Received 23 September 2026

Serial No.

A couple of months ago I sent a birthday greeting to Franz, Duke of Bavaria, on the occasion of his birthday. In my letter, I commented that the weather where I live was quite hot, and I hoped the weather at Nymphenburg would be more pleasant. You can imagine how delighted I was to see his own reference to the weather in his reply.

“Alas, we have had our heatwave too!” he says. This small comment is reveals quite a bit about how the Duke processes mail from the public. the reply is in his own hand and signed by him. Since he references my comment on the weather, it is very likely that he held my letter in his hands, read it with his own eyes, and prepared this reply specifically to my letter. In my experience, it his highly likely he does this with most mail he receives from the public, an extremely generous characteristic of perhaps the most well-known member of Germany’s royals.