Born on 24 May 1950 in
Lucerne, Heinrich Ruzzo was the son of Heinrich
Enzio Reuss-Plauen (1922–2000) and a Swedish mother, Baroness Louise Peyron (1918–1989), daughter of Baron Gustaf Peyron and Emma Kockum. Although only a younger son of a minor royal family, when Heinrich XXVI married Countess Viktoria von Fürstenstein (1863–1949) in 1885, under the strict marriage rules then enforced by the Reuss dynasty their children were not allowed to bear the princely title, being designated "
Counts of
Plauen" instead, while still in the line of succession to the throne of Reuss When the
German Empire collapsed at the end of
World War I, the reigning Prince Reuss lost his crown along with all the other monarchs whose realms were within Germany. In 1927, Heinrich XXVI's childless brother, Prince Heinrich XXX (1864–1939), adopted his nephew and the now-deposed dynasty agreed to accept him as "Prince Heinrich Harry Reuß", along with those of his male-line descendants born of unions complying with the family's 1902 rules that permitted marriages to countesses (Heinrich Harry's wife, Huberta von Tiele-Winckler was only a baroness in her own right, but belonged to a family of
comital rank in
Prussia). Their son Heinrich Enzio was thus accepted by the House of Reuss as a prince, but his own marriage to Baron Peyron's daughter in 1949 occurred before the Reuss family conference of 1957 which lowered the marital standard again, allowing
dynastic inter-marriage with baronial families. Strictly, therefore, since 1996 the House of Reuss recognized Prince Heinrich Ruzzo Reuss by that title, but without official membership in the dynasty or entitlement to the traditional style of
Serene Highness, while in German law since 1919 the title is not recognized and is allowed only as part of the surname, thus "Heinrich Ruzzo Prinz Reuss". Called by the Italian name "Ruzzo" within the family, he grew up with his paternal grandfather in
Rome, but spent the summers with his mother in
Scania. In February 1954, his parents divorced; in October his father remarried Countess Fedora von
Pückler-Groditz and with her fathered Marina Carolina (born 1964) and Heinrich Patrick (born 1966), both graphic artists. In 1972, his mother remarried nobleman Theodor "Ted"
Ankarcrona, owner of the estate Boserup in Scania and Runsa Castle in
Uppland. Heinrich Ruzzo was educated in Sweden, obtaining a degree in architecture, where he became a friend of the future King
Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, subsequently his occasional hunting companion. Later in life, he relocated to Switzerland, where he lived at his family castle in
Fribourg. In 1989, his mother died and he inherited her farm in
Glumslöv outside
Landskrona. He constructed golf courses on his properties in Switzerland and Sweden. ==Marriages and children==