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 from the empress to her mother are preserved and catalogued. Increasingly isolated after the weddings of her younger daughters, Empress Frederick died of breast cancer in August 1901, less than 7 months after the death of her mother, Queen Victoria, in January 1901. The empress dowager then settled in Kronberg im Taunus, where she built Friedrichshof, a castle, named in honour of her late husband. After her husband's death, she became widely known as Empress Frederick (German: Kaiserin Friedrich). ![]() Frederick III died in 1888 – 99 days after his accession – from laryngeal cancer and was succeeded by their son Wilhelm II, who had much more conservative views than his parents. Victoria was empress for only a few months, during which she had opportunity to influence the policy of the German Empire. This isolation increased after the rise to power of Otto von Bismarck, one of her most staunch political opponents, in 1862. Criticised for this attitude and for her English origins, Victoria suffered ostracism by the Hohenzollerns and the Berlin court. Victoria shared with Frederick her liberal views and hopes that Prussia and the later German Empire should become a constitutional monarchy, based on the British model. She was the mother of Wilhelm II, German Emperor.Įducated by her father in a politically liberal environment, Victoria was married at age 17 to Prince Frederick of Prussia, with whom she had eight children. As the eldest child of Queen Victoria, she was briefly her heir, until the birth of her younger brother and future King, Edward VII. ![]() She was the eldest child of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and was created Princess Royal in 1841. Victoria, Princess Royal (Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa 21 November 1840 – 5 August 1901) was German Empress and Queen of Prussia as the wife of German Emperor Frederick III. Viktoria, Princess Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe.“Unfortunately, there is a question of the ownership of the letters which has not yet been resolved. The Palace’s plan was to publish the letters online on April 11, 2021, in time for the centenary of Augusta Victoria’s death, says Jörg Kirschstein, a curator of the 2018 exhibition as well as manager of Neues Palace. The letters are addressed to Augusta Victoria while she was still Crown Princess.” “We do not yet have information on what the letters are about. The two wooden boxes were corded-and the strings sealed as well-but one box had been opened once.” In this box, Wittwer says that very few of the seals of the envelopes had been broken and opened, which indicated the amount of letters in total. “Some of the envelopes show the name of the writer of the letters inside, but the envelopes are still sealed. “To be sure that no one would read these private letters, the letters were packed in envelopes according to the people who wrote them and then sealed,” says Wittwer. ![]() Hulton Archive // Getty ImagesĪccording to the addresses on the boxes, Wittwer believes that the letters were transported from the Berlin Schloss to the Neues Palais when Wilhelm II and Augusta Victoria moved there. Opening this lock was rather easy.”Įmperor Wilhelm II of Germany with his wife Augusta Victoria in a photo dated around 1900. “Because the second door was only wood, the lock was much more simply made. ![]() “It was unreachable without a ladder, which would have been difficult to use in such a tight space anyway,” says Wittwer. They happened to spot a second, much smaller door above the steel door which looked very much the same. The curators tried but failed to get past the steel door. As we were preparing for the exhibition on the end of the monarchy, we were curious to see if our experts could open it.” “There are no keys and no one from the former or present palace staff ever saw it open. Samuel Wittwer, director of the Prussian castles. “In the former boudoir of Augusta Victoria there is a steel safe built in the wall in a small cabinet,” says Dr. While preparing for the exhibition, curators made a startling discovery in the dressing room of Wilhelm’s wife, Empress Augusta Victoria (pictured above with her great aunt, Queen Victoria). In 2018, The Neues Palais-the last palace built by Frederick the Great in Potsdam, Germany-hosted a small exhibition called “Kaiserdämmerung” (“The Twilight of the Emperor”), to mark the centenary of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s abdication as Emperor and King of Prussia.
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