Bertita Harding (1 November 1902 – 31 December 1971) was a royal German biographer with an easy and sometimes humorous style that made her a popular author.

Her book Phantom Crown, a biography of the life of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico and his wife Charlotte was turned into a screenplay by John Huston for the film Juarez (1939).

While working on a public street lighting project in Budapest in 1896, he married the Hungarian Countess Sarolta Pősze-Károly.

[1] In 1904 the family moved briefly to Berlin and the following year to Mexico City where her father worked as general director of the Mexican steel industry.

She attended a Catholic school, made trips to Europe and the United States, and learned German, Spanish, English, Hungarian and French.

At the age of 28, she abandoned her career as a pianist and started to write Phantom Crown: The Story of Maximilian and Carlota of Mexico.

The couple had an active social life and traveled extensively as Bertita continued her series of lectures around the United States.

[2] The couple adopted a four-year-old Mexican orphan named Katya, but the marriage lasted less than one year.