Rudolf von Schönburg-Glauchau

Rudolf Graf von Schönburg-Glauchau was born on 25 September 1932 at Wechselburg Castle in Saxony, Germany, into the Catholic Glauchau branch of the House of Schönburg, a noble family that had ruled lands in Saxony until the end of the monarchy in 1918. He was the fourth of eight children; Spanish reports described his father as German and his mother as Polish. His elder brother Joachim (1929 to 1998) later became a member of the German Bundestag.

The Second World War destroyed the world he was born into. He lost his father in the war, and in May 1945, when he was twelve, he fled west with his mother and siblings ahead of the advancing Soviet army. The family's estates and castles, which lay in what became the Soviet zone, were lost.

After finishing school he began training in hotel management in 1953 at the hotel school in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he qualified as a hotel director. He learned the trade from the bottom, working as a waiter and kitchen assistant and gaining experience in luxury hotels in Switzerland and Germany, including in St Moritz.

On 28 December 1956, aged 24, he arrived in Málaga at the invitation of his relative Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe, who in 1954 had turned a family estate on the coast into a small hotel, the Marbella Club. He joined as assistant manager. After two years in Mexico he returned in 1961 to become general manager, a post he held until 1983, and in 1993 he returned to the company as a board member. He remained a familiar face at the hotel, representing it to guests, for decades afterwards.

Hohenlohe was the visionary who attracted his aristocratic friends; Rudi was the host who made them stay. In the 1960s, he recalled, there was little to do on the coast, so the hotel had to invent activities for guests who often stayed for weeks: costume parties, treasure hunts and long evenings. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, Sean Connery and Grace Kelly were among those associated with the Marbella Club in its golden years. He said his greatest achievement was having influenced the style of the hotel.

Beyond the hotel he played a long role in the life of Marbella. He was elected a councillor of the town, which he named as one of the proudest moments of his life, and later advised the municipal government. He was president of the Marbella tourism association, president of the Spanish and Portuguese delegation of Relais and Châteaux, chairman of the board of the German school Colegio Alemán Juan Hoffmann, and for 36 years hermano mayor of the Cofradía de Santa Marta, the hoteliers' brotherhood in Marbella's Holy Week.

In 2002 King Juan Carlos I awarded him the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic for his services to Spanish tourism and to relations between Spain and its European neighbours. He also received the Silver Medal for Merit in Tourism, a German Order of Merit decoration and the exemplary citizen medal of the Rotary Club of Marbella. In 2012, on his eightieth birthday, he received a star on the Bulevar de la Fama in Puerto Banús, and an avenue in Marbella, Avenida Conde Rudi, bears his name.

On a safari in Somalia with clients of the hotel he met Princess Marie Louise of Prussia, a great granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II and a cousin of Queen Sofía of Spain, who was working there as a volunteer children's nurse. They married in May 1971 and settled in the hills above Marbella, where Marie Louise became known for her charity work, especially fundraising in the fight against AIDS. They had two children, Sophie (born 1979) and Friedrich (born 1985), and celebrated 55 years of marriage in May 2026.

A devout Catholic, he gave his motto as be a good Catholic and named his porcelain collection as his most treasured possession. His life was told in the biography El conde Rudi, un hombre afortunado by José María Sánchez-Robles, presented at a party for his ninetieth birthday at the Marbella Club in September 2022. In June 2026 he stayed in Marbella, finding travel tiring, when his son Friedrich married Amanda Lange near Madrid.

Rudolf von Schönburg-Glauchau died in Marbella on Saturday 17 October 2026, aged 94. The cause of death was not made public. He had spent a long period in hospital earlier in 2026, and in March his wife said he was recovering at home. He had often said he hoped to live to a hundred and that Marbella would be the place where he died.

The mayor of Marbella, Ángeles Muñoz, announced her sorrow the same day, saying the town was saying goodbye with great affection to a much loved man who left an indelible mark on Marbella, and that his name was part of the history of the town and of Puerto Banús. His death was reported by Diario Sur, ABC, El Mundo, La Razón, Vanitatis and other Spanish media. Funeral arrangements had not been reported at the time of writing.

The Conde Rudi is remembered as one of the founding figures of modern Marbella and of luxury tourism on the Costa del Sol, the man who, alongside Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe, gave the Marbella Club its personal, unhurried style of hospitality. Spanish newspapers called him the last great aristocrat of Marbella. His name lives on in Avenida Conde Rudi, in his star in Puerto Banús, and at the Marbella Club itself, where a suite and the bar Rudi's are named after him.