Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz

by John Van der Kiste

  On the night of 8 February his condition swiftly worsened, and his breathing became so difficult that he was in danger of suffocation. An immediate tracheotomy was decided upon and performed that afternoon by Bergmann’s assistant Bramann, taking about ten minutes. Henry reported that it ‘afforded poor Papa great relief’, though it had been ‘a dreadful day, full of unrest and nervous agitation; when the operation was over we all breathed a sigh of relief!’40 Vicky had been waiting outside the room trembling violently, with Henry, Moretta and the widowed Grand Duke of Hesse comforting her. When it was over she was relieved to find him looking tolerably well and smiling bravely, although he could not speak, and the sound of breathing through the canula distressed her.

  The doctors had predicted that he would feel much better for a while, but in vain. His condition for the next few days was miserable. He coughed persistently, had a high temperature and no appetite, could not sleep, and suffered from constant neuralgia-like pain in the face and teeth. To the doctors’ dismay he continued to cough up fresh blood through the canula. Still clinging to the belief that it was not cancer, Mackenzie and Vicky accused Bergmann and Bramann of handling the laryngoscope clumsily, and Mackenzie maintained that an obsolete instrument was largely responsible for the increased bleeding. He complained that the treatment of their patient was ‘entirely in the hands of the German doctors who are unwilling to receive suggestions from me. I only remain at the urgent desire of the Crown Princess.’41 On 21 February the German doctors threatened to withdraw from the case, but Mackenzie’s canula resulted in little improvement, probably as the damage had already been done.

  By now with understandable if pathetic optimism, Vicky was writing to her mother that Fritz was ‘turning the corner and beginning to mend’.42 Determined to vindicate their national honour, the German doctors could not resist the temptation to drag another colleague into the case, and on 26 February Professor Kussmaul arrived. He was not a laryngeal specialist and made an unconvincing attempt to examine Fritz’s throat, declared that the lungs were quite sound, and needed no other proof that cancer was present. When Vicky told Bergmann sharply that they just needed Mackenzie to adjust the tubes and treat the throat, he told her brutally that Fritz would never recover and could only rapidly worsen. To her request that he should wait a fortnight before returning, he agreed with ‘a pitying incredulous smile’.43

  At the end of February Vicky learnt from the papers that Willy was returning to San Remo, travelling from Karlsruhe where he had just attended the funeral of his cousin Louis of Baden. As she firmly believed that he was responsible for making life difficult for her by preventing Bergmann from leaving San Remo and stirring up other members of the household against her, she felt more than usually hostile to the idea of his presence and asked him to postpone his visit. Expecting something of the sort, he telegraphed to his father that as he was already halfway there, he would come to see how he was and bring the Emperor’s good wishes. An attempt to obtain official sanction for Wilhelm to go instead to the Royal and Papal Courts at Rome to thank them in person for the messages of concern they had sent the Crown Prince failed, and he reached San Remo on 2 March. Shortly after arriving, he was sent a letter from his father welcoming him but making it clear that as Crown Prince he would ‘under no circumstances tolerate the slightest interference in my affairs.’44 Wilhelm was careful to heed these instructions, and Vicky reported that ‘his visit did not do any harm, and he did not meddle this time.’ But ‘not one word of sympathy or affection did he utter, and I was distressed to see how very haughty he has become, and what tremendous airs he gives himself!’45

  On 6 March news arrived at San Remo that the Kaiser’s strength was declining fast. Now within less than three weeks of his ninetyfirst birthday, he was increasingly enfeebled by a series of strokes and the end was expected at any time. Even before they had given up any hope for his recovery, the doctors had urged that the Crown Prince, soon to be Emperor, ought to spend his last days at home, and Radolinski agreed that it would be undignified for their Crown Prince to die ‘like a homeless wanderer in some hotel abroad’.46 Initially the Crown Princess insisted that it was more important for the worst of his symptoms to improve first, and that the cold of Germany would only cause a relapse; he needed another few weeks in the Italian sun to recover his strength. To Lady Ponsonby, she wrote that he had not ‘sufficiently recovered to be able to bear the strain of all the business and responsibility which would suddenly fall upon him’.47 But it was impossible to postpone the inevitable. She suggested a compromise by which they would travel to Wiesbaden in April and Potsdam in May, but after urgent warnings from Bismarck and the ministry, under the circumstances they could no longer refuse to go to Berlin.

  At the Berlin Schloss the Kaiser lay on his back in a narrow camp-bed, wearing his beloved white jacket and old red scarf that had seen almost as many winter campaigns on the battlefield as he had himself. Empress Augusta, confined to a wheelchair, sat beside the husband she had never loved, while their daughter Louise and grandson Willy, soon to be Crown Prince, took their places with other members of the family as the old man breathed his last. Shortly before the end, at a signal from her mother, the Grand Duchess went to his desk and fetched the miniature that had stood there for so long, a portrait of Elise Radziwill. Placing it in his feeble hands, she watched his fingers close gently round it as a look of peace came to his face.

  At 8.30 on the morning of 9 March, the bells tolled and flags were lowered to half-mast to announce that Germany had a new Kaiser.

  *Fears of the taint of haemophilia were to be proved sadly justified. Henry and Irene had three sons of whom two were haemophiliac, one dying in infancy and one surviving to his fifties. Ella’s marriage to Grand Duke Serge of Russia was childless.

  *A French correspondent, Jean de Bonnefon, alleged in his book, Drame Impérial (1888), that the Crown Prince had become infected with and was treated for syphilis while in Egypt in 1869 (see p. 112). After Fritz’s death, Mackenzie allegedly confided in a colleague in England that he was sure the Crown Prince had had syphilis of the larynx before the cancer appeared.29 Such a hypothesis is impossible to substantiate. Mackenzie’s comments are unsupported by written or printed evidence; while as a Frenchman who had no reason to admire one of the major architects of France’s defeat in war less than twenty years earlier, and who was thus ready to propagate any scurrilous gossip aimed at discrediting the portrait of an unusually happy royal marriage, Bonnefon’s words must be regarded with caution.

  NINE

  ‘A mere passing shadow’

  Fritz was returning from a walk in the grounds of San Remo A on the morning of 9 March when he was handed a telegram from Berlin addressed to His Majesty the German Emperor and King Friedrich Wilhelm. It was from Wilhelm, to tell him that his ‘adored grandfather’ had just passed peacefully away. Within minutes, all the household were gathered in the drawing-room. Wearing his General’s uniform and accompanied by a tense Vicky, the new Emperor entered the company, seated himself at the table, and wrote out the announcement of his accession as Friedrich III, following in the Prussian tradition. He had wanted to call himself Friedrich III, King of Prussia, and Friedrich IV, German Emperor, but Bismarck would not allow this as the other German princes might be offended by the assumption of continuity with the old Holy Roman Empire and the medieval Hohenstaufen Emperors of Germany.*

  Next he removed from his jacket the ribbon and star from his Order of the Black Eagle, and pinned it onto Vicky’s dress. Unable to control her feelings any longer, she fell into his arms and wept unashamedly. When she had regained her composure, he took his pad and wrote for Mackenzie to read: ‘I thank you for having made me live long enough to recompense the valiant courage of my wife.’1 Later that morning he sent Queen Victoria a telegram to express his desire for ‘a close and lasting relationship between our two nations.’2

  To his eldest son, now Crown Prince, he wrote: ‘In my profound grief for my father, at w
hose death it was granted not to me, but to you, to be present, I make known on my accession my absolute reliance on your being a pattern to all others in loyalty and obedience.’3 Though it was a perfectly dignified, civil message as befitting a sovereign to his son and heir, Waldersee thought it went beyond ‘the bounds of coldness’ and indicated an unpleasant ‘thoughtlessness and antipathy’.4

  One of Vicky’s first thoughts as Empress was the pathos of Fritz succeeding to the long-awaited throne ‘as a sick and stricken man’.5 Nevertheless their return could no longer be postponed, and Mackenzie warned the journey could be dangerous for his health, but Fritz replied that there were occasions when it was a man’s duty to take risks. Early next day they left by train, all in mourning, and Fritz with a brown woollen scarf around his neck. They broke their journey at Leipzig for Bismarck to join them, and on the evening of 11 March they reached Berlin in heavy snow. Despite the contrast between the moderate climate of San Remo, and freezing winter conditions at the capital, Fritz had stood the journey better than expected.

  He and Vicky took up residence in Charlotte’s and Bernhard’s apartments at Charlottenburg, which had more of a country setting than the Schloss at Berlin and was considered better for an invalid. As it was relatively secluded, people could not peer in through the windows. One of his first duties was to confirm Bismarck in his position as Chancellor. On 12 March he issued two manifestos, one addressed to his people, the other to his Chancellor. The latter, published in the Reichsanzeiger, summarized his aims in respect of the maintenance of peace and religious toleration, education and economic prosperity, and his resolution ‘to govern in the Empire and in Prussia with a conscientious observation of the provisions of their respective constitutions.’6 Written by Fritz himself, they were carefully worded so they would not give offence to Bismarck nor the liberals. It was proof, if any was needed, that he and Bismarck admired each others’ abilities, and Vicky would have been the first to agree that neither they as individuals, nor the German empire, could do without the Chancellor.

  The new Kaiser’s demeanour as he received official deputations and guests who had come for his father’s funeral pleasantly surprised some of those who had believed the worst they heard or read about his condition. From a distance, Prince Hohenlohe thought him looking not so much ill as thin and rather sallow, and his eyes unduly prominent; only on closer observation could one notice his suffering expression.7 Although he was obviously very sick, and had to write on his pad instead of speaking, the sight of him as he stood before them so upright in his uniform inspired hope that he might recover after all. Yet others, shocked by his appearance, were angry with the Empress and Mackenzie for disguising the gravity of the situation by giving what they felt were falsely optimistic reports of his condition.

  Increasingly impatient for the next reign, Waldersee declared that as Kaiser Friedrich was incapable of uttering a single word, and physically so weak, he would never be able to cope with the work and should abdicate. The only other alternative was for him to appoint Crown Prince Wilhelm as his deputy, which was unlikely in view of the Empress’s attitude. In Waldersee Vicky had an implacable enemy, perhaps her greatest foe. To him she was the German Empire’s mortal enemy, an agent of the West, democracy and the Jews, spurred on by hatred of her son; ‘she wishes to create ruins before retiring from the stage and to make things difficult for the Crown Prince & inflict damage on Germany.’8 Her husband, he was convinced, had no will of his own, and as she controlled everyone who had access to him and could be at his side at a moment’s notice, she was therefore running the country. Only her fear of the Chancellor, he believed, had prevented anything ‘dreadful’ from happening to Germany.

  Vicky was under no illusions as to their transient position, writing to Queen Victoria that she thought ‘people in general consider us a mere passing shadow, soon to be replaced by reality in the shape of William.’9 To Lord Napier she wrote, ‘The trial laid upon us is a very heavy one, and it is not easy to meet it with all the courage and energy necessary. One tries to keep a stout heart, and hopes on, that things may improve! The Emperor is able to attend to his business, and do a great deal, but not being able to speak is, of course, most trying.’10

  On 14 March Fritz saw his mother for the first time since he had left Berlin in May 1887 for London. The Dowager Empress Augusta was pushed in her wheelchair as he crossed the room to greet her, went on his knees and placed his sobbing head in her lap. When she spoke to him he tried by scribbling on bits of paper to say what he wanted, but he was dissatisfied with what he had written, and simply tore up one sheet after another in frustration.

  Kaiser Wilhelm was buried on 16 March. The Prince of Wales, Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and Tsarevich Nicholas were among foreign royalties following the hearse, drawn by six blackplumed horses to the sound of muffled drums, through the crisp snow and frost on the road to the family mausoleum. Fritz had wanted to attend, but Vicky and Mackenzie had to persuade him to stay indoors and watch the procession from the palace window. Seeing the new Crown Prince as chief mourner, he wrote on his pad, ‘that is where I ought to be.’ As the hearse passed beneath the window he broke down completely. Next day he attended a short funeral service in Charlottenburg chapel.

  For the first few weeks his routine was arranged for him to perform a monarch’s duties as far as possible without over-exerting himself. Every morning he breakfasted in bed, dressed and went downstairs about 9.30 a.m. to his study or the palace orangerie to work on state business, reading the papers, and writing letters till lunch. After eating he rested for an hour or so and then received visitors, the most regular being Bismarck. When they had gone he finished any outstanding paperwork and wrote his diary, dined at 8 p.m., and went to bed between 9.30 and 10.00. Either Mackenzie or Hovell was in constant attendance by day and within call at night if needed. Sometimes the battle against his condition proved too much, and overcome by exhaustion he would drop what he was doing, lie down on his couch and close his eyes for a few moments. But in view of his appalling headaches, fits of coughing, and the morphia he needed to sleep, his devotion to duty was outstanding. Mackenzie noticed that when he felt worse than usual he worked harder than ever; having ‘an almost overwhelming sense of the duties of his position’, he seemed resolved literally to die at his post. The doctor never discouraged him from working, as he knew what disappointment such a suggestion would cause, and also because he realized that mental effort sustained him and diverted his thoughts from his condition.11 As Seckendorff wrote to Lord Napier, ‘May God spare the Emperor’s life! We are still very, very anxious about the state of his health, and we are most uncertain about the future; yet we must say, hope for the best and prepare for the worst’.12

  Among the new Kaiser’s first official actions was the decoration of those whom he considered had served him and Prussia loyally. Nobody objected to his making his former Chief of Staff Count von Blumenthal a Field-Marshal, but his award of the Black Eagle to Friedberg, and to Dr Simson, President of the Supreme Court of Justice, caused an outcry in Berlin, especially among the anti-Semites. Both men were of Jewish descent and it was said, especially by those who recalled Kaiser Wilhelm’s anti-Semitism, that Germany was now ruled by ‘Cohen I, King of the Jews’.13 A few weeks later Fritz wanted to bestow honours on some of the more moderate Liberals in the Reichstag, and when Radolinski asked Bismarck whether he had any objection, Bismarck replied that it was all the same to him. Awarding honours was the monarch’s prerogative and not subject to ministerial approval. However when a written application was submitted to him, he consulted the ministry of state and then said he could only agree to decorations being awarded to two of the nominees, Forckenbeck, mayor of Berlin, and Virchow. He informed the Kaiser that it had unfortunately not been possible to push the decorations through against the opposition of the ministers. Even Holstein was shocked at seeing how powerless the Kaiser was, and thought it was wrong of the Chancellor not to defer to him in minor matters under s
uch circumstances. ‘What harm would a few minor decorations have done?’14

  At the same time Fritz wanted to leave the mark of a new era in some way by granting a general reprieve for certain political refugees and offenders, but Bismarck and the ministers brushed this aside on the grounds that it would be harmful for Germany’s reputation. Fritz could hardly force his wishes through against a mass of threatened resignations, but in the end they conceded by allowing him to grant a much-curtailed amnesty.

  However such threats of clashes were nothing to Vicky’s trials. There were many Liberals and close friends who understood and sympathized with her, but they were in almost as precarious a position as she was. Some were guided less by loyalty than by the instinct of self-preservation, such as General Hugo von Winterfeld, formerly a trusted friend; their closest allies were watched carefully and had to be extremely circumspect in their contacts with the Emperor and Empress. Dr Ludwig Bamberger, Deputy Leader of the Freisinnige, was one of the most reliable of their advisers, but such was the state of intrigue in which they were surrounded that he and his sovereigns could only communicate by means of letters discreetly delivered to each other by the widowed Baroness Stockmar.

  Vicky’s devotion to Fritz was mercilessly attacked. Because he could not speak she had to be with him almost constantly, especially when receiving visitors, and as she always pointed out to them how well he was looking, it was asserted that she wished to convey the impression his life and therefore his reign under her influence would be a long one. Herbert Bismarck maintained that the Kaiser was a mere living vegetable, his mind completely gone, while others whispered that he was dead and the Empress was concealing the fact in a bid for power. Prince Hohenlohe remarked that if every rumour he heard was true, it would take a royal commission to protect the Emperor against the Empress.15