King Zog Named Himself The King Of Albania, Then Survived Over 50 Assassination Attempts
Updated: Sep 2
King Zog I of Albania is the only Muslim monarch modern Europe has ever had, and he gave himself the job. He clan-fought his way to the presidency, then simply declared the republic a kingdom and himself its king. He chain-smoked through hundreds of cigarettes a day, survived dozens of attempts on his life including one gunfight outside the Vienna Opera, and eventually fled the country carrying as much of its gold as he could load into cars. He ended up, of all places, buying a sixty-room mansion on Long Island that he never once set foot in.
Quick Answers
Who was King Zog? Ahmet Zogu, an Albanian clan leader who became prime minister, then president, then crowned himself King Zog I in 1928, ruling until Italy invaded in 1939.
How many assassination attempts did he survive? Estimates commonly cited put the figure around 55, though the exact number is difficult to verify and varies between sources.
What happened to him after he fled Albania? He spent 22 years in exile across Greece, France, England and Egypt, bought and never moved into a Long Island mansion, and died in France in 1961.
Did he ever return to Albania? Only in death. His remains were repatriated from France to Tirana in 2012 and reburied with full honours.
From Clan Leader to Minister of the Interior
Ahmet Muhtar Zogolli was born on 8 October 1895 at Burgajet Castle in the Mat district of central Albania, into a family of beys, hereditary clan leaders whose authority ran deeper than any government's in that part of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. He was educated at Istanbul's Galatasaray College, one of the empire's most prestigious schools, then returned to Albania in 1912 just as the country declared independence.
Albania's early independence was chaotic, with governments rising and falling in quick succession. Drawing on his family's standing in Mat, Zogu built a political career fast, becoming Minister of the Interior in 1920 and prime minister in 1922. In 1924 a reformist bishop, Fan Noli, briefly seized power in what amounted to a democratic uprising. Zogu fled into exile in Yugoslavia, then returned that December backed by Yugoslav money and arms, and drove Noli out for good.
From President to Self-Crowned King
In 1925 Zogu had himself elected president under a new constitution that handed him near-dictatorial powers. Three years later, on 1 September 1928, he had the republic dissolved and declared himself King Zog I of the Albanians, the only monarch Albania has ever had, and Europe's only Muslim king in the modern era.
According to Jason Tomes, whose 2003 biography remains the standard English-language account of Zog's life, the new king swore his coronation oath on both the Bible and the Koran, a deliberate gesture toward a country split between Muslim and Christian populations. The following year he abolished Islamic religious law across Albania and replaced it with a civil code modelled on Switzerland's, part of a wider modernisation push that included new roads, schools and a nationalised currency.
A King Who Never Turned His Back to a Door
Zog's rule was defined as much by paranoia as by reform. He kept a large personal guard, had food prepared under close supervision, and according to people who knew him rarely let a cigarette burn all the way down before lighting the next, a habit that reportedly ran to well over a hundred a day. The paranoia had cause. Political assassination was close to routine in Albanian public life during this period, and Zog himself had already survived an attack in Tirana in 1924, taking a bullet wound to the hand, before a grenade was thrown at his motorcade in 1927.
The Vienna Opera Shooting
The most serious attempt on Zog's life came on 20 February 1931, while he was in Vienna for medical treatment and attending a performance of Pagliacci at the Vienna State Opera. The plot was organised by Hassan Prishtina, an Albanian nationalist from Kosovo who had turned bitterly against Zog, and carried out by two gunmen, Aziz Çami and Ndok Gjeloshi, while the planners reportedly watched from a café across the street.
As Zog left the opera house and got into his car, the gunmen opened fire. His aide-de-camp, Major Llesh Topallaj, was shot and killed on the spot. Albania's foreign minister, Eqrem Libohova, was wounded, according to some accounts after placing himself between Zog and the gunfire. Some sources credit Zog himself with drawing a pistol and firing back, though this detail is disputed and impossible to confirm with certainty. What's clear is that Zog walked away physically unharmed. Çami and Gjeloshi were tried in a Viennese court and given comparatively light sentences, three and seven years respectively.
More plots followed. In 1932, Albanian émigrés in Budapest reportedly planned to kidnap him at a railway station. Estimates of the total number of attempts on his life over the years commonly cite a figure around 55, though, like much of Zog's biography, the exact count is difficult to pin down and varies by source.
Hassan Prishtina himself didn't survive much longer. On 14 August 1933, he was shot dead on a street in Thessaloniki by a man he knew personally, Ibrahim Çelo. Who ordered it remains disputed. Some Albanian accounts blame Zog's own agents settling the score for Vienna; others point instead to the Yugoslav government, which had its own long-running grievances with Prishtina over his Kosovo activism. No version of the story has ever been definitively proven.
Mussolini's Grip Tightens
By the late 1920s, Zog's government had become financially dependent on loans from Benito Mussolini's Italy, which funded infrastructure projects and supplied military advisers in exchange for growing influence in Tirana. Treaties signed in 1926 and 1927 effectively turned Albania into an Italian protectorate in all but name. Zog resisted full submission, which only sharpened Mussolini's determination to bring the country fully under Italian control.
Marrying to Keep Italy at Arm's Length
In December 1937, Zog's sisters were sent travelling around Europe to photograph prospective brides for the king. One photograph, of 22-year-old Countess Géraldine Apponyi, a Hungarian noblewoman known in aristocratic circles as the White Rose of Hungary, caught his attention. She was summoned to Tirana, and the couple were engaged within days of actually meeting.
Choosing a Hungarian bride rather than an Italian one carried its own quiet political weight, a signal that Zog wasn't ready to fold Albania entirely into Mussolini's orbit. They married in a civil ceremony in Tirana on 27 April 1938, with Mussolini's own son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, standing as a witness for the king. Géraldine's specially commissioned wedding tiara featured white roses worked around Zog's heraldic goat emblem, and the couple's honeymoon car, a scarlet Mercedes-Benz 540, was a personal gift from Adolf Hitler. Their only child, Crown Prince Leka, was born on 5 April 1939, two days before Italian troops invaded.
Fleeing With the Gold
Mussolini's forces invaded on 7 April 1939. Albania's poorly equipped army barely slowed them down. Zog, Géraldine and their newborn son fled by car into Greece that same day, reportedly carrying a substantial share of Albania's gold reserves with them, estimates of the amount vary considerably depending on the source, with some Albanian accounts putting it as high as two and a half tonnes. Italy annexed Albania and installed Victor Emmanuel III as its king.
What followed was 22 years of exile spread across four countries. The family went first to Greece, then briefly to France, settling at the Château de la Maye outside Versailles until the German invasion forced them onward to England, where they lived for a time at the Ritz in London before settling more permanently at Parmoor House in Buckinghamshire for the rest of the war. From 1946 they lived in Egypt under the protection of King Farouk, before moving on to France for good in the mid-1950s.
The King Who Bought a Long Island Mansion He Never Lived In
The strangest chapter of Zog's exile played out an ocean away from any of it. In 1951, while still based in Europe, Zog paid over $100,000 for the Knollwood Estate in Muttontown, on Long Island's Gold Coast, a 60-room granite mansion built between 1906 and 1920 for Wall Street financier Charles I. Hudson, designed by the New York architecture firm Hiss and Weekes with grounds laid out by Ferruccio Vitale, the same landscape architect behind Washington's National Mall gardens.
Zog reportedly planned to move in permanently with a staff of fellow Albanians, effectively recreating a small court in exile on American soil. The New York Times, covering the purchase at the time, noted drily that "a man must have a place to lay his head." He never got the chance to test that theory. Zog never moved to the United States at all, choosing to remain in Europe and Africa instead, and sold the estate in 1955 to businessman Lansdell Christie.
Rumours that Zog had hidden gold and jewels inside the mansion's walls drew vandals and treasure hunters throughout the 1950s, and the looting was severe enough that the new owners had the building demolished in 1959. Today the ruins, toppled columns, a walled garden, a grand double staircase leading nowhere, sit inside Nassau County's Muttontown Preserve, a genuine curiosity for hikers who often have no idea an Albanian king's abandoned American palace is buried in the woods around them.
Death, and a Return Only His Body Made
Zog died at the Foch Hospital in Suresnes, France, on 9 April 1961, at the age of 65. Albania's communist government under Enver Hoxha had barred him from ever returning and formally deposed him in 1946, so he never set foot in the country again while he was alive. His remains were repatriated to Tirana only in 2012, more than fifty years after his death, and reburied with full state honours in a mausoleum built for the Albanian royal family. Géraldine, who outlived him by over four decades, was finally allowed to return to Albania herself in 2002, the year she died.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was King Zog really the only Muslim monarch in modern Europe?
Yes, according to his biographer Jason Tomes, Zog was Europe's only Muslim king of the modern era, a fact he leaned into at his coronation by swearing his oath on both the Bible and the Koran.
Did anyone ever find the gold Zog supposedly hid on Long Island?
Not that's been publicly confirmed. The rumours persisted for years and drew vandals to the abandoned Knollwood mansion, but nothing verifiable has ever surfaced, and the building was ultimately demolished in 1959.
What happened to Zog's son?
Crown Prince Leka was proclaimed King of the Albanians in exile by royalist supporters after his father's death in 1961, a symbolic title with no governing power, since Albania was a communist republic at the time.
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Zog was far from the only 20th century leader to survive repeated attempts on his life. See Fanny Kaplan: The Woman Who Tried to Assassinate Lenin for another attempt on a head of state from the same turbulent era.
For a very different royal figure whose life ended in political violence, see The Death of Lord Mountbatten: Royal Power, India and the Bomb That Killed Him.
Sources
3. NYU Press / Labyrinth Books, King Zog of Albania: Europe's Self-Made Muslim Monarch by Jason Tomes
