Copyright The New York Times
When you think of a baroness, you might conjure images of Baroness Elsa Schraeder, Captain von Trapp’s fiancée in “The Sound of Music,” or maybe Princess Catherine, who also carries the title of Baroness Carrickfergus. Leonie von Ungern-Sternberg, a descendant of a 900-year-old German-Baltic family that has carried the baron and baroness titles for centuries, wants to change that. Ms. von Ungern-Sternberg, a 29-year-old German native who is about to finish an M.B.A. at IE University in Madrid, has begun making a name for herself on TikTok with a series of “Millennial Baroness Diaries.” She has answered questions about her noble heritage, her international upbringing and an unnamed prince she said she had to block after his courting became a little too aggressive. (“Moral of the story is that princes can also be frogs,” she quipped.) On TikTok, Ms. von Ungern-Sternberg aims to demystify what life as a noble is really like, acknowledging her privilege and the access her title gives her to rarefied circles while also showing that it isn’t all debutante balls and yachts in Saint-Tropez. “My whole motivation comes really from democratizing knowledge,” she said. “In the past, there’s been this gatekeeping around culture — including language, elegance, education but also confidence. And since I had access to this so early in life, and this is what I learned in my private schools and my boarding schools, diplomatic dinners and so on, I want to share this on TikTok, because I really, truly believe that this knowledge should not be exclusive.” Ms. von Ungern-Sternberg grew up attending international schools in Dubai and Cairo before graduating from the German boarding school Stiftung Louisenlund in 2016. She speaks German, English, Spanish and some Arabic and is versed in the fields of art, classical music, literature and philosophy. Though her education and pedigree belie her noble status, she has described her upbringing as being more humble than many might imagine, and has been working since she was 18. “I always had this awareness that I had a lot of privilege growing up, and I think maybe that’s also something that kind of motivated me to start with my TikToks,” she said. “When you grow up seeing these extreme changes in wealth and hardship within, you know, the same day, you don’t romanticize privilege in the same way that I think a lot of people on social media do.” “I recognize that it’s a responsibility, so I’m very vocal about it,” she added, “not because I want to flaunt it, but because I really think that naming it is the first step in using it for something that just goes beyond myself.” Ms. von Ungern-Sternberg seems happy to discuss just about anything, with videos that include personal style tips, book recommendations, monologues about how she learned multiple languages and how to kindle self-confidence. Her audience, which is 70 percent women and mostly from the United States, responds by asking her more questions, which she almost always answers head on, no matter how uncomfortable. Over the summer, a commenter brought up Ms. von Ungern-Sternberg’s distant relation to the early 20th century Russian nationalist Roman von Ungern-Sternberg. Known as the Bloody Baron for the violent treatment of his enemies, and even his own soldiers, her relative waged military battles in Russia and Mongolia, and was eventually captured and executed by the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution. Ms. von Ungern-Sternberg made no attempt to hide from that. “Yes, I am related to the last ‘King’ of Mongolia,” she said before sharing a history lesson on his reign. In another video, she shared a family story in which she said her great-grandparents had helped their Jewish friends hide and flee Germany during Nazi rule. When they were discovered by their pro-Nazi housekeeper, they killed themselves, and her grandfather, then 16, was forced to flee the country to Scotland with only a rucksack as the Nazis seized their land and property. Recently, Ms. von Ungern-Sternberg has started sharing more traditional influencer content, like her skin care regimen and her favorite perfumes. Though she’s still interested in history and how it influences culture, she said she wanted to move beyond her family heritage to showcase the things she’s interested in: classical music, books, personal style and the ethics of artificial intelligence, which she has written about on her newly released Substack. (She worked as an A.I. consultant before getting into business school.) Ms. von Ungern-Sternberg has also started sharing more details about her personal life, including about her relationship with her boyfriend, who comes from a nonaristocratic family in Mexico, as well as her thoughts on religion. Through it all, her family has remained supportive, even if they don’t necessarily understand her inclination for sharing. In a recent video, she revealed she had struggled with an eating disorder. “My mom and my sister called me and they were crying,” she said, “and they said, Leonie, that’s so brave of you, but be careful, because if you talk about these things, you’re making yourself very vulnerable for others.” But Ms. von Ungern-Sternberg’s candor and her willingness to break the number one rule of the aristocracy — talking openly about being a member of it — has earned her plenty of admirers, even at a time when her Gen Z and millennial peers have grown increasingly wary of the ultrarich. And when there are detractors, Ms. von Ungern-Sternberg, who is nothing if not savvy, acknowledges them with humor. “They say ‘eat the rich’ like my ancestors didn’t already get eaten,” she captioned one video. Since pivoting to more influencer content, Ms. von Ungern-Sternberg has gained more than 40,000 followers, and has discovered that it’s not just her family that her followers find fascinating. “I think what makes me interesting, apparently, to the people, is just me as a person, which is great — I never thought that that would be the case,” she said. Ms. von Ungern-Sternberg will earn her M.B.A. this month, and though she has many irons in the fire, she’s not sure what she wants to do next. She would like to get a Ph.D. in A.I. ethics, but her education is self-financed, and business school used up the money she saved working in the corporate world after college. Right now, she’s applying for jobs and working on a book that she says is “a manifesto for a renaissance of cultural literacy.” And, of course, she’s making TikTok videos. “I didn’t plan any of this,” she said of the evolution of her account. “I didn’t really think that I would ever be doing this.”
