Prince Michael Obolovitch and Herman Isaacstein: loan and concession deal

The proposed arrangement between Prince Michael Obolovitch and Herman Isaacstein joined a royal restoration project to a large loan and prospective oil concessions. Michael needed financial support to claim the throne of Herzoslovakia; Isaacstein’s business interests were to receive concessions if Michael became king. The bargain depended on political events as well as money, and Michael’s murder left its intended beneficiary absent just as the question of succession became decisive.

Political Background

After the overthrow of the monarchy, Herzoslovakia had remained a republic, though restoration was again under discussion. In Anthony Cade’s account, King Nicholas IV had married Queen Varaga despite opposition to her background and claims of royal descent. Discontent and an uprising culminated in the deaths of the king and queen and the proclamation of a republic. That history made a return to monarchy politically consequential rather than merely ceremonial: supporters of restoration had to contend with the republic’s existence and with the public arguments that a renewed Obolovitch rule might provoke.

By the time of the proposed deal, those seeking to restore the monarchy were prepared to offer the crown to Prince Michael, and the British Government supported his claim. George Lomax described the memoirs of the late Count Stylptitch as a threat to this plan: disclosures about the Obolovitch family could damage the restoration effort, prompt questions in Parliament, and make a new monarchy appear to be a return to tyranny. The loan-and-concession arrangement therefore formed part of a broader political undertaking whose success depended on managing both succession and public controversy.

The Loan and Its Terms

Prince Michael came to meet Isaacstein for the express purpose of arranging a loan. Lomax told Superintendent Battle that the precise details had not yet been settled, but the essential exchange was clear: if Michael came to the throne, he pledged to grant oil concessions to companies in which Isaacstein was interested. Lomax characterized the contemplated financing as a loan of about a million pounds to help place Michael on the throne. The evidence presents the sum and concession terms as part of the proposal, not as a completed transaction.

The bargain also had a foreign-policy dimension. Lomax said the British Government was ready to support Michael’s claim because of his pronounced British sympathies. Battle reduced the competing interests to their practical essentials: Michael needed money, Isaacstein wanted oil, and the British Government was prepared to support the royal claimant. Asked whether other parties were seeking the concessions, Lomax said an American group of financiers had made overtures to Michael. The proposed deal was consequently part of a competition for influence and access to Herzoslovakia’s oil, not simply a private loan.

Succession and the Deal’s Instability

The arrangement’s political foundation weakened when Michael was murdered. Battle identified Prince Nicholas Obolovitch, Michael’s first cousin, as the next heir. Lomax had earlier answered hesitantly that Nicholas would probably succeed Michael, revealing that the question was already relevant to those discussing the restoration. The death thus created an immediate gap between the person for whom the loan had been planned and the person who might inherit the claim.

Nicholas was believed to be in the United States and to have been raising money on his expectations. That report connected his presumed future inheritance to the same kind of financial anticipation underlying Michael’s negotiations, but did not establish that Isaacstein had already made Nicholas an offer. The distinction matters: the existing evidence describes a prospective arrangement for Michael and a later question about whether its terms could be transferred to his cousin, not a completed loan to either prince.

Revelation and Aftermath

When the possibility of offering the loan to Nicholas was raised, Isaacstein asked whether he could be produced, saying he thought Nicholas had been killed in the Congo. Anthony Cade answered that the report of Nicholas’s death had been deliberately spread and disclosed that he himself was Nicholas, having taken the name Anthony Cade after leaving the Congo. His revelation reopened the succession question in person: the presumed heir who might replace the murdered Michael was present, but under another identity.

The available evidence does not establish whether Isaacstein ultimately renewed the same loan on the same terms with Nicholas. It does establish why the question mattered. Michael’s proposed bargain had joined financial backing, oil concessions, and British support to one claimant; his death made its continuation dependent on a different claimant whose supposed death had concealed his identity. The relationship is therefore defined less by a consummated business agreement than by the way finance and resource concessions were made contingent on a disputed restoration and an unstable line of succession.