Overview
Ferdinand Philipp Maria August Raphael of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (28 March 1844 – 3 July 1921) was the second prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and lord of Csábrág and , both in modern-day Slovakia.
Life
Born in the Tuileries Palace in Paris as Ferdinand Philipp Maria August Raphael of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, he was the eldest son of August, prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. His mother, Clémentine of Orléans, was a daughter of King Louis Philippe I of France. He was a member of the Catholic Koháry line of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha-Koháry and an elder brother of Ferdinand, tsar of Bulgaria.
In 1870, he became a Major in the Hungarian army. He was a close confidant to his brother-in-law, Crown Prince Rudolf. On the morning of 30 January 1889, he and Count Josef Hoyos-Sprinzenstein and valet Johann Loschek discovered the bodies of Rudolf and his teenage mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera, who had also been shot dead.
Philipp spent his last years at in Coburg, where he died in 1921, aged 77. He was buried in the Koháry crypt in the St. Augustin church in Coburg.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
