Born 18 March 1914 in Braunschweig, he was educated at Castle Salem, and later at the universities of Oxford, Berlin and Goettingen, and earned a degree in law.

On 31 August 1951 in Castle Marienburg near Hannover, he married Princess Ortrud von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gluecksburg and they became the parents of six children. In 1953, after his father's death, he became the head of Hannoverian Royal Family.

It may have been his legal background that gave him a particular interest in the Act of Settlement passed by the British Parliament in 1701. In 1956 by persistence, he finally managed to establish in the British courts the right of all non-Catholic descendants of the
Electress Sophia von Hannover to British citizenship. This proved particularly important in the case of those descendants whose lands had been seized in eastern Europe after the was since they were now able to establish claims for compensattion as British subjects.

From; "Queen Victoria's Descendants", by Marlene A. Eilers.