Victoria, Princess Royal
|German Empress consort
Queen consort of Prussia
|Tenure||9 March 1888 – 15 June 1888|
21 November 1840|
Buckingham Palace, London, England
|Died||5 August 1901
Schloss Friedrichshof, Kronberg im Taunus, Grand Duchy of Hesse, German Empire
|Burial||13 August 1901
Friedenskirche, Potsdam, Prussia, German Empire
|Spouse||Frederick III, German Emperor|
|Issue||Wilhelm II, German Emperor
Charlotte, Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen
Prince Henry of Prussia
Prince Sigismund of Prussia
Viktoria, Princess Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe
Prince Waldemar of Prussia
Sophia, Queen of the Hellenes
Margaret, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel
|House||Saxe-Coburg and Gotha|
|Father||Albert, Prince Consort|
She was the eldest child of Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland and Prince Albert. She was created Princess Royal of Great Britain and Ireland in 1841. She was the mother of Wilhelm II, German Emperor.
Educated by her father in a highly politically liberal attitude, she was betrothed at the age of sixteen to the Prince Frederick of Prussia, and supported him in his views that Prussia and the later German Empire would become a constitutional monarchy on the British model. Criticized for this attitude and her English origins, Victoria suffered the ostracism of the Hohenzollerns and the Berlin court. This isolation increased after the arrival of Otto von Bismarck (one of her most staunch political opponents) to power in 1862.
Victoria was Empress and Queen of Prussia for only for a few months, during which she had opportunity to influence the policy of the German Empire. Frederick III died in 1888 – just 99 days after his accession – from laryngeal cancer and was succeeded by their son William II, who had much more conservative views than his parents. After her husband's death, she became widely known as Empress Frederick (German: Kaiserin Friedrich). The Empress Dowager then settled in Kronberg im Taunus, where she built a castle, Friedrichshof, named in honor of her late husband. Increasingly isolated after the weddings of her younger daughters, Victoria died of breast cancer a few months after her mother in 1901.
The correspondence between Victoria and her parents has been preserved almost completely: 3,777 letters from Queen Victoria to her eldest daughter, and about 4,000 letters of the Empress to her mother are preserved and catalogued. These give a detailed insight into the life of the Prussian court during 1858-1900.
- 1 Life
- 1.1 Princess Royal of the United Kingdom
- 1.2 Princess of Prussia
- 1.3 Crown Princess of Prussia
- 1.4 Crown Princess of Germany
- 1.5 German Empress
- 1.6 Empress Dowager
- 2 In Popular Culture
- 3 Titles, styles, honours and arms
- 4 Issue
- 5 Ancestry
- 6 Notes
- 7 References
- 8 Bibliography
Princess Royal of the United Kingdom
Childhood and education
Princess Victoria was born on 21 November 1840 at Buckingham Palace, London. Her mother and namesake was Queen Victoria, the only child of George III's fourth eldest son, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Her father was Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha the second and younger son of Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Princess Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg.[a]
As a daughter of the sovereign, Victoria was automatically a British princess with the style Her Royal Highness, styled HRH The Princess Victoria. On 19 January 1841, the Queen created Victoria Princess Royal, giving her an honorary title sometimes conferred on the eldest daughter of the sovereign. Victoria was then styled HRH The Princess Royal. In addition she was heiress presumptive to the throne of the United Kingdom before the birth of her younger brother Prince Albert (later Edward VII) on 9 November 1841. To her family, she was known simply as "Vicky" or "Pussy".
She was baptised in the Throne Room of Buckingham Palace on 10 February 1841 (on her parents' first wedding anniversary) by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Howley. The Lily font was commissioned especially for the occasion of her christening. Her godparents were Queen Adelaide (her maternal grandfather's sister-in-law), King Leopold I of Belgium (maternal grandmother's brother, her great-uncle), Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (paternal grandfather; for whom The Duke of Wellington, Tory Leader in the Lords, stood proxy), The Duke of Sussex (maternal grandfather's brother), The Duchess of Gloucester (maternal grandfather's sister) and The Duchess of Kent (maternal grandmother).
The royal couple decided to give their children an education as complete as possible. In fact, Queen Victoria, who succeeded her uncle, King William IV at the age of 18, believed that she was not sufficiently prepared for the government affairs. For his part, Prince Albert, born in the small Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, received, thanks to his uncle, Leopold I, King of the Belgians, a more careful education.
Shortly after the birth of Victoria, Prince Albert therefore wrote a memoir detailing the tasks and duties of all those involved in the royal children. A year and half later, another 48-page document, written by the Baron Stockmar, intimate of the royal couple, details the educational principles which must be used to the little princes. But the royal couple had only a very vague idea of the proper educational development of a child. Queen Victoria, for example, believed that the fact that her baby sucked bracelets was a sign of deficient education. According to Hannah Pakula, biographer of the future German Empress, the first two governesses of the princess were therefore particularly well chosen. Experienced in dealing with children, Lady Lyttelton directed the Nursery through which passed all royal children after Victoria's second year. A diplomat, the young woman managed to soften the unrealistic demands of the royal couple. For her part, Sarah Anne Hildyard, the second governess of the children was a competent teacher who quickly developed a close relationship with her students.
Precocious and intelligent, from the age of eighteen months, Victoria quickly learned French and at the age of four she began to study German. From six, her curriculum included lessons of arithmetic, geography and history, while her father tutored her in politics and philosophy. Her school days, interrupted by three hours of recreation, began at 8:20 and finished at 18:00. Unlike her brother, whose educational program was even more severe, Victoria turned out to be an excellent student, who was always hungry for knowledge. However, despite all this educational qualities, she showed an obstinate character.
Queen Victoria and her husband wanted to remove their children from court life as much as possible. So they acquired Osborne House in the Isle of Wight, which was remodeled in the style of a Neapolitan villa following the drawings of the Prince Consort. Near the main building, Albert built his children a Swiss-inspired cottage with a small kitchen and a carpentry workshop. In this building, the royal children learned manual work and practical life. Prince Albert was very present in the education of their offspring. He closely followed the progress of his children, and gave some of their lessons himself, as well as spending time playing with them.
First meeting with the Hohenzollerns
In the German Confederation, Prince William of Prussia and his wife, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, were among the personalities with whom Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were allies. The British sovereign also had regular epistolary contact with her cousin Augusta since 1846. But the revolution that broke out in Berlin in 1848 strengthened the links between the two royal couples by requiring the heir to the Prussian throne to find shelter for three months in the British court.
In 1851, William returned to London with his wife and two children (Frederick and Louise), on the occasion of The Great Exhibition. For the first time, Victoria met her future husband and, despite their age difference (she was eleven years old and he was nineteen), they got along very well. To promote the contact between the two, the British sovereign and her husband asked Victoria to guide Frederick through the exhibition and during the visit, the princess could talk in perfect German with the prince only able to say a few words in English. The meeting was therefore a success and, years later, Prince Frederick would emphasize the positive impression that Victoria had in him during this visit with her mixture of innocence, intellectual curiosity and simplicity.
His encounter with little Victoria, however, not only positively impressed Frederick during the four weeks of his English stay. The young Prussian prince, in effect, shared his liberal ideas with the Prince Consort. Finally, Frederick was sincerely fascinated by the relationships between the members of the British royal family. In London, the court life wasn't as rigid and conservative as in Berlin, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's relationship with their children was very different to William and Augusta's relationship with their children.
After Frederick returned to Germany, he began a close correspondence with Victoria. But behind this nascent friendship was the desire of the Queen Victoria and her husband to forge closer ties with Prussia. In a letter to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, the British sovereign transmitted the desire that the meeting between her daughter and the heir of the Prussian throne lead to a closer relationship between the two young people.
Engagement with Frederick of Prussia
Similar to Victoria, Frederick received a comprehensive education and in particular was formed by personalities like the writer Ernst Moritz Arndt and historian Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann. According to the tradition of the House of Hohenzollern, he also received rigorous military training.
In 1855, Prince Frederick made another stay in Great Britain and visited Victoria and her family in Scotland at Balmoral Castle. The purpose of his trip was to see the Princess Royal again, to ensure that she could be suitable consort for him. In Berlin, this journey in Britain was far from receiving a positive response. In fact, in the Prussian court many individuals wanted to see the heir to the throne marry a Russian Grand Duchess. King Frederick William IV had also allowed his nephew reluctantly to marry a British princess and he even had to keep his approval in secret as his own wife showed strong Anglophobia.
At the time of Frederick's second visit, Victoria was fifteen years old. A little larger than her mother, the Princess was 1.50 m and far away from the ideal of beauty of the time. The British sovereign was concerned that the heir to the Prussian throne wouldn’t find her daughter sufficiently attractive. Nevertheless, from the first dinner with the prince, it was clear to Queen Victoria and her husband the mutual sympathy of the two young people which began in 1851 was still vivid. In fact, after only three days with the royal family, Frederick asked Victoria's parents permission to marry their daughter. They were thrilled by the news, but gave their approval on condition that the marriage should not take place before Vicky's seventeen birthday.
Once this condition was accepted, the engagement of Victoria and Frederick was publicly announced on 17 May 1856. Immediately the project raised criticism in Great Britain. The English public complained about the Kingdom of Prussia's neutrality during the Crimean War of 1853-1856. In an article, The Times even qualified the Hohenzollern as a "miserable dynasty" that pursues an inconsistent and unreliable foreign policy, with the maintenance of the throne depending solely on Russia. The newspaper also criticized the failure of King Frederick William IV to respect the political guarantees given to the population during the revolution of 1848. In the German Confederation, the reactions to the announcement of the engagement were less unanimous: several members of the Hohenzollern family and conservatives opposed it, while liberal circles welcomed the proposed union with the British crown.
Preparation for the role of Prussian princess
The Prince Consort, who was part of the Vormärz, had long supported the "Coburg plan", i.e. the idea that a liberal Prussia could serve as an example for other German states and would be able to achieve around it the Unification of Germany. During the involuntary stay of Prince William of Prussia in London in 1848, the Prince Consort tried to convince his Hohenzollern cousin of the need to transform Prussia into a constitutional monarchy following the British model. But the future German Emperor was not persuaded and instead, kept very conservative views.
Eager to make his daughter the instrument of the liberalization of Germany, Prince Albert took advantage of the two years of engagement between Victoria and Frederick to give the Princess Royal the most comprehensive training possible. Thus he taught himself history and modern European politics and actually wrote to the Princess many essays on events that occurred in Prussia. However, the Prince Consort overestimated the ability of liberal reform movement in Germany at a time when only a small middle class and some intellectual circles shared his views in the German Confederation. So this was a particularly difficult role that Prince Albert gave to his daughter, especially facing a critical and conservative Hohenzollern court.[b]
Domestic issues and marriage
To pay the dowry of the Princess Royal, the British Parliament attributed to the girl a sum of 40,000 pounds and also gave to her an appanage of 8,000 pounds per year. In the meanwhile, in Berlin King Frederick William IV gave an annual sum of 9,000 thalers to his nephew Frederick. The income of the heir to the Prussian throne thus proved insufficient to cover a budget consistent with his position and that of his future wife. Throughout much of their marriage, Victoria stood on her own resources.
The Berlin court of the royal couple was chosen by Queen Elizabeth of Prussia[c] and Frederick's mother, Princess Augusta. However, both women called to people who were in court service for a long time and therefore much older than Victoria and Frederick. Prince Albert therefore asked the Hohenzollerns that his daughter at least could kept two ladies-in-waiting that were her age and of British origin. His request was not denied but, as a compromise, Victoria got two young ladies-in-waiting of German origin: Countesses Walburga von Hohenthal and Marie zu Lynar. However, Prince Albert succeeded in imposing Ernst Alfred Christian von Stockmar, the son of his friend Baron von Stockmar, as private secretary of his daughter.
Convinced that the marriage of a British princess to the heir to the Prussian throne would be regarded as an honor by the Hohenzollerns, Prince Albert insisted that his daughter could retain her title of Princess Royal after the wedding. However, due to the very anti-British and pro-Russian Berlin court, the decision of the prince only triggered further irritation against Victoria.
However, the question of the place of the marriage ceremony raised the most criticism. For the Hohenzollerns, it seemed natural that the nuptials of the heir of the throne of Prussia was held in Berlin. However, Queen Victoria insisted that her eldest daughter must marry in her country and she ultimately imposed herself in this matter. The wedding of Victoria and Frederick therefore took place at the Chapel Royal of St. James's Palace in London, on 25 January 1858.
Princess of Prussia
Subject to criticism
Victoria's move to Berlin began a large correspondence between the princess and her parents. Each week, she sent a letter to her father that usually contained comments on German political events. The majority of these letters have been preserved and have become a valuable source for knowing the Prussian court.
But these letters also show the will of Queen Victoria to dictate every move of her daughter. The British sovereign demanded that Victoria appeared equally loyal to her homeland as her new country. But the thing quickly became impossible and the most insignificant events put the princess in front of insoluble problems. For example, the death of a distant relative of the British and Prussian royal houses brought a month of mourning in London while in Berlin the mourning period lasted only one week. Victoria was therefore bound to respect the period of mourning in use among the Hohenzollerns but this earned her the criticism of her mother, because she believed that, as a Princess Royal and daughter of the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Victoria should follow the custom in use at England.
Concerned about the consequences of the continual maternal criticism on Victoria's psychological health, the Baron von Stockmar asked Prince Albert to intervene and ask the Queen to moderates her demands. However, the Baron failed to lessen the attacks that the princess suffered from the russophilic and anglophobic circles of the Berlin court. She was often hurt by the unkind comments from the Hohenzollern family.
Aged only seventeen, Victoria had to perform many tedious and official duties. Almost every evening, she had to appear at formal dinners, theatrical performances or public receptions. If foreign relatives of the Hohenzollerns were located in Berlin or Potsdam, her protocolary duties widened. Sometimes she was forced to salute the guests of the royal family at 7:00 in the station and then she would still be present at receptions past midnight.
Upon the arrival of Victoria in Berlin, King Frederick William IV gave to Frederick and his wife an old wing of the Berlin Royal Palace. However, the building was in very bad conditions and it didn't even contain a bathtub. In November 1858 the couple moved to the Kronprinzenpalais while as a summer residence they resided at the Neues Palais.
A difficult first childbirth
A little over a year after her marriage, on 27 January 1859 Victoria gave birth to her first child, the future German Emperor William II; however this first delivery was extremely complicated. In fact, the maid responsible for alerting doctors about the onset of contractions delayed giving notice. Moreover, the gynecologists hesitated to examine the princess, only wearing a flannel nightgown. The baby was in breech and the delay in delivery could have caused the death of both the princess and her son.
Finally, doctors managed to save both mother and child. However, due to the difficult childbirth, the baby suffered damages at the brachial plexus and the nerves in his arm had been injured. Growing up, the prince's arm experienced abnormal growth and, when William became an adult, his left arm measured 15 cm shorter than the right. There is also speculation that the difficult labor caused fetal distress, which deprived the future emperor of oxygen for eight to ten minutes and would have brought other neurological problems.
The doctors tried to calm both Victoria and Frederick, affirming that their baby could fully recover from his injuries. Still, the couple chose not to inform the British court of William's disease. However, over the weeks it became clear that the child's arm would not recover and, after four months of doubts, Victoria decided to give the sad news to her parents. Fortunately for the princess, the birth of her second child, Princess Charlotte on 24 July 1860, took place without difficulty.
Crown Princess of Prussia
A delicate situation
With the death of King Frederick William IV of Prussia on 2 January 1861, his brother, who already acted as regent since 1858, ascended the throne as William I. Frederick was then the new Crown Prince but his situation at court didn't change much: his father refused to increase his revenues and Vicky continued to contribute significantly to the family budget with her dowry and appanage. In a letter to the Baron von Stockmar, Prince Albert commented the situation:
To me it is obvious that a certain person is opposed to the financial independence of the princess ... [She] not only has not received a pfennig from Prussia, which is already calamitous, but has also had to use her dowry, which it should not be necessary. If they refuse the money to the poor Crown Prince for having a "rich wife", what they will get is impoverishing her.
In addition to their financial limitation, Frederick and Victoria accumulated more problems. As heir to the throne, he couldn't make travels outside Prussia without the King's permission. There was a rumor that this measure would limit Victoria's travels to the United Kingdom. Upon his accession to the throne, William I received a letter from Prince Albert in which he implicitly asked that the Prussian constitution would serve as an example for other German states. However, this letter increased the resentment of the sovereign against the British Prince Consort and against Frederick and Victoria, who shared the same liberal ideas.
Loss of her father and political crisis
On 14 December 1861, just 42 years, Prince Albert died of typhoid fever. With a very close relationship with her father, Victoria was devastated by the news and went with her husband to the United Kingdom to attend the funeral.
Shortly after this tragedy Frederick and Vicky, still in mourning, had to faced the first major crisis of William I's reign and they were not prepared to deal with it. The Prussian Parliament denied the King the money needed for his plan of reorganization of the army. However, William I considered the reform as paramount and decided to dissolve the Parliament on 11 March 1862. In doing so, the monarch revived the Prussian constitutional conflict.[d] In a tough confrontation between the crown and the Landtag, the King came to considering setting a deadline for leaving the throne.
In this perspective, Vicky tried to convince her husband to accept the abdication of his father. However, the prince didn't agree with his wife and supported his father that he would stand firm before the Landtag. For Frederick, the abdication of a sovereign after a conflict with the Parliament would create a dangerous precedent and weaken his successors. The Crown Prince also judged that his support to his father's abdication in his favor would be a serious dereliction of his duties as a son.
Finally, William I chose not to abdicate and appointed Count Otto von Bismarck as Prime Minister of Prussia on 22 September. Leader of the Conservative Party, the politician was willing to rule without parliamentary majority and even without authorized budget. The King was pleased with the situation, but his wife, the liberal Queen Augusta, and especially his son and daughter-in-law, harshly criticized the decision. However, Bismarck remained at the head of the Prussian government and subsequently of the German government until 1890 and was instrumental in the isolation of the Crown Prince and his wife.
With the outbreak of the Prussian constitutional conflict, the opposition between liberals and conservatives in Berlin reached its peak. Suspected of supporting parliamentarians against William I, the Crown Prince and his wife were subjected to harsh criticism. The trip that the couple made in the Mediterranean in October 1862 aboard Queen Victoria's yacht served as a pretext for conservatives to accuse Frederick to abandon his father in a time of great political tension. They also emphasized the fact that the Crown Prince traveled aboard a foreign vessel escorted by an English warship.
Following the announcement of the engagement between the Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra of Denmark, daughter of the future King Christian IX and representative of a rival Prussian state,[e] Victoria's position in the Berlin court was further weakened. The German public was of the opinion that the Crown princess was responsible for encouraging this union between Denmark and the United Kingdom.
Frederick caused an incident when he openly criticized the policy of his father and Bismarck. During the official visit to Danzig, the Crown Prince publicly rejected an order issued by the Prime Minister on 1 June 1863 that allowed the Prussian authorities to prohibit the publication of a newspaper whose content was considered inappropriate. Enraged with the speech of his son, William I accused him of disobedience and threatened to suspend him from his military duties and even to exclude him from the succession to the throne. To the conservative circles, who demanded exemplary punishment, few joined the voices of Prince Charles, the King's younger brother and General Edwin von Manteuffel, who believed that Frederick should be tried in a court martial.
Severely criticized in Germany, the couple saw their behavior praised in Great Britain. The Times wrote:
"It is hard to imagine a more challenging role than the Crown Prince and his wife, who are without a counselor, between a coward monarch, an impetuous cabinet and an indignant population."
The support of the British newspaper became a new source of problems for Frederick and Victoria. The article contained everyday details that suggest that Vicky revealed certain confidential information to the press. The authorities opened an investigation against her, and because of this pressure, Victoria's personal secretary, Baron Ernst von Stockmar, finally resigned his position.
The Prussian-Danish War
In the international arena, Prime Minister Bismarck tried to obtain German unity around Prussia. His plans were to end the Austrian influence in the German Confederation and impose Prussian hegemony in Germany. Faithful to his objectives, Bismarck involved Prussia in the War of the Duchies against Denmark in 1864. However, the Prime Minister counteracted with the help of Austria in the conflict.
Despite the familiar relations of the Prince of Wales with Copenhagen, the British government refused to intervene in the war between the German Confederation and Denmark. Still, this had a certain importance in the royal family, which was deeply divided by the conflict. In addition, in Berlin many suspected that Victoria was unhappy of the Prussian military successes against the country of her sister-in-law Alexandra.
Despite criticism and distrust, Vicky supported German troops. Following the example of Florence Nightingale, who had helped to improve medical care of British soldiers in the Crimean War, the Crown Princess became involved in the aid of wounded soldiers. During the birthday celebrations of William I, Victoria created, along with her husband, a social fund for the families of soldiers killed or seriously injured.
During the war, Frederick joined the Prussian army and was part of the fighting under the command of Field Marshal Friedrich von Wrangel and distinguished himself for his courageous valor in the Battle of Dybbøl (7–18 April 1864) that marked the Danish defeat against the Austro-Prussian coalition. Pleased with the German victory, Victoria expected the military success of her husband would encourage people to understand that she was the wife of the heir to the throne. In a letter to Frederick, she complained of the constant criticism and being considered too British in Prussia and too Prussian in Great Britain.
With the final victory over Denmark and the Treaty of Vienna (signed on 30 October 1864), it was decided that the Duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg would be administered by a joint Prussian-Austrian government. However, this new division became a source of conflict between Vienna and Berlin.
The Austro-Prussian War
After the War of the Duchies, Germany experienced a short period of peace. The Gastein Convention, signed by the two winners on 14 August 1865, placed the former Danish provinces under Prussian-Austrian control and both countries occupied a part of the Duchies. However, differences of opinion concerning the administration of the provinces quickly triggered a conflict between the former allies. On 9 June 1866, Prussia occupied Holstein, which was administered by Austria. In the meanwhile, Vienna asked the Diet of Frankfurt for a general mobilization of the German states against Prussia, which is what happened on 14 June.
Considering the mobilization illegal, Prussia proclaimed the dissolution of the German Confederation and invaded Saxony, Hanover and Hesse-Kassel, effectively starting the called Austro-Prussian War. During the Battle of Königgrätz (3 July 1866), in which Crown Prince Frederick was instrumental, Austria suffered a heavy defeat and ended up capitulating. Finally, with the Peace of Prague (23 August 1866), Vienna withdrew from the German union. Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, the Duchy of Nassau and the city of Frankfurt were annexed by Prussia.
Shortly after the Prussian victory at Königgrätz, Bismarck asked the Parliament for more money for the army, which raised a new controversy between the liberal parliamentarians. Frederick welcomed the creation of the North German Confederation, which joined Prussia and some Germanic principalities, because he saw that it was the first step toward German unification. However, the Confederation was far from adopting the liberal ideas of the Crown Prince. Despite being democratically elected, the Reichstag didn't have the same powers as a Parliament. In addition, local sovereigns, who were more interested in maintaining their prerogatives, and the new German constitution gave many powers to the now Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Less enthusiastic than her husband, Vicky saw the North German Confederation as an extension of the Prussian political system she hated.[f] Nevertheless, she remained hopeful that this situation was temporary and a united and liberal Germany could be created.
During the Austro-Prussian War, Victoria and Frederick received a hard blow. Sigismund, the fourth child of the couple died of meningitis at 21 months on 18 June 1866, just a few days before the Battle of Königgrätz. This tragedy weakened the Crown Princess, who found no comfort from her mother or her in-laws. Queen Augusta demanded that her daughter-in-law quickly resumed her official duties instead of feeling sorry for herself. Queen Victoria, who was still mourning the loss of Prince Albert, didn't understand the feelings of her daughter and considered that the loss of a child was much less severe than that of a husband.
With peace restored in Germany, the Crown Prince was constantly sent abroad to represent the Berlin court. On these trips, Vicky rarely accompanied her husband because, due to their financial difficulties, they tried to limit costs to a minimum. On the other hand, the Crown Princess was also concerned to leave her children for long periods of time. Despite the death of Sigismund, the royal family continued to grow with the arrival of four new children between 1866 and 1872. While the older children of the couple (William, Charlotte and Henry) were left in the care of governesses, the younger ones (Sigismund, Viktoria, Waldemar, Sophia and Margaret) were raised personally by Victoria, which was a point of conflict with both her mother and mother-in-law.
In Berlin, the position of Victoria was still difficult and her relationship with Queen Augusta, who also had liberal ideas, remained tense. Any gesture of the Crown Princess was a pretext for the worst criticism from her mother-in-law, for example, when she chose to use a landau instead of the traditional barouche with two horses. The opposition between the two women came to the point that Queen Victoria was forced to intercede for her daughter to William I.
The Franco-Prussian War
On 19 July 1870 the Franco-Prussian War broke out, which saw the fall of the Second French Empire. As in previous conflicts against Denmark and Austria, Frederick participated actively in the fight against the French. At the head of the 3rd German army, he had a decisive role in the battles of Wissembourg (4 August 1870) and Wörth (6 August 1870), and also had a notorious participation in the Battle of Sedan (1 September 1870) during the siege of Paris. Jealous for the military success of the heir to the throne, Bismarck tried to undermine his prestige. The Chancellor took the late arrival of 3rd German army to Paris to accuse the Crown Prince to protect France under pressures from his mother and his wife. During an official dinner, Bismarck accused the Queen and the Crown Princess of being ardently francophile, an incident that was soon known by the newspapers.
Victoria's commitment in favor of the wounded soldiers had no impact in the German press. In Hamburg the Crown Princess had built a military hospital, running it at all costs, in addition to visiting the war-wounded soldiers in Wiesbaden, Biberach, Bingen, Bingerbrück, Rüdesheim and Mainz. However, by doing this, Victoria was accused of performing tasks normally attributed to the Queen, prompting the wrath of her in-laws. Finally, William I ordered her to stop that "theater of charity" and return to Berlin to represent the royal family.
Crown Princess of Germany
The proclamation of the German Empire
On 18 January 1871 (the anniversary of the accession of the Hohenzollern dynasty to the royalty in 1701), the princes of the North German Confederation and those of South Germany (Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg and Hesse-Darmstadt) proclaimed William I as the hereditary German Emperor (Deutscher Kaiser) with the style Imperial and Royal Majesty (Kaiserliche und Königliche Majestät) in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. Then they symbolically united their states within a new German Empire. Frederick and Vicky became German Crown Prince and German Crown Princess with the style Imperial and Royal Highness (Kaiserliche und Königliche Hoheit) while Otto von Bismarck was appointed Imperial Chancellor.
Subsequently, the Catholic states of South Germany that were previously bound to Prussia by a Zollverein (Customs Union), were officially incorporated the Unified Germany by the treaties of Versailles (26 February 1871) and Frankfurt (10 May 1871).
An enlightened princess
Despite being named Field marshal thanks to his military performance in the wars of the 1860s, Frederick did not receive the command of any troops after the Franco-Prussian war. In fact, the Emperor did not trust in his own son and tried to keep him away from state affairs because of his "too English" ideas. The Crown Prince was appointed "Curator of the Royal Museums", a task that raised some enthusiasm at his wife. Following the advice of her father, Victoria had continued her intellectual formation after arriving in Germany: she read Goethe, Lessing, Heine and Stuart Mill and frequented the intellectual circles with her husband. The writer Gustav Freytag was a close friend of the Crown Princely couple and Gustav zu Putlitz was appointed Frederick's Chamberlain for some time. Despite the indignation of her mother, Vicky was also interested in the Theory of Evolution of Darwin and the ideas of British geologist Lyell. The German astronomer Wilhelm Julius Foerster reported that she visited the Berlin Observatory frequently and took keen interest in his astronomical work, and in the growth of the German Society for Ethical Culture. Eager to understand the principles of socialism, she read the work of Karl Marx and encouraged her husband to frequent the salon of Countess Marie von Schleinitz, a place known for being a meeting point of Bismarck's opponents.
Unlike many of their contemporaries, Vicky and Frederick rejected antisemitism. In a letter to her mother, the Crown Princess harshly criticized the essay Das Judenthum in der Musik (Judaism in Music) by Richard Wagner, whom she considered ridiculous and unfair. As for Frederick, he did not hesitate to make public appearances in synagogues when manifestations began of hatred against the Jews in Germany, especially in the early 1880s. In both the Kronprinzenpalais and Neues Palais in Potsdam, the Crown Princely couple received many commoners, including some Jewish personalities, which inevitably led to the disapproval of the Emperor and the court. Among their guests were the physicians Hermann von Helmholtz and Rudolf Virchow, the philosopher Eduard Zeller and the historian Hans Delbrück.
An art lover, Victoria appreciated and practiced painting, receiving classes from Anton von Werner and Heinrich von Angeli. She also supported education and was a member of the association founded by Wilhelm Adolf Lette in 1866, whose objective was to improve women's education. Since 1877, Vicky founded schools for girls (the "Victoriaschule für Mädchen") directed by British teachers, in addition to nursing schools (the "Victoriahaus zur Krankenpflege") based on the English model.
Mother of a large family
Since his birth, the eldest son of Victoria went through various treatments to cure his atrophied arm. Strange methods, such as the so-called "animal baths" in which the arm was immersed in the entrails of recently dead rabbits, were performed with some regularity. In addition, William also underwent electroshock sessions in an attempt to revive the nerves passing through the left arm to the neck and also to prevent his head tilting to one side.
For Victoria, her son's disability was a disgrace. Her letters and her diary shows her grief for her son's arm and her guilt for having given birth to a disabled child. During a visit to her parents in 1860 the Crown princess wrote about her eldest son:
"He is really smart for his age...if only he didn't had that unfortunate arm, I would be so proud of him."
According to Sigmund Freud, being unable to accept the illness of her child, Victoria ended up taking distance from her first-born, a fact that caused a great impact on the behavior of the future William II. However, other authors such as the historian Wolfgang Mommsen, insisted that the Crown Princess was very affectionate with her children. According to him, Vicky wanted her children to be like the idealized figure of her own father and tried, as best she could, to follow the educational precepts of Prince Albert. In 1863, Victoria and Frederick bought a cottage in Bornstedt so that their children could grow up in an environment similar to Osborne House. However, Victoria's influence on the offspring had an important limitation: like all the Hohenzollerns, her sons received a military training from a very young age and the Crown Princess feared that such education would undermine their values.
Willing to give their children the best education possible, Victoria and her husband entrusted this task to the bright but strict Calvinist philologist Georg Ernst Hinzpeter. Reputedly a liberal, Hinzpeter however was a staunch conservative who made William and Henry undergo a rigorous and puritanical upbringing, without praise or incentives. To complete their education, the princes were sent to a school in Kassel, despite the opposition of the King and court. Finally, William was enrolled at the University of Bonn, while his younger brother, who didn't show the same intellectual interests, was sent to the Navy at 16 years old. The education received by the children didn't allow them to have the open and liberal personalities that their parents wanted.
While her two eldest sons were approaching adulthood, Victoria suffered another blow with the death of her 11-year-old son Waldemar on 27 March 1879 of diphtheria. Without having recovered from the death of Sigismund, the Crown Princess was devastated with the loss of another child, especially since he died of the same disease as her sister Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine and her niece, Princess Marie just a few months earlier. Victoria, however, tried to keep her suffering in secret because, except for her husband, no other family member was willing to comfort her.
If her sons were sources of great concern, Vicky's daughters didn't usually cause problems. The only exception was Charlotte, the eldest of the princesses. A girl with slow growth and a difficult education, she was regularly prone to fits of rage during her childhood. Growing up, her health became delicate and, and in addition to her capricious personality, she also revealed an irritable character. Today, several historians (like John C. G. Röhl, Martin Warren and David Hunt) defend the thesis that Charlotte suffered from porphyria, as did her maternal ancestor King George III of the United Kingdom. This could explain the gastrointestinal problems, migraines and nervous crises that tormented the princess. The same historians believe that the headaches and skin rashes that Victoria treated with doses of morphine were also a consequence of porphyria, albeit in a weaker form than that suffered by Charlotte.
Matrimonial projects: sources of conflict
As her children became adults, Victoria began to seek suitors for them. In 1878, Charlotte married her second cousin[g] Bernhard, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Meiningen, a fact that delighted the Berlin court. Three years later, Victoria began negotiations to marry William with Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, provoking outrage in conservative German circles. Chancellor Bismarck criticized the project as the princess belonged to the family who was dethroned by Prussia with the annexation of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein in 1864. As for the Hohenzollerns, they considered Augusta Victoria unworthy to marry the heir to the German Empire because her family lacked sufficient rank. After several months of negotiations, Victoria got what she wanted, but soon became disappointed when she saw that her daughter-in-law didn't have the liberal personality that she expected.
The Crown Princess, however, was not so lucky with the marriage plans for her daughter Viktoria. In 1881 she fell in love with Prince Alexander I of Bulgaria and her mother tried to obtain permission from the Emperor for the engagement. Despite being a sovereign, the Bulgarian prince was the fruit of a morganatic marriage, which placed him in a position of inferiority in front of the proud House of Hohenzollern. In addition, Alexander's policy in his Principality of Bulgaria greatly disliked Russia, a traditional ally of Prussia. Bismarck feared that marriage between a German princess and an enemy of Tsar Alexander II of Russia would represent a blow to the League of the Three Emperors, i.e. the Austro-German-Russian alliance. The Chancellor, in the meanwhile, gained the disapproval of William I to the union, much to the dismay of Victoria and Frederick.
This new conflict between father and son resulted in the Emperor replacing the Crown Prince with Prince William at official ceremonies and major events. On several occasions, it was the grandson of William I who represented the Berlin court abroad.
Agony of William I and Frederick's disease
In 1887 the health of the 90-year-old William I declined rapidly, indicating that the succession was close. However, the Crown Prince was also ill. Increasingly sickly, the physicians told him he had laryngeal cancer. To confirm his suspicions, Frederick was examined by British physician Morell Mackenzie, who after a biopsy did not find any sign of illness.
With the agreement of his physicians, Frederick went with his wife to Great Britain for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in June 1887. On that trip, the Crown Princely couple secretly brought three boxes full of personal documents to Windsor Castle that they wanted to keep away from the eyes of Bismarck and the Hohenzollerns. Always eager to harm the heir to the throne, the Imperial Chancellor continued his intrigues against Victoria. With the help of chamberlain Hugo von Radolinski and painter Götz de Seckendorff, he tried to prepare a final report against the Crown Princess.
Because the health of the Crown Prince did not improve, Mackenzie advised him to go to Italy to undergo treatment. Frederick and Victoria went to San Remo in September 1887, causing outrage in Berlin because, despite the continued deterioration in the Emperor's health, the couple didn't return to the capital. In early November, Frederick completely lost the use of speech and German doctors were summoned by Victoria to San Remo for further examinations. Finally, he was diagnosed with a malignant tumor and the only possible treatment was the removal of his larynx, but the Crown Prince refused. Victoria supported her husband in his decision, which caused a serious argument with her son William, who shortly before had arrived in Italy and accused his mother of being happy with Frederick's disease.
In Berlin, the agony of William I lasted several months until, on 9 March 1888, the first German Emperor finally died. Still in San Remo and completely mute, his son succeeded him as King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany under the name of Frederick III.
The Empress of 99 days
Immediately after he became Emperor, Frederick III appointed his wife Lady of the Order of the Black Eagle, the highest order of chivalry in the Kingdom of Prussia. However, after her return to Berlin, the new Empress realized that she and her husband in fact were really "shadows ready to be replaced by William".
Gravely ill, Frederick III limited his political actions to some symbolic measures, such as declaring an amnesty to all political prisoners and the dismissal of the reactionary Interior Minister Robert von Puttkamer. He also awarded the Order of the Black Eagle to various people who supported and advised him when he was still Crown Prince, like the Justice Minister Heinrich von Friedberg, and the President of the Frankfurt Parliament Eduard von Simson.
Victoria tried to use her new status as Empress to promote the marriage of her daughter Viktoria to Prince Alexander I of Bulgaria (abandoned since 1886). However, given the difficulties caused by the project, she advised her daughter to desist of the wedding.
Death of Frederick III and its consequences
Frederick III died about 11:00 on 15 June 1888. Once the Emperor's death was announced, his son and successor William II ordered the occupation of the imperial residence by soldiers. The chambers of Frederick and Victoria were carefully checked to find incriminating documents. However, the search was unsuccessful because all the couple's correspondence had been taken to Windsor Castle the previous year. Several years later, William II stated that the purpose of this research was to find state documents. Currently, however, many historians (as Hannah Pakula and Franz Herre) suggest that what the new Emperor wanted was to recover documents that could threaten his reputation.
The funeral of Frederick III came shortly after in Potsdam, without major pomp. Victoria, now Empress Dowager, didn't appear at the ceremony in the Friedenskirche of Sanssouci, but attended a mass in memory of her husband in the Royal Estate of Bornsted. From the death of her husband, Victoria was known simply as Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Frederick.
In the following weeks, William II made a real purge in all institutions and close people to Frederick III and Victoria. The home of the lawyer Franz von Roggenbach was searched and the widow of Ernst von Stockmar, former private secretary of Victoria, was questioned by the police. Friedrich Heinrich Geffcken, Frederick III's counselor for years, was tried for high treason for publishing excerpts from the diary of the late Emperor. Finally, Heinrich von Friedberg was dismissed as Justice Minister.
Looking for a new home
Once widowed, Vicky had to leave the Neues Palais in Potsdam because the new Emperor William II wanted to settle his residence there. Unable to settle in Sanssouci, she acquired a property in Kronberg im Taunus, in the old Duchy of Nassau. There, Vicky built a castle that was named Friedrichshof in honor to her husband. Having inherited several millions of marks after the death of the wealthy Duchess of Galliera, the Empress Dowager was able to finance the construction and expansion of her residence. With the completion of the works in 1894, she spent most of the year in the property with her younger daughters, and only left when she traveled abroad. Contrary to the desires of the Emperor, who preferred that she leave Germany permanently, Vicky formed her own court and maintained close relations with the liberal circles.
An increasingly lonely empress
In October 1889, Princess Sophia, Victoria's penultimate daughter, married the future King Constantine I of Greece, leaving the maternal residence. The following year, Princess Viktoria, after the sad ending of her hopes to wed the ruler of Bulgaria, in the end married Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe, the future regent of the Principality of Lippe. Finally, in 1893, Princess Margaret married Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse, who in 1918 was elected to the throne of the ephemeral Kingdom of Finland. Although satisfied with these marriages, the Empress Dowager felt increasingly isolated following the departure of her daughters.
In fact, Victoria was completely secluded from public life by William II. With the death of her mother-in-law, the Empress Dowager Augusta in 1890, Victoria had hopes to succeed her as patron of the German Red Cross and the Vaterländischer Frauenverein (Association of Patriotic Women). However, it was her daughter-in-law, Empress Augusta Victoria who assumed the presidency of these entities, which caused a deep bitterness in Victoria.
The Empress Dowager didn't hesitate to harshly criticize the policies and behavior of her son. When the Emperor wrote in the guestbook of the city of Munich the words "Suprema lex regis voluntas" (The will of the King is the supreme Law"), she indignantly wrote to her mother:
The Tsar, an infallible Pope, a Bourbon or our poor Charles I might have pronounced that phrase, but a monarch of the 19th century ... My God, I think (...) Fritz's son and the grandson of my dear father took such a direction and also misunderstood the principles with which it is still possible to govern.
Vicky devoted part of her final years to painting and to visiting the artists' colony of Kronberg, where she regularly met with the painter Norbert Schrödl. In her last days she used to walk in the morning and spent long hours writing letters or reading in the library of her castle.
In late 1898, physicians diagnosed the Empress Dowager with inoperable breast cancer, forcing her to stay in bed for long periods. By the autumn of 1900, the cancer spread to her spine, and as she worried about her personal letters (in which she detailed her concern over Germany's future under her son) falling into the hands of the Emperor, she requested that the letters were brought back to Great Britain in a cloak-and-dagger operation by her godson Frederick Ponsonby, the private secretary of her brother King Edward VII, who was making his final visit to his terminally ill sister in Kronberg on 23 February 1901. These letters were later edited by Ponsonby and put into context by his background commentary to form the book that was published in 1928.[h]
The Empress Dowager died in Friedrichshof on 5 August 1901, less than seven months after the death of her mother. She was buried next to her husband in the royal mausoleum of the Friedenskirche at Potsdam on 13 August 1901. Her tomb has a recumbent marble effigy of herself on top. Her two sons who died in infancy, Sigismund and Waldemar, are buried in the same mausoleum.
In Popular Culture
- The Mount Victoria in Jervis Inlet, British Columbia, Canada, was named in honor of the Princess Royal.
- The Princess Royal Reach is a fjord of Jervis Inlet also named after Vicky in 1860.
- The Kaiserin-Friedrich-Gymnasium, secondary school in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Hesse, named after the Empress.
- The Empress Frederick is a variety of begonia double with flat petals and roses arranged around a single center.
- The Kronprinzessin Viktoria is a rose of type Bourbon created in 1888 by the rose breeders Vollert.
- The Kaiserin Friedrich is a variety of rose noisetee created in 1889 by Drögeüller.
Film and television
- Perhaps the most notable was in 1975 when Felicity Kendal played Vicky in Edward the Seventh, including the scenes during her final months when the character was 60 years old but Kendal was only in her 29th year.
- Other portrayals include Gemma Jones (Fall of Eagles, 1974) and Ruth Hellberg (Bismarck, 1940), as well as Catherine Punch (Bismarck, 1990). While she is portrayed as a naive English princess in the Bismarck films, the German film Vicky - die vergessene Kaiserin ("The Forgotten Empress"), tries to show her in a different light.
- In July 2014 the first novel about Victoria, Princess Royal, was published in Germany, Ihr Name ist Victoria, by Boris Anderson.
Titles, styles, honours and arms
Empress Frederick as consort
|Reference style||Her Imperial and Royal Majesty|
|Spoken style||Your Imperial and Royal Majesty|
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Victoria, Princess Royal.|
Titles and styles
- 21 November 1840 - 10 November 1841: Her Royal Highness The Princess Victoria
- 10 November 1841 - 25 January 1858: Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal
- 25 January 1858 - 2 January 1861: Her Royal Highness Princess Frederick William of Prussia
- 2 January 1861 - 18 January 1871: Her Royal Highness The Crown Princess of Prussia
- 18 January 1871 - 9 March 1888: Her Imperial and Royal Highness The German Crown Princess, Crown Princess of Prussia
- 9 March 1888 - 15 June 1888: Her Imperial and Royal Majesty The German Empress, The Queen of Prussia
- 15 June 1888 - 5 August 1901: Her Imperial Majesty The Empress Frederick
- Dame of the Order of Louise
- Royal Order of Victoria and Albert, First Class
- Spain : 788th Dame of the Order of Queen Maria Luisa -
- Order of the Black Eagle
With her style of Princess Royal, Victoria was granted use of the royal arms, as then used: with an escutcheon of the shield of Saxony, the whole differenced by a label argent of three points, the outer points bearing crosses gules, the central a rose gules.
Victoria and Frederick had eight children:
|Wilhelm II, German Emperor and King of Prussia||27 January 1859||4 June 1941||married (1), 27 February 1881, Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein; died 1921; had 6 sons; 1 daughter
(2), 9 November 1922, Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz, no issue
|Princess Charlotte of Prussia, later Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen||24 July 1860||1 October 1919||married, 18 February 1878, Bernhard III, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen; had 1 daughter|
|Prince Henry of Prussia||14 August 1862||20 April 1929||married, 24 May 1888, his first cousin Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine; had 3 sons|
|Prince Sigismund of Prussia||15 September 1864||18 June 1866||died of meningitis at 21 months. First grandchild of Queen Victoria to die.|
|Princess Viktoria of Prussia, later Princess Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe and Mrs. Alexander Zoubkov||12 April 1866||13 November 1929||married (1), 19 November 1890, Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe; he died 1916; no issue
(2), 19 November 1927, Alexander Zoubkov; no issue
|Prince Waldemar of Prussia||10 February 1868||27 March 1879||died of diphtheria at age 11|
|Princess Sophia of Prussia, later Queen of the Hellenes||14 June 1870||13 January 1932||married, 27 October 1889, Constantine I, King of the Hellenes; had 3 sons; 3 daughters (including: George II, King of the Hellenes; Alexander I, King of the Hellenes; Paul, King of the Hellenes; and Helen, Queen Mother of Romania)|
|Princess Margaret of Prussia, later Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel||22 April 1872||22 January 1954||married, 25 January 1893, Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse, later Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel; had 6 sons|
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- In a letter to his half-sister Queen Victoria, Princess Feodora of Leiningen qualifies the Prussian court as the center of breeding envy, jealousy, intrigue and pettiness. Pakula 1999, p. 90.
- Daughter of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria and sister of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, Queens Marie and Amalie and Archduchess Sophie of Austria.
- For more details on this crisis, see Kollander 1995, pp. 25-45.
- Between 1848 and 1850, Denmark and several German states, including Prussia, were at war for the possession of the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. An international convention finally recognized the union of the duchies to Denmark, but German states continued to claim the integration of the two provinces into the German Confederation.
- For political divisions of Vicky and Frederick, see Kollander 1995, pp. 16-17 and 79-88.
- He was the eldest and only surviving son of Princess Charlotte of Prussia, daughter of Prince Albert, in turn younger brother of Kings Fredercik William IV and William I.
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Victoria, Princess Royal
Cadet branch of the House of WettinBorn: 21 November 1840 Died: 5 August 1901
Augusta of Saxe-Weimar
Queen consort of Prussia
9 March 1888 – 15 June 1888
Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein
Title last held byCharlotte
Title next held byLouise