Georgii Nikolaevich was born on November 28, 1872, in Rome to Duke Nikolai Maximilianovich of Leuchtenberg and Nadezhda Sergeevna Annenkova.
The Leuchtenbergs were descendants of Nicholas I by blood and were related to the Bavarian Wittelsbach dynasty. In 1878, Emperor Alexander II recognized the marriage of Duke Nikolai Maximilianovich, thus granting his wife and sons the titles of countess and counts of Beauharnais. In November 1890, the young Georgy received the hereditary title of duke of Leuchtenberg. He entered military service in the Life Guards cavalry regiment with the rank of captain. On May 5, 1895, in St. Petersburg, Georgii Nikolaevich married Princess Olga Nikolaevna Repnina-Volkonskaya. He retired from the army due to illness in 1905 and moved with his family to the family castle Seeon in Bavaria, where he occupied himself with history and hunting. After the outbreak of World War I, he worked in the Russian Red Cross before serving in the headquarters of the Russian Southwestern Front. The February Revolution found the duke in Kiev, where he served under General Alexei Brusilov.¹

In May 1917, Georgii Nikolaevich was dismissed from service once again. As a witness to the revolution and consequent events in Ukraine, he later wrote his “Memories of Ukraine. 1917–1918”.² During the German occupation of Ukraine, he maintained contact with Hetman Skoropadskii. In July 1918 in Kiev, along with the lawyer Mikhail Akatsatov, Nikolaevich founded the White Guard organization Union Our Motherland (Soiuz Nasha Rodina), which was later renamed the Southern Army. Pyotr Krasnov also took part in the formation of these White Guard units. By the fall of 1918, the Southern Army consisted of about 16,000 soldiers, which in 1919 became part of the Armed Forces of South Russia (Vooruzhennye Sily Yuga Rossii, VSYuR).³

In 1920, Nikolaevich left for Germany, and by the end of September 1920, the entire Leuchtenberg family had moved to Bavaria. In 1921, he, General Krasnov and the poet Sergei Sokolov (Krechetov) founded the organization Brotherhood of Russian Truth (Bratstvo Russkoi Pravdy).⁴ The duke participated in the Bad Reichenhall Monarchical Congress. He was also the founder and chairman of the Union of United Monarchists (Soiuz Obyedinennykh Monarkhistov). He supported the Berlin-based émigrée publishing houses Medny Vsadnik, Detinets and Grad Kitezh, as well as the magazine “Beloe Delo”, and kept in close contact with Pyotr Wrangel, Carl Gustav Mannerheim, generals Krasnov and Alexandr Kutepov, and the philosopher Ivan Ilyin. In 1928, Georgii Nikolaevich was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Following the shock from the death of his elder brother Nikolai Nikolaevich, the duke passed away on August 9, 1929.⁵

Duke Georgy of Leuchtenberg and General Pyotr Wrangel at Leuchtenberg’s
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