Princess Michael’s decision to wear the blackamoor brooch is not the first time she has been embroiled in controversy after allegedly telling black diners to ‘go back to the colonies’ and claiming not to know her father was an SS officer.
In 2004 she was branded a racist by a group in a New York restaurant after a row erupted over the noise she claimed they were making.
The royal was accused of slamming her hand down on the group’s table, telling them: You need to quiet down.’
Princess Michael claimed to be shocked by revelations that her father (pictured, right) was a high-ranking member of the SS
Restaurant boss Silvano Marchetto offered to move Princess Michael and her party to another room.
Before switching tables the royal is alleged to have said ‘you need to go back to the colonies’.
The princess was reportedly challenged at the time and was said to have replied: ‘I did not say “back to the colonies”, I said you “should remember the colonies”.
‘Back in the days of the colonies there were rules that were very good.’
She is alleged to have continued: ‘You think about it. Just think about it.’
One of the group, Wall Street banker Merv Matheson, who said: ‘She has a problem and that problem is racism. She needs help.’
The princess was accused of telling a table of black diners to ‘go back to the colonies’ in a New York restaurant in 2004
AJ Callaway was also caught up in the alleged row and was surprised to find out she was a member of the Royal family.
‘I thought she was just a crazy woman. I still think she’s a crazy woman,’ he said at the time.
A spokesman denied that the princess made the slur, which reportedly arose from a confrontation about the group making too much noise in the Da Silvano restaurant.
In 2014 it was revealed her father, Baron Gunther von Reibnitz, was a high-ranking SS officer, which the Princess Michael claimed was shocking news to her.
He joined the Nazi party in 1930 but would escape to Bavaria in 1945 when it was occupied by the Americas.
Princess Michael was born Marie-Christine von Reibnitz during the final months of World War Two.
Historian Philip Hall unearthed the baron’s Nazi link at the Berlin Document Centre, where evidence showed he had joined the SS three years before Hitler became chancellor.
He also found references to Baron Gunther von Reibnitz being recommended for an appointment by Herman Goering and he is believed to have fought on the Polish front.
Princess Michael of Kent, pictured wearing the ‘blackamoor’ brooch, was at the centre of controversy when she was accused of telling black diners in New York to ‘go back to the colonies’
After the war’s end, the baron split from his family. The children and their mother headed to Sydney, Australia, and he settled in Mozambique, where he ran a citrus farm.
The Czech princess joined the British Royal Family when she married Prince Michael of Kent in Vienna in 1978 and would later claim her union with the Silesian was an arranged marriage.
She famously accused the British of racism in the 1980s when she said in an interview: ‘The English distrust foreigners.
‘I will never become British even if I live here the rest of my life.’
She was branded Princess Pushy until 2013, when she was described as Princess Cushy for whinging about the rent she paid to Kensington Palace.
Before 2010 she was paying just £69 a week in peppercorn rent, but would go on to pay £120,000 a year to stay at the palace, which has ten main rooms.
The new rent rate was imposed when the Queen was forced to restructure her grace-and-favour residences a few years ago to bring rents into line with present-day market values.
She also courted controversy when she told Tatler magazine she knew ‘the real story’ about Princess Diana following her death in 1997.