The last King of Romania, who arrested Antonescu on 23 August 1944 to bring the country over to the Allies and abdicated at gunpoint in 1947
On the morning of 30 December 1947, in a palace surrounded by troops, Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej put the abdication before him. Michael testified in exile that he was told refusal would mean bloodshed and the shooting of a thousand students held in custody. That afternoon parliament proclaimed the People's Republic.
Born to Crown Prince Carol of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and Helen of Greece, he became king at six in 1927 under a regency because his father had renounced the succession, and was demoted to crown prince when Carol II returned to take the throne in 1930. When Antonescu deposed Carol II in September 1940 he was crowned again at eighteen, but power lay with Antonescu's dictatorship and the Axis alliance. On 23 August 1944, with the Red Army across the border, he arrested Antonescu in a palace coup, concluded an armistice with the Allies and turned Romania against Germany, becoming one of the very few foreigners awarded the Soviet Order of Victory. Yet in March 1945 he had to appoint the Groza government under Vyshinsky's pressure, and his "royal strike" of refusing to sign decrees from August that year could not stop the rigged election of 1946 or the Maniu trial of 1947. On 30 December 1947 he signed the abdication forced on him by Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej, and the People's Republic was proclaimed the same day. Stripped of citizenship in 1948, he lived in Britain and Switzerland as a test pilot and a broker; a million people gathered in Bucharest on his first return at Easter 1992. His citizenship was restored in 1997, and he died in Switzerland in 2017, buried with a state funeral in the royal necropolis at Curtea de Argeș.
Also known as: King Michael I of Romania · Mihai I
Activities and affiliations
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1940–1947
Romania state institutionsKingMain
Monarchs and royalty
Career Timeline
- 1927–1930First reign under a regency
- 1930–1940Crown prince
- 1940Crowned again after Antonescu deposed Carol II
- 1944Palace coup of 23 August; Antonescu arrested, Romania joins the Allies
- 1945Awarded the Soviet Order of Victory; forced to appoint the Groza government
- 1945–1946"Royal strike", refusing to sign decrees
- 1947Forced abdication on 30 December; exile
- 1948Stripped of citizenship
- 1992First return visit to Romania
- 1997Citizenship restored
Related historical events
- 1944.03–1945.02Hungary under German occupation: from Operation Margarethe to the siege of BudapestKing of RomaniaOn 23 August dismissed Antonescu and declared war on Germany and Hungary.
- 1944–1949The People's Democracies of Eastern EuropeKing of RomaniaHe arrested Antonescu on 23 August 1944 and took Romania over to the Allies, accepted the Groza government in 1945, and abdicated on 30 December 1947.
- 1944–1948Romania: From 23 August to the People's RepublicKing of RomaniaHe arrested Antonescu on 23 August 1944 and took Romania to the Allies, refused to sign the Groza government's decrees from August 1945 to January 1946, and signed the instrument of abdication on 30 December 1947.
Marriage and the dynastic succession in exile
Weeks before his abdication, at the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten in London in November 1947, Michael met Anne of Bourbon-Parma. During the Second World War she had volunteered for the French Army and served as an ambulance driver in Algeria, Morocco, Italy and elsewhere, receiving the Croix de Guerre. They married in the throne room of the Royal Palace in Athens on 10 June 1948. Because canon law required a Catholic such as Anne to obtain a dispensation to marry a non-Catholic, and Pius XII conditioned one on a promise to raise the children as Catholics, which Michael refused as contrary to Romania's monarchical constitution, the Orthodox ceremony left the marriage invalid under Catholic canon law. The couple went through a Catholic ceremony again in Monaco on 9 November 1966.
They had five daughters between 1949 and 1964 and lived near Florence, then Lausanne, then in Hertfordshire, England, settling near Versoix, Switzerland, from 1956. On 30 December 2007, the sixtieth anniversary of his abdication, Michael signed the Fundamental Rules of the Royal Family, designating his eldest daughter Margareta as his heir, a document with no legal standing since it regulated an institution that no longer existed. In May 2011 he severed the dynastic and historical ties with the German princely house of Hohenzollern and renamed his family "of Romania". In 2014 he stripped his third daughter Irina, who had pleaded guilty to running an illegal gambling business, of her royal titles and place in the succession, and in 2015 he removed the title and succession rights of his grandson Nicholas Medforth-Mills.