Her life touched many millions of people after her death: Soraya, the ex-empress of Persia, died 20 years ago.
A family grave in Munich’s Westfriedhof, No. 143-A-17. The wide reddish tombstone shows high-ranking dead: an ambassador, a princess, a prince, a princess, the latter was / is a world famous. Her name alone sounds like a fairy tale from “A Thousand and One Nights”: Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary (1932-2001), ex-Empress of Persia, as Iran was called at the time.
Her eventful life has fascinated, and often shaken, many millions of people after her death. The “fairytale princess” was the uncrowned queen of colorful leaves worldwide. She died in Paris on October 26th, 20 years ago.
A life between two worlds
She was born appropriately in Isfahan, a 3,000 year old city that was once the center of the Persian Safavid Empire. The father: Prince Khalil Esfandiary Bakhtiary (1901-1983) from the powerful family of the Bakhtiar tribal chiefs. The mother: Eva Karl (1906-1994) from a Berlin merchant dynasty. She had met the young prince during his studies in Berlin.
Little Soraya grows up in the family palace in Isfahan and Berlin, her mother makes sure that the daughter can escape the Isfahan conventions in Germany. It is a clever child who speaks perfect German, Persian (Farsi), English and French through boarding school stays in Switzerland and England and who develops into a beautiful young woman with an expressive face and emerald green eyes.
“This woman was born to be a queen.”
A photo of Soraya finally falls into the hands of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980), who had succeeded his father Reza Shah on the Persian peacock throne in 1941. After the divorce from his first wife Fausia (1921-2013), daughter of the Egyptian King Fuad I, the young “King of Kings” is again looking for a bride because Fausia had not given him a male heir to the throne. And now a relative sends him the Soraya picture with the comment: “This woman was born to be a queen.” So the Esfandiary Bakhtiary family and their 18-year-old daughter are invited to the Imperial Palace.
“It was love at first sight,” said Soraya, describing the first meeting years later. On the same evening, Soraya is urged by her father, who months later becomes Iranian ambassador to the Federal Republic, to marry the Shah. She agrees, “From my point of view, I made a free choice,” she later wrote.
After suffering from typhoid fever, Soraya married at the age of 18 on February 12, 1951 in Tehran. She is wearing a 20 kilo Christian Dior wedding dress made of 20,000 marabou feathers, set with 6,000 diamonds and pearls.
Favorite couple of the tabloids
The “beautiful empress” and “the emperor with the sad eyes” become the favorite couple of the tabloids. With their staged glamor, the couple can not only successfully hide the image of the authoritarian ruled Iran during state visits. In truth, a rigorous policy supports the Shah. With the help of a brutal secret service, he tries to stabilize his power.
But the marriage remains childless. Soraya is sent to European and American doctors, unsuccessfully. When it became clear that she was not going to bear children, the court – Shah mother, Shah sisters, mullahs, who never liked the free spirit of the “Germans”, who was both Muslim and Christian – decided to divorce in 1958.
The end of the marriage
It is said that the Shah and the Shahbanu, both crying, discussed their options in the palace park beforehand. But she doesn’t want to live with the ruler’s second wife, he doesn’t want to change the constitution and make his brother his heir. Finally, in a radio address, the Shah announced “with great sadness” the end of his marriage to his “dear wife”. As a severance payment, Soraya receives an annuity of 17 million marks, valuable jewelry and the honorary title of princess.
The divorce triggers waves of public sympathy similar to that of Tehran’s fairytale wedding. Soraya buys a villa in Marbella and has it painted pink. She lives in Rome, Cologne and Munich, and allegedly has affairs with Gunter Sachs (1932-2011) and Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975), among others.
She becomes the “Empress of Tears”
She even finds great love again with the film director Franco Indovina (1932-1972), but he dies in a plane crash in 1972. The “Empress of Tears” and “Princess Melancholy”, as she is referred to by the press, is increasingly withdrawing to her seven-room Paris apartment on Avenue Montaigne. She is no longer under any illusions about men and great love, especially since after the overthrow of the Shah and the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1979), she refers to the Revolutionary Guard’s call to murder the Pahlavi family and fears for her life.
She dies in 2001, rich but lonely, at the age of just 69. Her cleaning lady finds her dead on the floor of her Paris apartment. Around 400 mourners gather for the funeral service in the American Cathedral in Paris. Including the brother of the Shah, Gholam Reza Pahlavi (1923-2017). In mid-November 2001, her urn was buried in the Westfriedhof in Munich in the family grave of the Esfandiary Bakhtiarys.