An American Princess

by Annejet van Der Zijl

  And Allene continued to provide assistance, even during the couple’s honeymoon. It soon became clear to Juliana that her young husband did not intend to give up the company of his bachelor friends or attractive women after the wedding. The Dutch princess had no idea how to make the most of herself as a woman. Her mother had sent her to her wedding night in flannel underwear. American women, on the other hand, were famous for leaving nothing to Mother Nature where their physical appearance was concerned, and Allene was no exception.

  When the royal couple spent a week on the Piazza d’Aracoeli at the end of March, Allene, always softhearted when it came to the underdog, took it upon herself to give the Dutch woman more self-confidence. She had her beauty specialist come over to Europe on a boat from New York and made appointments with Worth and Molyneux, the two Parisian fashion houses where she was a regular customer herself. In early April, Juliana—who had lost several pounds on her honeymoon—was fitted with a new contemporary and, in particular, flattering wardrobe. The hastily shipped-over American beautician completed the metamorphosis of “a plump, placid, pleasant lass into an almost dashing young woman of the world,” as the stylist told one newspaper.

  Later, Wilhelmina, as frugal and averse to ostentation as ever, would have almost all of the clothes her daughter ordered from the Paris fashion houses sent back. In the meantime, Juliana’s Parisian transformation, as remarkable as it was short-lived, was put down to Bernhard’s influence, both by his biographers and himself. Like all good honeymoons, this one too ended in Paris where Bernhard promptly telephoned Aunt Allene. “What’s the best fashion house at the moment? Lanvin?” he asked.

  “No, Lanvin is passé,” Countess Kotzebue cried. “Nowadays you need to be at Worth and Molyneux.”

  “Wonderful,” said the prince, “would you like to go there with us tomorrow? We’ll order a few things for Juliana that don’t look like they’ve been made by the local dressmaker, eh?”

  Nevertheless, Allene’s efforts paid off—and very concretely, too, in the form of an heir to the throne who came into the world in late January 1938, exactly nine months after the Paris shopping spree, thus rescuing the Dutch monarchy from extinction. The grateful couple insisted that the American benefactor become one of the five godparents of little Princess Beatrix. And so Allene, the girl from the livery stables, sat in the front row along with Europe’s nobility at the baptism on May 12, 1938.

  She sat there bored to tears—as film footage of the hours-long ceremony, held in what was to her unintelligible gibberish, shows. Her face only betrayed signs of pleasure again when, after it was over, she was able to wave to the enthusiastic crowds together with the princely couple.

  For the Netherlands, still in deep economic crisis, the birth of Princess Beatrix, “bringer of joy,” was a welcome glimmer of happiness in dark times. In America, where all the misery had started nine years earlier with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, hope and light were glowing on the horizon. The country had Franklin Roosevelt to thank for this—the Democratic president who, during his inauguration in 1933, declared he would fight the malaise as he would the invasion of a foreign enemy: “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.”

  The economic recovery program Roosevelt began that year, nicknamed the New Deal, was based on the ideas of British economist John Keynes. It consisted of a large number of employment projects, a social safety net for the poorest, pensions for widows and the unemployed, and higher taxes for higher income brackets. Monitoring of banks was tightened, and Prohibition was abolished. As early as 1936, it began to become clear that this program was indeed breathing new life into the beached economy. In November that year, Roosevelt was reelected with the largest majority since the days of the Founding Fathers.

  Almost simultaneously, the tide began to turn for the grandiose apartment complex on Park Avenue. John D. Rockefeller Jr., scion of one of the richest families in America, bought the twenty-four-room penthouse. So many buyers followed in his footsteps that the shares the existing owners had been given in exchange for property ownership became profitable. Share prices on Wall Street rose again, too, and Allene’s fortune—she’d managed to cling to most of her shares—grew in line with it. By 1938, the market was back at full steam, and a newspaper described Allene as one of the wealthiest of American women once again.

  In November that year, Allene exchanged her old, relatively small flat in the dark C wing for an eighteen-room apartment in the D wing, the most attractive side of the complex. There she had her own ballroom and a splendid view of both Park Avenue and Seventy-Fifth Street, with light from the southwest. The space and the lovely evening light probably weren’t the only reasons for the move. It wasn’t inconceivable that she and Paul might have to use their New York address as their main residence and say farewell to their beloved Paris for an indeterminate period of time.

  By 1938, with his annexation of Austria and part of Czechoslovakia, Adolf Hitler had shown that he wasn’t planning to accept the subordinate role the allies had assigned to Germany in Versailles. After a desperate Jewish refugee shot an employee of the German embassy in Paris on November 7, 1938, the German dictator proved to the world that he was serious in his campaign against Jews. During the Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, thousands of Jewish shops were trashed, synagogues were set on fire, and Jewish citizens were abused, humiliated, and murdered.

  Many Jewish friends of the Kotzebues, including the Pecci-Blunts, decided not to wait for the inevitable and traveled to New York. Paul and Allene, too, seriously considered returning, an event that, as Paul wrote from Rome to an art-dealer friend in April 1939, “may be sooner than one expects. At any rate we don’t feel this is the moment to buy anything.”

  In a last attempt to stem the aggression flowing from Germany, their phoenixlike traditional enemy, France and England extended a guarantee of independence and mutual assistance to Poland, the state reestablished after the First World War to keep Germany in check on the eastern border. But on August 23, 1939, Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin, the Russian dictator who had been in power since the 1920s. Using an iron fist, Stalin had managed to grow the Soviet Union into a global economic power.

  Eight days later, in the early morning of September 1, German troops marched on Poland. Several hours later, France and England declared war on Germany. This time there was no trace of the festive eagerness with which Europe had gone to war in 1914—the atrocities of the previous conflagration were too fresh in the memory for this. The winter of 1939–1940 was known as the Phony War, a term invented by American newspapers for that strange time, fraught with anxiety, during which Europe was formally at war but there was no real fighting.

  This allowed Allene and Paul to plan their departure from Europe in relative calm. The house on the Rue Barbet-de-Jouy was entrusted to the care of Allene’s second cousin, Lucy Tew, who earlier that year had managed to become the second princess in the Tew family, thanks to the mediation of the Kotzebues. She had married one of Russian Prince Dadiani’s sons, Georges, like Paul a former member of the czar’s court. Apparently Lucy and her husband didn’t believe the war would be that bad—or, as in the previous world war, that the Germans wouldn’t manage to push on to Paris—since they decided to wait in the French capital for history to take its course.

  In November 1939, Paul and Allene left for Rome to clear the apartment on the Piazza d’Aracoeli. In early December, they sailed from Genoa on the SS Rex—away from the Old World, with its endless quarrels and feuds, and back to safe, orderly America and their new sun-flooded apartment in New York. A few months later, war did break out in Europe in full force. Beginning with the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, Germany overran half the continent at breakneck speed.

  The German advance happened so fast that the Dutch royal family wasn’t able to seek refuge at Château de Suisnes, as had been agreed with Allene. Instead, “the Oranjes” fled to England aboard a British Royal Navy destroyer. On June 14, the G
ermans occupied Paris. England managed to hold its own at first, but the country was ill prepared for war. The Kotzebues had no idea when they would be able to return to their French life, if ever.

  The Second World War was a remarkably tranquil period in Allene’s otherwise stormy life—even if it was only because the war forced her to stay in her own country without interruption for the first time in decades.

  Paul, for whom this period of exile was already the third in his life, adapted to life in New York City as well as he could—far from his familiar Paris and his family, who for the most part had stayed there. He allayed his homesickness by becoming the president of the American branch of the Russian Nobility Association and by buying art and antiques, as well as with other pursuits like ballet and the opera. The tall Russian became a familiar sight in the River Café in Central Park, walking distance from 740 Park. He often lunched there with Allene, invariably accompanied by their dogs, a pair of Maltese. For a while they also had a little monkey, but it disappeared without a trace after guests got it drunk on champagne and it bit Allene’s hand.

  Allene combated her own restlessness and her endless need to be active in her usual manner, namely by buying a house. And what a house it was. In October 1940, she signed a contract for the purchase of Beechwood, the imposing Newport mansion that was once the sanctuary of Mrs. Astor, the unofficial queen of America in Allene’s younger years. After her death, it had fallen to her son, John Jacob Astor, who had caused a scandal in 1911 by marrying a classmate of Greta’s who was almost thirty years younger than himself. He had died a year later in the shipwreck of the Titanic.

  Since then, much had changed in and around Newport. Gone were the elegant yachts of the Great White Fleet—instead the bay was now filled with little white sails. Like so many luxury pastimes, sailing had been democratized in the working-class paradise America had transformed itself into. The exorbitant mansions the money-drunk heiresses of the Gilded Age had built were now largely abandoned, and many had been demolished. The housing market’s final blow had come from a large hurricane that had hit Rhode Island and surrounding areas in September 1938, taking hundreds of lives.

  Allene bought the house and its park, in total more than twenty-two acres, from one of Mrs. Astor’s grandsons for the sum of $49,500. For this bargain price, she could now waltz around the mirrored ballroom in which the high priestess of New York society had once held her famous summer balls—and where, as a young Mrs. Hostetter, Allene hadn’t been able to get a foothold, as much as she tried.

  But more important still was the fact that Beechwood, as one of the oldest country houses in Newport, was also in one of the best locations, with a wide view of the ocean both from the house and the park. Now that she could no longer turn to the comfort of transatlantic crossings, Allene could at least enjoy the straight line of the horizon from her own sitting room, something that had always afforded her peace and a sense of well-being, and fall asleep to the sound of the waves. She had bought her first seaside house when she was sixty-eight—and now she would never want anything else.

  As in the previous world war, the United States tried to stay out of the conflict that had ignited in Europe. And again, the country found itself involved nevertheless. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, America joined the Second World War.

  That same month, Allene organized a party at Beechwood on a scale that hadn’t been seen in Newport for years. It included a fashion show, a dog show, pony races, and a children’s carnival to raise money for the local branch of the Red Cross. In a New York that was ringing with patriotism as in the old days, she worked on numerous charity events behind the blackout curtains in her apartment at 740 Park.

  Behind the scenes, the Kotzebues had a lot of contact with Juliana, who now was living in Canada with her three children while Bernhard remained in London with Queen Wilhelmina. They sponsored a “Blankets for Holland” fundraiser, which was held in the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton in New York in April 1944. It was also Allene who ensured, via her extensive network, that Bernhard’s mother and brother, who had remained in Germany, had sufficient funds and uncensored mail.

  During the winter of 1942–1943, the tables turned in the war. After Hitler suddenly turned on the Soviet Union, the German advance was stalled by the tenacious Russian resistance at Stalingrad. The Germans lost in North Africa, too, and in June 1944, the Allies began a massive invasion of Europe from England. On August 25 that year, Paris was freed after four years of occupation. But it was still too early for Allene and Paul to pack their bags again. Just as in the previous world war, the Germans did not concede easily, and it wasn’t until spring 1945, following Hitler’s suicide, that Germany finally surrendered.

  For Bernhard, who, thanks to Wilhelmina, had been promoted to commander of the resistance groups in the occupied Netherlands after the invasion, the delay was a blessing. The Allied command had turned a blind eye to the promotion of the future prince consort, who was completely inexperienced in military matters, because the war seemed practically at an end at that point. But because the war lasted longer than expected, Allene’s protégé was able to expand his new role, wielding more power than he could have dreamed of in his future role as prince consort. At the same time, it also brought him lifelong fame as a war hero.

  There was another commander in this war with whom Allene shared some history, and this was Robert Greim, the pilot who had shot down her son Teddy’s plane in September 1918. Greim had become one of Hitler’s most faithful adherents, and after Hermann Göring fell out of grace in April 1945, he took over his role as commander in chief of the Luftwaffe. Just a few days after his promotion, he fell into the hands of the Allies. Fearful of being delivered to the Russians, he ended his life in late May 1945 by swallowing a poison pill.

  11

  Oceans of Love

  Blue—that was the color of Allene’s old age, just as green had been the color of her youth. The deep blue of the sea in this period increasingly becoming the leitmotif of her life. The bleached blue of the fabrics she used to decorate her houses. And the practical blue of the sheets of airmail paper that she covered, one after the other, with her still-elegant handwriting or filled with type using the mini Hermes portable typewriter she took everywhere with her.

  Organized as she was, Allene had letterhead stationery printed for each house, from the Rue Barbet-de-Jouy to Park Avenue to Beechwood. Since her divorce from Henry, she often used paper with just a stylized A with a crown above it. Officially she had lost her royal status, but in her eyes she was still a princess—an American princess.

  During the postwar years, Allene’s letters were mainly directed to another legacy of her marriage to Henry: her stepson, whom she’d come to consider even more her own as time passed. In 1918, Allene hadn’t been able to save Teddy from the grasping claws of world history, but in 1945, she was given a second chance with Heiner. And she made full use of it, despite her age—she turned seventy-three that year.

  Heiner had still been living at Trebschen with his father at the outbreak of the Second World War, but in 1941, when this last remnant of the Reuss estate had to be sold due to lack of funds, he moved into his sister’s house in Berlin. Marlisa was newly married to a Berlin businessman who was not of noble birth, and she was mother to a baby daughter. The previous month, their father died. Marlisa’s husband disappeared from the scene, and the brother and sister spent the rest of the war together with the child, moving to ever-shabbier abodes, driven on by the Allied bombings systematically reducing the German capital to ashes.

  Heiner’s war efforts remained limited to some translation work for the Wehrmacht. In addition to the perception that he was both physically and psychologically unfit for active service, he benefited from his title for once in his life: from 1940 onward, members of deposed royal houses were banned from joining the Wehrmacht.

  Heiner managed to stay under the radar even after the fall of Berlin in the spring of 1945. Like almost al
l adult men left in the German capital, he was interned for a while, but his interrogators soon realized that there wasn’t a rabid Nazi or a war criminal concealed inside this slender, feminine young man and let him go again.

  But Heiner was not allowed to leave occupied Berlin—that right was restricted to those who could prove they were victims of Nazi terror. For him and his sister, there was nothing to do but try to survive in the ruined, starving city without any money, without profession or useful contacts, and with their former stepmother as their only lifeline. Allene was saving her own clothing coupons far away in America so that she could provide Heiner with shoes and clothes and did everything she could to get him out of Germany. She ignored Marlisa, who had insulted and hurt her so badly before the war. Allene had washed her hands of Marlisa for good.

  Allene hired an expensive Swiss law firm for Heiner and used all her government contacts to get “her son,” as she called him, to America. Every two or three days she wrote him letters, invariably flooded with maternal care and love: “I miss you all the time and find myself constantly turning to speak to you.” She ended most of her letters with “Best love to you ever” or her favorite—in the eyes of the reserved Europeans, she remained a rather overemotional American—“Oceans of love, Mama.”

  At first, Allene’s quest appeared hopeless. Heiner was a German citizen, and there were few humanitarian reasons he could use to justify preferential treatment. In her words, it was “a struggle with a heavy black cloud, could not get hold of anything.” In the meantime, relationships between the former Allies were quickly deteriorating. The chance that the Russians would try to get their hands on Berlin, which was in the middle of the portion of defeated Germany they had been assigned, grew by the day. This meant Heiner’s princely title was becoming a real risk for him. The Russians were known for their cruel treatment of anyone who had even the slightest whiff of aristocracy, and two of Heiner’s family members who had the misfortune to end up in the Russian occupation zone had not survived their stays in one of the infamous Soviet prison camps.