In late 1926, Harry Domela, a destitute World War I veteran and Baltic German refugee, arrived in Heidelberg looking for work. After being mistaken for an aristocrat due to his refined manners and military demeanor, Domela decided to lean into the illusion. Adopting the alias Prince Lieven, and later allowing hostesses to believe he was Prince Wilhelm of Prussia—grandson of the deposed Kaiser Wilhelm II traveling incognito—Domela executed one of the most absurd hoaxes of the Weimar era.
For several months, high society figures, hotel owners, city officials, and conservative aristocrats showered him with luxury accommodations, free meals, loans, and deference, eager to curry favor with royalty. Domela never explicitly claimed the royal title himself; instead, he used vague hints and quiet modesty, allowing the class anxieties and monarchist nostalgia of his hosts to do the heavy lifting. His deception unraveled when suspicious newspaper reports began investigating his whereabouts, leading to his arrest in Cologne in December 1926.
Surprisingly, public sentiment turned strongly in Domela's favor. During his trial, working-class Germans viewed him as a folk hero who exposed the superficiality, gullibility, and illegal monarchist sympathies of the wealthy Weimar elite. Domela served five months in prison, wrote a best-selling memoir about the trick titled A Sham Prince, and later vanished from public record in South America.