Sazan and the port of Vlorë. A country that was meant to be a neutral buffer between Serbia, Greece, Italy and Austria-Hungary became, during the war, a ground for the marches and occupations of foreign armies.