[3] On his father's side, Alfonso came from an ancient German House of Hohenlohe which traced its history to the 12th century[4] and whose members were reigning Princes of the Holy Roman Empire in Württemberg until Napoleon I's invasion.

In August 1938, the British mediator in the dispute between Germany and Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland, Lord Runciman, met the leader of the Sudeten German Party (SdP), Konrad Henlein, at Rothenhaus Castle − to no avail.

[citation needed] The family fortune was replenished by Alfonso's marriage in 1955 to the 15-year-old Austrian-Italian Princess Ira von Fürstenberg, a Fiat heiress.

The bride's youth evoked some scandal in high society, but the couple had obtained a papal dispensation for the marriage and 400 guests attended a 16-day wedding party.

Five years later, the marriage was dissolved by divorce in Mexico City after Ira left him to marry notorious 1950s playboy Francisco "Baby" Pignatari, another papal dispensation being obtained, this time for an annulment, from the Church in 1969.

The prince pulled out, selling his shares in the Marbella Club due to the area's increasing association with Arab arms traffickers and Russian mafia, whose conspicuous consumption was peppered with violence.