Franz was born on 14 July 1933 in
Munich, as the third child and elder son of
Albrecht, Duke of Bavaria, and his first wife, Countess Maria (Marita) Draskovich of Trakostjan, member of the
House of Drašković, an old
Croatian noble family. As Maria's family did not belong to the small circle of
reigning or
former reigning families, his parents' marriage was initially considered
morganatic. But, on 18 May 1949, when Franz was 15, his grandfather Crown Prince
Rupprecht recognised the marriage of Franz's parents as
dynastic, and Franz became a successor to the headship of the house. The Wittelsbach dynasty were opposed to the
Nazi regime in Germany. The former Crown Prince Rupprecht earned Hitler's enmity by opposing the
Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. In 1933, shortly after
Adolf Hitler's rise to power, he sent his son Albrecht to President
Paul von Hindenburg with a protest letter strongly objecting to the appointment of governors at the head of the federal states and thus the de facto abolition of German federalism. In July 1934, Prince Albrecht emigrated to
Hungary with his family. From 1935 to 1939 the family returned to Bavaria and lived in seclusion in
Kreuth, but former crown prince Rupprecht emigrated to
Italy in 1939 and his son Albrecht and his family moved back to
Budapest, where they stayed in a rented apartment in the
Castle Quarter. They often visited Princess Marita's Hungarian and Croatian relatives in the countryside. The children received private lessons after a visit to the German school failed after a few weeks because it was dominated by Nazi supporters. In March 1944,
Nazi Germany occupied Hungary, and on 6 October 1944 the entire family, including the 11-year-old Franz, were arrested by the
Gestapo. They were sent to a series of
Nazi concentration camps, including
Oranienburg,
Flossenbürg and
Dachau. As special prisoners, they were allowed to stay together and were locked in separate buildings. Franz remembers that they only received one slice of bread, often moldy, per person per day as food. Badly hit by hunger and disease, the family barely survived. At the end of April 1945, they were liberated by the
United States Third Army. After the war, Franz received his secondary education at the Benedictine
Abbey of Ettal. He then studied business management at the
University of Munich and in
Zürich. With his father and a sister, he took part in the ship tours organized by King
Paul of Greece and Queen
Frederica in 1954 and 1956, which became known as the "
Cruise of the Kings" and were attended by over 100 royals from all over Europe. ==Patron of modern art==