Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires
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Amid the ongoing frustrations of Dona’s life in Potsdam with her in-laws, her one refuge was her children. She fulfilled Willy’s paternal dreams by delivering four sons, one after the other. Little Willy was followed by Eitel-Frederick (“Eitel-Fritz”) in 1883, Adalbert in 1884, and Augustus Wilhelm (“Auwi”) in 1887. One courtier observed of Dona that “so frequent were the stork’s visits in the young household that [she] was unable to appear at the great Court festivals for three winters in succession.”140 Regardless, Dona “loved above everything else the numerous children who were born to her in quick succession, and was never so happy as when playing with them in their nursery.”141 From an early age, the little princes were inculcated with the traditional Prussian passion for the military. They “grew up surrounded by lead solders, by little cannons that discharged peas, and by every kind of plaything that had some near or remote bearing on real military science.” Little Willy “was allowed to run along the carefully raked walks of the parks with his noisy companions, to play at war in miniature; he was permitted to construct strongholds of sand, fortresses of pounded earth, and, by digging up the flower beds or grass plots sacrificed to his youthful and bellicose whims, he was able to enjoy a foretaste of the trenches of 1914.”142
Exactly eight weeks before Little Willy celebrated his sixth birthday, everything in his mother’s life changed forever. Ninety-one-year-old Emperor Wilhelm I died on March 6, 1888. His last words included an endorsement for Dona’s husband: “I have always been pleased with you, for you have always done everything right.”143 Willy, now crown prince of Germany and Prussia, confided in his diary, “William I., King of Prussia and First German Emperor, passed away this morning. At eight o’clock he passed into eternity so quietly that it was only when Doctor Leuthold approached him and closed his eyes that I knew that all was over.”144 Willy’s parents ascended the throne as Emperor Frederick III and Empress Victoria. “The sad news has just come that dear Emperor has passed away!” Vicky tearfully wrote to her mother from San Remo, where she was staying with Fritz, who was battling excruciating laryngeal cancer. She continued, “Fritz is deeply affected … I cannot tell you how anxious I feel and how nervous.… To think of my poor Fritz succeeding his father as a sick and stricken man is so hard!!”145 The next day, Vicky and Fritz held a brief ceremony in the drawing room at the Villa Zirio where the new emperor was sworn in. During the ceremony, he took off his Order of the Black Eagle and placed it on the shoulders of his wife, who burst into tears—along with Dona later on, Vicky was the only woman to ever be invested with the Black Eagle. The great tragedy for Fritz and Vicky was that they had so many dreams to reform Germany, but Fritz was so near death from cancer when he became emperor that everyone knew he would not last long.
When the imperial train bearing the new monarchs on their return from San Remo pulled into the Charlottenburg station in the west end of Berlin’s old quarter, Dona, Willy, and his brother Henry were there to meet Fritz and Vicky. The winter that year was especially unforgiving, with large snowdrifts and howling winds sweeping through the station. When the emperor and empress got off the train, the scene that unfolded was heartrending. After embracing his son, Fritz turned to Dona, who, with tears streaming down her face, threw herself into the towering emperor’s arms. One witness at the station recalled that the “whole scene was exceedingly affecting, and many of the onlookers were moved to tears.”146 A few days later, the city of Berlin gathered to mourn the death of the man who had forged the German Empire. The royal family, dressed in furs and pelts, walked behind the gun carriage bearing the old emperor’s coffin—the use of a gun carriage in state funerals was a sign of the deceased’s status as a great military leader. Fritz’s wretched health was devastated by the harsh winter, forcing him to watch the funeral procession from a raised dais so he could see through the palace windows while he wept. One witness noted that there was nothing “more pathetic, more tragic, than the spectacle of the funeral cortège wending its solemn way through the snow-drifted park, with the death-stricken Emperor Frederick looking on from an upper window of the Palace, because [he was] unable to follow the body of his father to the tomb!”147
Willy chose this opportunity to step up his attacks on his mother. Even though Vicky’s husband was the reigning emperor, Germany’s social elites were inclined to side with her truculent son. Bismarck made sure Willy was named deputy emperor on March 23, along with arranging for him to chair a number of government committees and take up a position at the German Foreign Office. “So they already look upon me as dead,” Fritz muttered to Vicky.148 Willy’s supporters quickly expanded to include Vicky’s older children, Charly and Henry. She wrote bitterly to her mother, “People in general consider us a mere passing shadow soon to be replaced by reality in the shape of William!!”149 Queen Victoria had “no words to express” her “indignation and astonishment” at how coldly Willy was acting during this time.150 Frederick III was nearly incapacitated. He had endured a painful tracheotomy, could barely speak, and issued his orders by scrawling them onto pieces of scrap paper. His own chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, unscrupulously jumped ship and threw his support behind Willy.
To help shore up support for her daughter, and to remind Willy that she was still a powerful woman, Queen Victoria made a rare visit to Germany on her way back to England after a holiday in Italy. After arriving at the Charlottenburg station on April 25, where the queen was met by Vicky, her daughters, and all their children, she was taken to Vicky’s home, the Neues Palais. Once she had readied herself, Victoria accompanied her daughter to see Fritz. In her diary, the queen recorded the emotional reunion with her beloved son-in-law: “He was lying in bed, and he raised up both hands with pleasure at seeing me and gave me a nosegay. It was very touching and sad to see him thus in bed.”151 It was the last time Fritz and the queen would ever meet. Afterward, Victoria made a visit to the nearby Marble Palace to see Dona and the children. Although she enjoyed the presence of her great-grandchildren, the two women were icily cold to one another, stemming from the latter’s anger over the precedence issue from the jubilee the year before.
Of all the meetings the queen held during her brief German visit, it was her face-to-face audience with Otto von Bismarck at Charlottenburg Palace that was the most memorable. After the forty-five-minute confrontation, the politically battle-hardened Bismarck walked out of the meeting wiping the sweat from his forehead. According to Arthur Bigge, the queen’s assistant private secretary, Bismarck declared, “Mein Gott! That was a woman! One could do business with her!” The next day, Victoria returned to the railway station bound for the coast. She described in her diary that night the wrenching good-bye from her daughter: “I kissed her again and again. She struggled hard not to give way, but finally broke down, and it was terrible to see her standing there in tears while the train slowly moved off, and to think of all she was suffering and might have to go through. My poor child, what would I not do to help her in her hard lot.”152
The highly charged atmosphere in Potsdam was slightly interrupted a month later when Willy’s brother Henry married Alix’s sister Princess Irene of Hesse on May 24. Everyone made a valiant though transparent effort to seem happy. Fritz donned one of his elaborate military dress uniforms, leaning heavily on a cane during the ceremony. Vicky, dressed in a pale green silk dress accented with diamonds around the neck, did everything within her abilities to set aside her feelings for Willy and Dona. This bitter struggle between Dona, Willy, Vicky, and her meager number of supporters resumed after the wedding, but it did not last long. After a reign of only ninety-nine days, Fritz’s agonizing battle with cancer came to an end on June 15, 1888, making him the shortest-reigning monarch in Prussian history. It was a bittersweet day for the immediate royal family, as only hours before they had put on brave faces to celebrate the eighteenth birthday of Willy’s sister Sophie. “What a birthday for the poor child!” Vicky recorded, “what a recollection for the whole of her life! The last day on earth of her
beloved father!” In the moments after his death, Vicky placed on his chest the wreath she had given him during the Franco-Prussian War. After placing a sword in his hand, she collapsed beside his bed, consumed by her grief as Dona, Willy, and her daughters looked on in silence. Upon hearing the dreadful news of Fritz’s passing, Queen Victoria immediately sent a letter to her grandson. “I am broken-hearted,” she wrote. “Help and do all you can for your poor dear Mother and try to follow in your best, noblest, and kindest of father’s footsteps.”153
If his early years had shown Willy to be a selfish albeit young man, his accession to the throne as Emperor Wilhelm II revealed how truly flawed his character was. Within an hour of his father’s death, Wilhelm sent his soldiers to ransack the Neues Palais in search of documents to incriminate his parents. Rooms were torn apart, desks were overturned, and belongings were destroyed. When the new emperor finally returned, dressed in his full military uniform, “he gave his shocked mother no explanation. More high-ranking officers came to ransack the palace and rifle through Fritz’s desk again while Vicky huddled with her three youngest daughters, the dead emperor’s body still lying nearby.”154 Queen Victoria was horrified by his actions and shuddered to think about Germany under his rule. She wrote to her granddaughter Victoria of Battenberg, “It is too dreadful for us to think of Willy & Bismarck & Dona—being the supreme head of all now! Two so unfit & one so wicked.”155
The new emperor immediately set about consolidating his power. He wanted to ensure there was no question that he reigned supreme by the will of God. On June 25, he made his first throne speech to a crowded Reichstag. Keeping with his theatrical personality, Wilhelm spoke with bravado and rhetoric. He was explicit that the entire powers of the Prusso-German monarchy were embodied in him, along with the empire’s complex constitution, which he swore to “watch over and protect.”156 His words were quickly to put to the test. Less than ten months after becoming emperor, Wilhelm was faced with his first major crisis in the form of massive, nationwide labor strikes. The crisis began in May 1889 in the empire’s heavy industry core, the Ruhr basin, situated on the Westphalian plain near the Lower Rhine. In a relatively short period, the unrest spread into Aachen, the Saar region, Saxony, and eventually to Silesia, one of the richest mining regions in the eastern empire. It was a tremendously violent uprising that lasted for nearly a year. Direct mediation was required between the emperor, the chancellor, and the industry leaders before some sort of equilibrium was restored months later.
Vicky, somewhat naively and with her usual poor choice of timing, felt that during the heavy industry crisis of 1889–90 was an appropriate time to enlist Dona’s help in deflecting some of her son’s wrath. She hoped her daughter-in-law, who was now German empress and queen of Prussia, would be able to step into the fray in a direct manner on her behalf. But at the time of her husband’s accession, Dona could do little. At thirty years old, she was almost nine months pregnant with her fifth child. Many were afraid that the stress of two deaths and two accessions in three months would cause Dona problems during her pregnancy. These concerns were put to rest a month later. After what turned out to be a particularly harrowing six months, Empress Augusta Victoria was blessed with another son. Vicky, who was now styled as Empress Frederick, wrote to her mother, “William is overjoyed that it is a boy … He was afraid it might have been ‘only’ a girl!! She is pleased too.”157 When the baby prince was christened that summer, he was given the name Oscar, in honor of his illustrious godfather, King Oscar II of Sweden.
The official mourning period prescribed by etiquette for the death of Emperor Frederick III was insultingly short—at Wilhelm’s insistence. With Fritz’s calming presence gone, the battle within the royal family turned decisively against Vicky and in favor of the new emperor and empress. Wilhelm funded a vituperative public campaign to smear his mother. Accusations against her ranged from “passing military secrets to the French during the Franco-Prussian War” to contributing “to her husband’s death because she had supposedly ignored the German doctors.” The accusations against her prompted her to write to her mother, “I am no longer astonished at any lies or impertinence. The most imprudent gang in the world, without principles or conscience, is now in power! I feel utterly without any protection whatsoever!” She accused her son of trying “to wipe out all trace of Fritz’s reign, as of an interlude without importance.… William II succeeds William the 1st—in perfect continuity.”158
With her husband now the head of the German Empire and the Prussian royal family, Dona found herself somewhat relegated to the sidelines, less involved in the battle between her husband and her mother-in-law. Dona took a less direct stand against Vicky and instead focused all of her energies on her children, whom she kept isolated from the dowager empress, which left her mother-in-law speechless. “They are kept entirely away from me, though I am so passionately fond of children,” Vicky wrote to a friend.159 She could not believe Dona would not unite with her against Wilhelm’s outrageous behavior. Vicky wrote to Queen Victoria, “She has quite forgotten me, or does not like to remember, or really does not understand what she owes me.… She has a great sense of duty, but she does not seem to see what her duty towards me is!”160 The environment at the Prussian court quickly became toxic. The Empress Frederick publicly disapproved of everything Dona and Wilhelm did. This left Dona, who always felt somewhat intimidated by Vicky, feeling more insecure than ever. She overcompensated by becoming obsessed with her role as empress and the prerogatives that came with it. The problem was that she had never been properly educated about wielding power, and Wilhelm’s egocentric personality greatly enhanced her own less appealing qualities. In time, Dona would develop a dichotic personality, marked by narrow-mindedness and haughtiness but also by loyalty, honor, and devotion. The question was, which traits would prevail, and what would Empress Augusta Victoria’s lasting legacy be?
4
“Bitter Tears”
(1889–92)
In January 1889, Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt returned to Russia for six weeks to visit Serge and Ella. Unlike her first visit for Ella’s wedding, this time Alix was the center of attention. A small crowd of royals gathered at the train station to welcome the princess, including Ella, Serge, Tsar Alexander III, and his besotted son Nicky. When he saw Alix again, Nicky enthusiastically wrote in his diary that she “has grown up a lot and become much prettier.”161 Alix stayed at Ella’s home, the pink-tinged, “grandiose” Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, on the banks of the Neva and Fontanka rivers in Saint Petersburg. Ella’s home embodied all the magnificence of imperial Russia. Everywhere inside the palace there was a “profusion of wealth and splendour … Silks and velvets, marble and ormolu, gilding and tapestry, plate and pictures, inlaid floorings and mosaic tables, were all literally scattered everywhere.”162
Alix’s first day in Russia was packed with activities in Saint Petersburg, whose winter social scene was reportedly the most extravagant in the world. Ice-skating and tobogganing in the afternoon were followed by a candlelit ball at the Winter Palace. Alix recalled that after dinner that evening, she and Ella “went to the Winter Palace where we dressed for the ball (white diamonds, white flowers and sash).”163 The thousand-square-foot marble White Ballroom was decorated in sparkling diamonds for the occasion. During Alix’s visit, her constant companion was the young and handsome Tsarevitch Nicholas, whose parents, Alexander and Minnie, watched her closely, scrutinizing her every move. Whatever adolescent feelings Nicky and Alix may have had when they first met had since fully blossomed into love. When Alix returned to Darmstadt, she left her heart in Russia. She and Nicky began writing to one another in English, the only language they shared. “It was so good of you to write and it gave me great pleasure,” Alix wrote after receiving one of Nicky’s letters. “Thank you so much for your dear little letter,” came the reply from Nicholas, who made no secret of his feelings for Alix by closing with the words, “With much love, your ever loving Nicky.”164
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Nicholas became determined to make her his wife. What he did not realize was that he would have to contend with the most powerful force in Alix’s life: her grandmother, who was against the match. Queen Victoria had hoped to pair Alix with her grandson Prince Eddy. He was a young man to whom historians have been somewhat ungenerous. While certainly not a pillar of the monarchy or a man who inspired great confidence, the listless, indolent Eddy became the subject of a historical feeding frenzy when an article appeared in the periodical The Criminologist in November 1970. The author, Dr. Thomas Stowell, began a decades-long belief that Eddy was not only a sybaritic, syphilitic lethario, but that he was also Jack the Ripper. This also led to speculation that Eddy was involved with the notorious Hundred Guinness Club on Cleveland Street, which was embroiled in a scandal in 1889 alleging the club was a male brothel.165
In pairing Alix with Eddy, Queen Victoria was also in love with the idea of Alix one day becoming queen of England. When Alix was seventeen, Queen Victoria brought her and Eddy to her Scottish home, Balmoral Castle, to give them a chance to take a liking to one another—this was something the queen did often, as she fancied herself her family’s matchmaker. Strained lectures on Eddy’s virtues, coupled with his own protestations of love for Alix all came to naught. It became quickly obvious that Alix had no interest in Eddy, despite the tantalizing prospect of becoming queen. Queen Victoria was resolute until the end. She wrote to Alix’s sister Victoria in March 1889, trying to convince her to intervene: “Is there no hope abt. E[ddy].? She is not 19—& she shld. be made to reflect seriously on the folly of throwing away the chance of a very good Husband, kind, affectionate & steady & of entering a united happy family & a very good position wh. is second to none in the world!”166