In 1936 she was sent to England to be educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton (later Woldingham School) where several of her cousins, princesses of Luxembourg, were also enrolled.

In early 1940 Irmingard and her siblings were allowed to go to Italy and join their father who had left Germany to avoid conflict with the Nazi authorities.

Later they were transferred to the concentration camps at Flossenbürg and Dachau, before being freed by the Third American Army on 30 April 1945.

After a brief return to Germany, she went to the United States for a year, where her uncle Prince Adolf of Schwarzenberg had a ranch in Montana.

The civil wedding took place at Leutstetten, and the religious ceremony followed a day later at Schloss Nymphenburg in Munich.