Princess Marianne of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn ahead of her 99th birthday, on 20 November 2018 in Munich. Photograph: Gisela Schober/Getty
Photographer and doyenne of German and Austrian nobility
On a Sunday morning in August 1985, during a holiday on the Wolfgangsee near Salzburg, Margaret Thatcher was introduced over coffee to a woman called Manni, who invited her for lunch. The prime minister politely declined, explaining her busy schedule. “That’s a pity,” Manni said. “I’m sure you would have enjoyed talking to Sean Connery.”
That grabbed Thatcher’s attention. “You mean James Bond?” she asked. A conversation followed with the British ambassador. “I can come for one drink,” the prime minister said. Soon after, Manni recalled, “Sean was introduced to his biggest fan,” as the Thatchers were photographed by their host relaxing in the garden and chatting about devolution with the Scottish actor.
Manni was also known as Marianne, Dowager Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn and quadruple-great-granddaughter on her mother’s side of Empress Maria Theresa, ruler of the Habsburg monarchy. Or the “Mamarazza”, to use the nickname Princess Caroline of Monaco gave her in recognition of her status as the best-connected celebrity photographer in Europe.
For 35 years from the 1970s, Manni, who has died at 105, threw parties for high society during the Salzburg Festival at her hunting lodge in Fuschl am See. As her guests relaxed, she would quietly circulate with a camera and take their photographs. These images were not to sell, but to preserve memories of joyful moments. “I always photographed my friends as friends,” she once said.
Her guests included a tieless Prince Charles, whom she photographed sipping a beer in 2003; and the composer Leonard Bernstein, who received a cake for his birthday in 1987; and Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt, whom she invited in 1978, shortly before the peace summit at Camp David.
Elsewhere, her connections meant she could take more personal photographs while the paparazzi were restricted to using telephoto lenses. These included Maria Callas snorkelling off the Greek island of Skorpios with a poodle on her shoulder, Aristotle Onassis trying to repair his beach buggy and Andy Warhol at the Met Ball. “Captures the beau monde at play”, Vogue said of her exhibition at the Westwood Gallery in New York in 2006.
“She was able to take such pictures because she was always a welcome guest,” Philipp Crone wrote in the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. “She not only took good photos, but [created] a good atmosphere. And who doesn't want a cheerful person around, who shoots beautiful pictures in an unobtrusive way?” She liked to share the opinion of Gunter Sachs, the socialite, film-maker and husband of Brigitte Bardot: “Manni has no idea about photography, but always presses it at the right moment.”
‘She not only took good photos, but [created] a good atmosphere. And who doesn't want a cheerful person around, who shoots beautiful pictures in an unobtrusive way?’
Phillip Crone
Marianne Mayr von Melnhof was born on 9 December 1919, in Salzburg, the eldest of nine children of Baron Friedrich and his wife Maria-Anna, daughter of the Count of Meran. Fascinated by the photos of Indian safaris taken by an aunt, she was given her first camera at 10.
She studied at the Blocherer art school in Munich, where she met Prince Ludwig of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, an aristocrat from the Rhineland Palatinate, when he was on leave from the war. They were married in 1942 and their first child, Yvonne, was born nine months later, followed by Alexander.
Prince Ludwig went missing in action and was held in a British prison-of-war camp until 1946 when he returned to find his castle in Sayn badly damaged. “The only thing that mattered to me at that point was life, and I was just happy to be there with my husband, and to know my two children were safe,” Marianne said. Three more children – Elisabeth, Teresa, Peter – followed.
Lacking money, the couple spent the next few years running a market garden. But they still had connections and would visit Bonn in their work van for parties. Marianne took her camera and would send prints of her photographs to guests.
Her photography really took off after her husband died in 1962. She was often commissioned by Germany’s Bunte magazine and enjoyed photographing motorsport celebrities at the Nürburgring, Monte Carlo and Le Mans.
Aged 80, she published the first collection of her photographs. “I sat at the kitchen table for two months, going through 300 albums, 50 years, and putting stickers on photos I wanted to use,” she said. Her final archive was estimated to contain about 300,000 photos, and in 2003, a gallery in Salzburg established a permanent exhibition.
In July 2010, Manni gave a farewell party in Fuschl and retired to Munich, where she kept her exuberance deep into old age. “I look forward to every day,” she told one interviewer. “When I wake in the morning, I ask: ‘Dear God, what new and great things can I experience today?’”
Marianne, Dowager Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, photographer, born on 9 December 1919, died on 4 May 2025, aged 105
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