[citation needed] Albert was born at Regensburg, Germany, the youngest of four children of Maximilian Anton Lamoral, Hereditary Prince of Thurn and Taxis (1831–1867) and Duchess Helene in Bavaria (1834–1890).

As was then typical for the aristocracy, he received a non-specific education, attending lectures in law, national economics and art history in Würzburg, Freiburg and Leipzig.

On 30 November 1889 he was made a knight of the Austrian Order of the Golden Fleece, along with ten other members of the European royal families, including the later father-in-law of his daughter, Frederick Augustus III of Saxony.

[citation needed] In the years before the outbreak of the First World War, the finances of royal household of Thurn and Taxis were exceptional, with the highest income Prince Albert would ever see.

On his journey to the front he retained his luxury and entourage, but he also supported the soldiers of his cavalry regiment, and he had the medical hospital of Ostheim built in the grounds of the sugar factory at Regensburg, where his wife Margarethe worked as a nurse.

[3] After the war, during the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the time of the Bavarian Soviet Republic there was unrest in Regensburg too, and rumours of a planned attack on the Prince's palace at Saint Emmeram.

During the incumbency of Maximilian Maria, 7th Prince of Thurn and Taxis, the architect Max Schultze [arz; de] had added (1883-1885) the south wing of the palace, 150m in length.

In the years 1904 to 1908, Prince Albert had Schultze build a new, modernised royal stables in the north part of the new Hofmarschallamtes;at Waffnergasse.

Princess Margarethe, too, was benevolent, and had good taste in art; she not only made a name for herself as a painter and sculptor, but also helped out as a surgical nurse in the Regensburg hospitals.

[6] In 1923 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Innsbruck; the Tyroleans had been keen to distance themselves from "red Vienna" since 1922, and wanted to establish themselves independently under a Catholic monarch.

On 15 July 1950, Albert and Margarethe von Thurn und Taxis, accompanied by the royalty of Europe and the people of Regensburg, celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary.