Thompson was sent to several POW camps before ending up at Stalag Luft III near Sagan.
The daughter of Henri de Castellane and Pauline de Talleyrand-Périgord, Marie de Castellane married prince Antoine Radziwill (1833–1904), a member of the House of Lords of Prussia and general à la suite of William I, German Emperor, at Sagan on 3 October 1857.
Saved for the moment, Tuck then spent the next couple of years in Stalag Luft III at Żagań (Sagan), before making a number of unsuccessful escape attempts from several other prisoner of war camps across Germany and Poland.
The double title (a prince and a duc) both Prussian and French, served to render the duc de Sagan a neutral party in World War II: his Château de Valençay provided a safe haven for treasures of the Louvre during the German occupation of France.
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This episode of history was the subject of the 1963 film The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen.
Żagań | Duchy of Żagań | Balthasar of Żagań | Jan I of Żagań |
In 1449 the Duchy was divided into two districts: Żagań and Przewóz.
Its capital was Żagań in Lower Silesia, the territory stretched to the town of Nowogród Bobrzański in the north and reached the Lusatian Neisse at Przewóz in the west, including two villages beyond the river (Pechern and Neudorf).
Princess Yevdokiya Borisovna Yusupova May 5 (NS: May 16) 1743, Moscow - July 19 (NS: July 8) 1780, Saint Petersburg), married on March 6, 1774, Mitava (Mittau) (divorced in 1777 or 1778), as his second wife, to Peter von Biron, the last Duke von Kurland (1769–1795) and the first Duke von Sagan (1786–1795) (February 15, 1724, Mitava (Mittau) - January 13, 1800, Schloss Gellenau), without offspring
Ultimately, the division was made in 1412: Jan I retained Żagań, and one year later (in 1413) he also took possession over the Duchy of Przewóz, inn the Polish-German border area (obtained as a result of his marriage with Scholastika, a daughter of Elector Rudolph III).
It was devastated by the troops of Duke Jan II the Mad of Żagań on his 1477 expedition against the Brandenburg elector Albert Achilles of Hohenzollern and again by Imperial as well as Swedish forces during the Thirty Years' War.
In 1942 they were replaced with Soviet prisoners, and the camp was placed under the administration of Stalag VIII-C near Żagań.