to contribute to an agreement with Great Britain in the summer of 1940 and from 1942 he repeatedly conspired with diplomats of the Allies with the aim of removing Hitler from power. After World War II, Prince Max Egon was expropriated by the communist government of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Alfonso then moved with his parents to Spain. There he discovered the idyllic fishing village Marbella on a trip and decided to buy land there in 1947. He sold plots to various rich and powerful friends, including the Rothschild and Thyssen families and Ferdinand von Bismarck. In 1954 he created the Marbella Club, the Costa del Sol's first luxury hotel, attracting many celebrities of the time to the former fishing village. On 3 August 1954, he survived a plane crash in Preston, Connecticut. 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. Later life After the divorce, the prince had much-publicised relationships with actresses Ava Gardner and Kim Novak. In 1973, he married actress Jocelyn Lane. This too was a stormy partnership, and ended in divorce in 1985. In the 1990s, the property speculator Jesus Gil y Gil became mayor of Marbella, and the town entered a construction boom. 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. He moved to the town of Ronda and successfully turned his efforts to wine-making, with new wife Marilys Haynes. His last wife died on 2 November 2000, apparently taking her own life, the same year he learned he had prostate cancer. Marriages and issue He married his first wife HSH Princess Ira zu Fürstenberg on 17 September 1955 (civil) and 21 September 1955 (religious) in Venice, Italy; and the couple were divorced in 1960, annulled in 1969. They had two sons: Prince Christoph "Kiko" von Hohenlohe (1956–2006) and Prince Hubertus of