Royal Kinship: British-German Family Networks 1815-1918 (Prinz-Albert-Forschungen)

Royal Kinship: Anglo-German Family Networks 1815–1918

Edited by Karina Urbach

K. G. Saur

Prinz-Albert-Forschungen Prince Albert Research Publications

Prinz-Albert-Forschungen Prince Albert Research Publications

Herausgeber / Board of Editors Adolf M. Birke · Franz Bosbach · Asa Briggs Hermann Hiery · Keith Robbins

Band 4 / Volume 4

Royal Kinship Anglo-German Family Networks 1815 - 1918

Edited by Karina Urbach

K · G · Saur München 2008

Printed with the support of Oberfrankenstiftung Kulturfonds Bayern Niederfüllbacher Stiftung Stadt Coburg Sparkasse Coburg-Lichtenfels Universität Bayreuth German Historical Institute London

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. U Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier / Printed on acid-free paper © 2008 by K. G. Saur Verlag, München Ein Imprint der Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG Alle Rechte vorbehalten / All Rights Strictly Reserved Jede Art der Vervielfältigung ohne Erlaubnis des Verlags ist unzulässig Satz / Typesetting by PTP GmbH, Berlin Druck und Bindung / Printed and bound by Strauss GmbH, Mörlenbach Printed in Germany ISBN: 978-3-598-23003-5

Contents List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

Franz Bosbach Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9

Karina Urbach Introduction: Royal Kinship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13

Daniel Schönpflug One European Family? A Quantitative Approach to Royal Marriage Circles 1700–1918 . . . . . . . . .

25

Andreas Gestrich Noble Siblings: Rivalry and Solidarity in Aristocratic and Noble Families . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

Clarissa Campbell Orr Anglo-German Kinship Networks in 1832 – Dynastic Survival and Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

45

Torsten Riotte The House of Hanover. Queen Victoria and the Guelph dynasty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75

John Davis The Coburg Connection. Dynastic Relations and the House of Coburg in Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . .

97

Monika Wienfort Marriage, Family and Nationality. Letters from Queen Victoria and Crown Princess Victoria 1858–1885 . . . . . 117 John C. G. Röhl Anglo-German Family Networks before 1914. Kaiser Wilhelm II’s correspondence with the British Royal Family . . . . . . . 131 Jonathan Petropoulos The Hessens and the British Royals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 5

Contents Matthew Seligmann Prince Louis of Battenberg: The Advantages and Disadvantages of being a Serene Highness in the Royal Navy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

6

List of Illustrations Ill. 1:

“Unique photo. Princely Wedding and family reunion” in Coburg 1894: PR flyer of the city of Coburg showing the family networks of the House of Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha. Reprinted by kind permission of the State Archive Coburg and the Tourist Information Coburg and markgerecht.jm.oHg. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12

Ill. 2:

Family Tree (1): Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Romanov . . . . . . . . .

51

Ill. 3:

Family Tree (2): Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Saxe-Gotha and Hanover . . .

52

Ill. 4:

Family Tree (3): Francis of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld . . . . . . . . . . . . .

98

Ill. 5:

Family Tree (4): Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

98

Ill. 6:

Family Tree (5): Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Kohary . . . . . . . . . . .

99

Ill. 7:

Family Tree (6): Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Ill. 8:

Family Tree (7): Antoinette of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Ill. 9:

Family Tree (8): Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

7

Franz Bosbach

Preface Charles Dickens describes in ‘Our Mutual Friend’ an aristocratic family’s social conquest of British Society: “The De Wilfers came over with the Conqueror. For, it is a remarkable fact in genealogy that no De-Any-ones ever came over with anybody else.” William the Conqueror was not the only ruler who brought his aristocratic entourage to Britain. The Hanoverians and the Coburgers have been seen as a similar sort of conquerors. There connections with and the amount of impact they had on the Royal Family is the subject of this volume. Since 2005 the Prince Albert Society has been in the fortunate position of getting unprecedented access to the private papers at the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. Thanks to the chief archivist Pamela Clark it was possible for our team of researchers to make detailed notes on the vast amounts of German-British correspondence from the 19th to the early 20th century. The concept of the ‘Common Heritage’ project has been to have one research group in Windsor, one in Coburg and one in Gotha which in close cooperation piece together the scattered correspondences of the Royal Family on an array of political, cultural and economic subjects. By the end of the project we will have a definitve catalogue of all German-British exchanges since 1815. Financial support for this ambitious endeavour has come from the British Academy, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the German Historical Institute London, the Oberfrankenstiftung, the Niederf ullbacher ¨ Stiftung, the Kulturfonds Bayern, the city of Coburg, the Sparkasse Coburg-Lichtenfels, Bayreuth University, the Universit¨atsverein Bayreuth, and the Karl-Graf-Spreti-Sonderfonds. By unearthing these vast amounts of correspondences we have already made many discoveries about monarchical life in the 19th and 20th century. In 2006 we presented the first part of our findings in two conferences. One took place in Coburg and focused on the cultural exchanges of the German-British network. It was published by John Davis and me under the title: Divided Estate – Common Heritage. This volume is based on the second part of the conference which was held at the German Historical Institute in September 2006. It was organised by Karina Urbach who has been involved with our Common Heritage programme from the very beginning. She brought together speakers from Britain, the US and Germany who used 9

Franz Bosbach

new material from the Royal Archives. The main question that was posed to the authors was to untangle which German families managed to play a role within the Royal Family, at what time they played such a role and which methods they used to stay in this profitable position. The quotes the authors are using here, of which many are published for the first time, are all reprinted by generous permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The conference attracted a great amount of guests from Germany and Britain and was opened by His Excellency the German Ambassador to the court of St. James, Wolfgang Ischinger. In true transnational spirit a mixture of British and German scholars ably chaired the discussions: Holger Afflerbach, Thomas Brockmann, Amalie Foßel, ¨ Keith Robbins, Hugo Vickers and Oliver Walton. Very special thanks go to our generous hosts: the Director of the German Historical Institute Andreas Gestrich and his excellent staff, in particular Anita Bellamy and the GHIL translator Angela Davies. Professor Dr. Franz Bosbach President of the Prince Albert Society

10

Einmalige Aufnahme Fürstenhochzeit und Familientreffen Folgende Personen befinden sich auf diesem Bild 18 Herzog Arthur von

1 Königin Victoria von

Connaught, Sohn von Königin

Großbritannien 2 Kaiserin-

Victoria 19 Prinz Ludwig von

Witwe Viktoria (Friedrich III.) 23

3 Kaiser Wilhelm II. 4 Erbprinz Alfred von Sachsen-Coburg

28

25

24

26

19

21

16

Nikolaus II. von Rußland

Sergius von Rußland, Bruder

22

14

von Zar Alexander III. von

18

17

6 (spätere) Zarin Alix von 11

Rußland 7 Prinzessin Victoria

Rußland 21 (späterer) König Ferdinand I. von Rumänien

12

13

(Ludwig) von Battenberg,

22 Großfürst Wladimir von 15

4 6

8 Prinzessin Irene (Heinrich)

7

8

5

von Preußen, Schwester des

Rußland, Bruder von Zar Alexander III. von Rußland

9

23 Großfürst Paul von Rußland, 10

Bräutigams 9 Großfürstin

Bruder von Zar Alexander III. von Rußland 24 Prinz Philipp

Maria-Pawlowna (Wladimir) von

von Sachsen-Coburg-Kohary,

Rußland, Schwägerin von Zar Alexander III. von Rußland

Battenberg, Schwager des Bräutigams 20 Großfürst

20

(†1899) 5 (späterer) Zar

Schwester des Bräutigams

27

3

2 1

10 Herzogin Marie-

Bruder von Zar Ferdinand von Bulgarien 25 Graf Arthur

Alexandrowna von Sachsen-

von Mensdorff-Pouilly, Enkel

Coburg 11 (späterer) König

von Prinzessin Sofie von

Edward VII. von Großbritannien

Sachsen-Coburg-Saalfeld,

12 Prinzessin Beatrice von

einer Schwester von Ernst I.

Battenberg 13 Fürstin Alexandra

26 (spätere) Königin Maria

zu Hohenlohe, Tochter von

von Rumänien 27 Großfürstin

Herzog Alfred von Sachsen-

Elisabeth (Sergius) von Rußland, Schwester von Zarin Alix von

Coburg 14 (spätere) Herzogin Charlotte von Sachsen-

29

30

29 Prinzessin Beatrix von

Friedrich III. 15 Herzogin Luise Margarete von Connaught, Schwiegertochter von Königin Victoria 16 Prinz Heinrich von Battenberg 17 Prinzessin Luise von Sachsen-Coburg-Kohary, Tochter von König Leopold II. von Belgien

Rußland 28 Herzog Alfred von Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha

Meiningen, Tochter von Kaiser

April 1894 in Coburg Vermählung der Herzogstochter Victoria Melita von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha mit ihrem Cousin, Großherzog Ernst Ludwig von Hessen. Diese Fürstenhochzeit war das letzte große Familientreffen dieser großen Dynastie. Das Foto dokumentiert wie kein zweites, die weltumspannende Ausdehnung und Macht der Coburger und deren Verwandten. 20 Jahre später befanden sich die wichtigsten Familienmitglieder miteinander im Krieg. Nationale Interessen hatten über verwandschaftliche Bande gesiegt.

Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, Tochter von Herzog Alfred von SachsenCoburg 30 Prinzessin Feodora von Sachsen-Meiningen, spätere Fürstin von Reuß (das Brautpaar fehlt auf diesem Bild)

Ill. 1: “Unique photo. Princely Wedding and family reunion” in Coburg 1894: PR flyer of the city of Coburg showing the family networks of the House of Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha. Reprinted by kind permission of the State Archive Coburg and the Tourist Information Coburg and markgerecht.jm.oHg.

12

Karina Urbach

Introduction: Royal Kinship∗ When this manuscript was about to go to print the Sunday Times ran one of its sensational articles on the Royal Family. Journalists had found a ‘secret’ letter Queen Victoria had written about the marriage plans of her cousin Princess Frederica of Hanover. In it Victoria supported Feodora’s decision to marry an equerry: “Lilly is worthy of the highest positions; but she cannot marry without her heart and her heart belongs to another” 1 . For the Sunday Times the implication seemed clear: this letter was kept secret because it could have had an impact on the marriage choices of other Royals. In this volume Torsten Riotte has unearthed the much more complex Frederica saga and puts it into its proper context. However, the reason why this private correspondence was found by the Sunday Times is relevant to the main questions we are addressing here. The letter was used in a law suit in 1955 by Prince Ernst of Hanover who wanted to establish that he was a British citizen. This might have been news to those who remembered him supporting Hitler, yet Hanover’s aim was to avoid losing parts of his property in the occupied Soviet zone of Germany. His rediscovered ‘Britishness’ opened up a can of worms for a team of solicitors. Was it correct that all descendants of George I (who had also been Elector of Hanover) were British? If so, would they not have had to ask Royal permission for their marriages under the Royal Marriages Act of 1772? Since they did not, did this make senior, living members of the Royal Family illegitimate? In 1955 the confused Home Secretary and the Attorney General wanted to keep the case quiet and struck a deal with Hanover2 .

I. The problems members of royal families faced when it came to the question of their nationality had of course already started in the nineteenth century. In 1854, Princess Feodora of Hohenlohe-Langenburg wrote to her half-sister Queen Victoria a rather desperate letter: ∗ 1 2

I would like to thank Michel Thill and Christine Henninger who helped me to put this volume into proper shape. Special thanks also go to Angela Davies who checked the translations. Peter Day/Dipesh Gadher, By royal command – wed for love: The Sunday Times, February 3, 2008, 3. Ibid.

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Karina Urbach

“Hermann will be here tomorrow, he has left the Wurttemberg service. [. . . ] There is a probability of Thessy going with the whole family to Russia if Fritz is called in to do his service which is more likely than not. What a confusion of interest and fears at this critical moment! Victor in the English navy, his two brothers in Austrian service, Fritz with the Russians, thank God we have no child in France to be in trouble about” 3 . Feodora’s family arrangements were not at all unusual for her social background and time. Until the rise of nationalism royals had thought of themselves solely in a dynastic not in a national context4 . To have different homelands at different stages of one’s life was therefore nothing unusual. Female members of royal families were expected to marry into foreign houses while in the aristocracy second and third sons served foreign rulers as soldiers or diplomats. Even in the twentieth century Victoria Bentinck, member of a Dutch-English-German aristocratic house, explained how her family tried to cope with such arrangements: “One takes the nationality of the sovereign and country one swears allegiance to.” After the experiences of two world wars she added gloomily: “Our nationality has always been a question” 5 . In this volume Monika Wienfort shows that the ‘dual-national’ background was extremely problematic for Crown Princess Vicky in understanding Germany, and that over the years her mother, Queen Victoria, came to regret the political implications of many of her children’s marriages. Because of emigration, migration and two world wars, family history has developed into global history. Yet while, for example, historians who have worked on Empire families learnt to understand their subjects’ rather difficult mindset6 , similar studies of the cosmopolitan side of royal families do not exist for the modern period7 . The contributors to this book had to come to grips with a group of people who were forced, because of external pressures, to redefine themselves in a national context, a process which affected their identity. Linda Colley once commented that identities are not like hats; one can wear more than one at the same time8 . That this is exactly what some members of this family network tried is shown in many of the chapters. Matthew Seligmann gives a poignant example of this fragile balancing act by looking at the biography of Louis of Battenberg. Louis developed two signatures: his German letters he signed Ludwig, his English: Louis. 3 4

5 6 7 8

14

RA VIC/Y40/71: Princess Feodora of Hohenlohe-Langenburg to Queen Victoria, Langenburg 8 March 1854. Rainer Hambrecht, Eine Dynastie – zwei Namen. Haus ‘Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha’ und ‘Haus Windsor’. Ein Beitrag zur Nationalisierungder Monarchienin Europa: Gestaltungskraftdes Politischen. Festschrift fur ¨ Eberhard Kolb, eds. Wolfram Pyta/Ludwig Richter, Berlin 1998, 284. BentinckFamily, Twickel Archive, The Netherlands(TW) 2196, Diary of Victoria Marie Frederica Mechthild Gravin van Aldenburg-Bentinck 1863–1952. See for example Elizabeth Buettner, Empire Families. Britons and Late Imperial India, Oxford 2004. This is not the case for the Early Modern period. H.M. Scott is currently writing a comparative study of European Nobility. Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707–1837, London 1992, 6.

Introduction: Royal Kinship

Whereas royal families were not by nature national, they had to develop into national figureheads. Frank Lothar Kroll and Johannes Paulmann have argued that monarchs were successful in adjusting to the growth of representational government and of nationalism from 18489 . But, as many of the following chapters show, this was not as easy and straightforward as has been suggested. Though sovereigns presented themselves in a national way, on a parallel level they used their family networks to circumvent national restrictions. Outside contacts helped them go beyond nations and these alternative routes reached well into the interwar period: how, for example, the Hesse family used these contacts is shown in Jonathan Petropolous’s contribution10 . The human cost of the process of national assimilation has also been underestimated. The growing ‘trouble’ Feodora Hohenlohe feared was due to a hostile climate that became more and more suspicious of the international connections of ruling houses. This was not just the case in Germany. The German roots of the Royal Family had long been a point of attack in Britain. The marriages of the Hanoverian rulers had been ridiculed on a regular basis. At the time of Queen Charlotte, the daughter of the impoverished Duke of MecklenburgStrelitz: “the unkind suggested that the country would be better described as ‘Muckleberg Strawlitter’. People claimed one couldn’t even find Mecklenburg on a map – for the English it was another comic-opera dukedom” 11 . The constant fights over the allowances for King George III’s numerous children are well known and were repeated when Prince Albert arrived in Britain. The English aristocracy in particular was not pleased with the ‘Coburg connection’: “The great landed families saw the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the words of H.G. Wells ‘as alien and uninspiring’. [. . . ] For many aristocrats the feeling lingered that Victoria privileged her German relatives over the native nobility, and that the royal clan refused to ‘indigenise’” 12 . Despite this criticism, each German house the Royal Family married into left an imprint on the historical thinking of the average Englishman. As late as 1932, the Berlin journalist Bella Fromm wrote that many of her British friends were outraged when Hitler was made a German citizen in Brunswick of all places: “The English don’t think it funny, as Hanover and Brunswick are the soft spots of all history loving Brits,

9

10 11 12

Frank-Lothar Kroll, Zwischen europ¨aischem Bewusstsein und nationaler Identit¨at. Legitimationsstrategien monarchischer Eliten im Europa des 19. und fruhen ¨ 20. Jahrhunderts: Geschichte der Politik. Alte und neue Wege, eds. Hans-Christof Kraus/Thomas Nicklas, (Historische Zeitschrift Beiheft 44). Munich 2007, 355f.; Johannes Paulmann, Pomp und Politik. Monarchenbegegnungen in Europa zwischen Ancien Regime und Ersten Weltkrieg, Paderborn 2000. Jonathan Petropoulos, Royals and the Reich. The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany, Oxford 2006. John Clarke, The Life and Times of George III, London 1972, 30. David Cannadine, The last Hanoverian sovereign? The Victorian monarchy in historical perspective, 1688–1988: The First Modern Society. Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone, eds. A.L. Beier/David Cannadine/James M. Rosenheim, Cambridge 1989, 155.

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Karina Urbach

and to have the Austrian Housepainter naturalised by the Brunswick Government seemed a personal affront to every wearer of the old school tie” 13 . Public images changed over the decades, yet how did the Royal Family try to cope with these ambivalent perceptions of them and how did they actually see themselves?14 To understand the ‘geographical and mental maps’ of the Royal Family, one has to take a closer look at the connections which were forged with different German houses at different times. Regional differences, power and size of the houses and the varying family dynamics have to be taken into account if one wants to evaluate their influence. This is why the concept of this volume follows the dynastic principle (Familienprinzip) and will cover five houses separately: Hanover, Prussia, Coburg, Hesse and Battenberg (Mountbatten).

II. So, what is special about this volume? Are we repeating the same old research on German-British relations or is it just another monarchical enterprise which – for a change – is not run by David Cannadine? For him the situation is obvious; he calls “the history of the Modern Royal Family [. . . ] the History of successive waves of parvenu German invaders – the Hanoverians, the Coburgs, and the Mountbattens” 15 . The intention is to move away from such tempting aper¸cus and go back to the sources: unpublished private letters from the Royal Archives at Windsor. Access to these papers was made possible by the cooperation of Windsor’s senior archivist Pamela Clark with Professor Franz Bosbach’s ‘Common Heritage’ project. Thanks to the work of the Common Heritage research team the majority of the authors of this volume were able to base their articles on rare documentation16 . Norbert Elias has suggested that one should not be using aristocratic correspondence as testimonies of famous people, but should look in more detail at their common interests and mutual dependencies. This seems an obvious piece of advice to a historian. Yet as Quentin Skinner once warned us “we can never hope to arrive at the ‘correct reading’ of a text, such that any rival readings can be ruled out” 17 . He was referring to philosophical tracts, but historians, no matter which school they come from, always have such warnings at the back of their minds. All authors therefore agreed to focus on some straightforward questions when they looked at the mass of communication with the Royal Family. 13 14 15 16

17

16

Bella Fromm, Banquets and Blood. A Berlin Diary 1930–38, New York 1992, 46. See for the public perception of the British Monarchy Andrzej Olechnowicz (ed.), The Monarchy and the British Nation 1780 to the Present, Cambridge 2007, 1ff. Cannadine (note 12), 155. From 2005 to 2008 Oliver Walton and Torsten Riotte worked at the Royal Archives, Windsor, cataloguing German and British royal correspondence. The following letters are reprinted by the generous permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Quentin Skinner, Motives, Intentions and the Interpretation of Texts: New Literary History 2, 1971/72, 393–408.

Introduction: Royal Kinship

First of all: was this Anglo-German royal network just an ‘imagined community’ constructed by historians or a functioning family network? If so, how exactly did it work? Who writes to whom; is correspondence intergenerational? Is it indifferent to social hierarchy and gender? Of course to be part of a family meant rights and duties. Yet although it seems obvious what made the German families cultivate their British cousins – the desire for position, money and more influence at home through prestigious foreign contacts – the interest of the parties in Britain seems more obscure. Why did they stay in such close contact with minor German princelings? The contents of the letters are, of course, vital. Were they mainly of a sentimental nature – i.e. should they be approached with the methods of what has been recently labelled the ‘affective turn’ or ‘emotionology’? Was the Royal Family more bourgeois than we think? Did they still act politically? When and under what preconditions did the British Royal Family actually try to influence foreign affairs? At what point did this become impossible? Here it will also be important to see how family members coped by the end of the nineteenth century with the rivalry between Germany and Britain. Which generation stuck to the old ties and still tried to live a ‘transnational’ life; which saw its future in one country only? Every author has very wisely decided to place a different emphasis on the above bombardment of questions. Furthermore their definitions vary when it comes to the dual-national identities of their subjects. In some chapters their lifestyle is described as ‘transnational’ in others as ‘international’ or ‘cosmopolitan’. Moreover, if one talks about a ‘network’, one has vaguely to agree on what is meant by this vague word. The literature on ‘network’ is vast, and the authors of these chapters are not trying to add another sociological interpretation18 . ‘Network’ is, of course, a new word for an old hat. Wolfgang Reinhard developed a theory about the connections between kinship and patronage more than 20 years ago19 and most of the authors in this book use ‘network’ mainly in this context. In Britain another expression has been employed for close knit family circles: ‘cousinhood’. Chaim Bermant invented this word for his study of prominent Anglo-Jewish families, in particular the Rothschilds. He described them as “a compact union of exclusive brethren with blood and money flowing in a small circle which opened up from time to time to admit a Beddington, a Montagu, a Franklin, a Sassoon, or anyone else who attained rank or fortune, and then snapped shut again” 20 . In this way wealth was kept in the family. But there were other advantages in everyday life. Studies of business families who lived and worked on an international level have shown that one reason for placing family members in other countries was simply common sense: they were a low-cost alternative, the cheapest way to do business and get access to information. It was also the safest way – within 18 19 20

See for a summary, Karina Urbach, Netzwerk: Handbuch Bildung, ed. Gerrit Walther (forthcoming). Wolfgang Reinhard, Oligarchische Verflechtung und Konfession in oberdeutschen St¨adten: Klientelsysteme in Europa der fruhen ¨ Neuzeit, ed. Antoni Maczak, Munich 1988. Chaim Bermant, The Cousinhood. The Anglo-Jewish Gentry, London 1971, 1.

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a family there often existed a culture of solidarity, a soziales Vertrauen – which was based on common traditions and family honour21 . A recent book on the Rothschilds’ communication system has shown that it was not the speed with which news travelled, but the size and density of the correspondence net that counted. The quality and loyalty of the agents was decisive22 . The Rothschilds used only agents whom they trusted completely and had tested over many years, but the best agents they employed were always other Rothschilds. The Royal Family would have agreed with this system. They naturally believed that kinship was a stronger bond than any forms of friendship. Of course the literature on kinship is as vast as on networks. David Warren Sabean and Simon Teuscher recently re-evaluated the influence of kinship: “The story of modernization has included the rise of the nuclear family and the cutting off of extensive kinship ties. What we are suggesting, however, is just the opposite. The transition to the nineteenth century is characterized by the construction of systematic, repeated alliances between families, patrilines, or agnatically constructed groups [. . . ] who over many generations contracted repeated marriages, circulated godparents, and took over offices of guardianship, tutelage [. . . ] creating tight bonds of reciprocity” 23 . If this theory is correct, the Royal Family should be seen in a wider social context.

III. As these chapters show, within the kinship system it is necessary to understand who exactly worked with whom. To follow hierarchies and just concentrate on the head of the family is too one-sided. How decisive a minor member of the family could become is illustrated by the case of Lord Mountbatten. Here we have an example of an aristocrat who still tried to play a political role in the twentieth century by networking himself into the Admiralty and later to a contentious Viceroyship of India. He was instrumental in bringing about the marriage between the later Queen Elizabeth II and his nephew Prince Philip24. It is doubtful whether the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu researched the Mountbatten case, but he could have used this example 21

22 23 24

18

Marcus Funck, The Meaning of Dying. East Elbian Noble Families as ‘War Tribes’ in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Sacrifice and National Belonging in 20th Century Germany, ed. Matt Berg/ Greg Eghigian, Arlington 2001, 26–63; Ibid., Ehre: Kleines Lexikon des Adels. Titel, Throne, Traditionen, ed. Eckart Conze, Munich 2005, 70ff. Rainer Liedtke, N M Rothschild & Sons. Kommunikationswege im europ¨aischen Bankenwesen im 19. Jahrhundert, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2006. David W. Sabean/Simon Teuscher (eds.), Kinship in Europe. Approaches to Long-term Development (1300–1900), Oxford 2007, 20. See for this Gyles Brandreth, Philip und Elizabeth. Portrait einer Ehe, Munich 2005.

Introduction: Royal Kinship

when he tried to explain the longevity of elite power by highlighting their symbolic capital (titles), their cultural capital (knowledge, taste, cultivation) and their social capital (networks)25 . Even today everyone who has visits the country house of the Mountbatten family, Broadlands, will receive a lesson in staging symbolic and cultural power. Though Lord Palmerston once owned the house, it is now a shrine entirely dedicated to Lord Mountbatten’s doubtful military and political ‘achievements’ and most importantly his connections with the Royal Family. Mountbatten’s example illustrates that one needs to look at minor as well as senior members of the Royal Family to understand the family mechanisms. As many of the following chapters show, within the family Plazierungsstrategien (the hierarchical placing of each member) differed greatly26 . De jure power and de facto power within a family could also go across gender barriers. Sophie Ruppel has shown for the early modern period how aristocratic women accumulated and used power that by right should have been exercised by their brothers, husbands or fathers. She illustrates this by describing marriage negotiations which took place from 1649 to 1651 between the Brandenburg Princess Elector Elisabeth Charlotte and the Princess of Siebenburgen. ¨ Elisabeth Charlotte wanted to marry off her niece Henriette to Siebenb urgen ¨ and ignored her protestations as much as the reservations of her nephew, the Prince Elector Karl Ludwig. By right he was the head of the house and would have been the prime decision-maker. However, Karl Ludwig was afraid of alienating his influential aunt. In this case seniority compensated for the fact that one belonged to the weaker gender. In the end Elisabeth Charlotte won this battle and sent Henriette to the Siebenb urgen ¨ 27 family where she died within a year . Picking up on this, Andreas Gestrich shows in his contribution that noble siblings were often far from noble to one another and that the complexity of their relationships – even when they were not heirs – should no longer be underestimated by family historians. Though one has to take all members of a family into account, this can also mean following a number of dead ends. Daniel Schonpflug ¨ cautions us in his chapter that we should not ‘drown by numbers’ and believe that a great amount of international family ties automatically meant that they were utilized. One has to look behind the impressive family trees and reconstruct from the correspondence who was ‘talking’ – i.e. in this case writing – to whom. This often had nothing to do with political or economic reasons but had an obvious explanation: sympathy. It was possible that close relatives did not exchange more than courtesy letters while distant ones saw 25

26 27

Pierre Bourdieu, Der Habitus als Vermittlung zwischen Struktur und Praxis (1970): Zur Soziologie der symbolischen Formen, ed. ibid., 4th ed., Frankfurt a. M. 1991; Pierre Bourdieu, ¨ Okonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital: Soziale Ungleichheiten, ed. Reinhard Kreckel, Gottingen ¨ 1983. See also Hans-Ulrich Wehler/PierreBourdieu, Das Zentrum seines Werks: Die Herausforderungder Kulturgeschichte,eds. ibid., Munich 1998, 27f. Monique de Saint Martin, Der Adel. Soziologie eines Standes, translated by Jorg ¨ Ohnacker, Constance 2003. Andreas Gestrich, Geschichte der Familie im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Munich 1999, 87. Sophie Ruppel, Geschwisterbeziehungen im Adel und Norbert Elias’ Figurationstheorie. Ein Anwendungsversuch: Höfische Gesellschaft und Zivilisationsprozess. Norbert Elias’ Werk in kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive, ed. Claudia Opitz, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2005, 219.

19

Karina Urbach

each other as kindred spirits. Goethe’s idea of Wahlverwandtschaften could also exist within kinship. Another important aspect emerging from these chapters is the role of women within families. When it comes to understanding regal networks these days, the gender aspect is becoming less of a ‘missing dimension’ 28 . However, the claim that the British Royal Family has been feminised since Victoria’s reign, raises the question as to how much this, together with the generational issue, actually influenced decisions. Three chapters focus on female correspondents – including the decisive letters between Queen Victoria and her daughter Vicky which are re-evaluated by Monika Wienfort. It was often these powerful women who were the ‘gatekeepers’ of their family and determined inclusion and exclusion processes. They made sure which family narrative was accepted. For them every turn in history seemed to be connected with their own family history, they personalised history and adapted it according to the needs of the time.

IV. Since kinship beyond borders depends on constant communication, the contents of the letters take up a great amount of space in this volume. In the following chapters it is therefore interesting to see what is said and what is not said. It seems that the greater the political divides between Germany and Great Britain, the more a retreat into family news set in. Of course it makes sense that in a family where national loyalties were a touchy subject, politics often had to be omitted from the correspondences or handled in a delicate way. Though surrounded by pro-Boer feeling in Germany, Prince Leiningen, for example, tried to show support to his aunt Queen Victoria: “How dreadful this war is, and how many brave and gallant fellows have sacrificed their lives in it. You must be proud of the way in which the whole Empire has come forward in your cause and in that of England. If only I were young again, and able to go out afresh” 29 ! In fact Leiningen was relieved to be too old to be dragged into this conflict. Another reason why it was necessary to tiptoe around certain subjects was the fear of indiscretions. Feodora Hohenlohe knew she had to be cautious in her correspondence in case her letters were intercepted: “What interests me in the doings and writings in the political world and papers I cannot write about in a letter” 30 . Instead delicate issues were discussed at family gatherings or during the summer holidays. The secret country house diplomacy of the 1930s was therefore based on a long tradi28 29 30

20

See Clarissa Campbell Orr, The feminization of the monarchy 1780–1910. Royal masculinity and female empowerment: Olechnowicz (note 15), 76ff. RA VIC/Z 149/115: Prince Ernst Leiningen to Tante Queen Victoria 1841–1900,18 January 1900. RA VIC/Y40/63: Princess Feodora of Hohenlohe-Langenburg to Queen Victoria, Langenburg 12 January 1854.

Introduction: Royal Kinship

tion31 . Sometimes a decision not to interfere was circumspect: “There may be a future for poor Germany. If only other people will follow your [Queen Victoria’s] example in not mixing in the affairs at present in Germany. I am very glad to hear you like your new dresser so well, that is a comfort” 32 . Here Princess Hohenlohe was mixing the political with the banal. Much of the correspondence catalogued by the Common Heritage research team was about property control. When it came to marriages money was an important issue. In 1895 Queen Victoria asked the aforementioned Prince Leiningen about the financial situation of the Hohenlohe family (to which they were both related anyway). One of her granddaughters was considering marrying the Hohenlohe-heir. Leiningen reported back on the income of the potential father-in-law: “[His] net income (I mean what he has to live on, in fact to keep his household on) is about the same as mine between 4.000–5.000 Pounds a Year. Still, I may be all wrong [. . . ] I only go by his style of living, and now he is Statthalter of Alsace-Lorraine he can, if he likes, lay by money. As for his place, the Schloss at Langenburg it is a very fine old castle 500 years old, one of the few which escaped the 30 years war. To make it however come up to one’s modern, especially English, ideas of comfort, a good deal of money would have to be spent on it. As for its dullness it is no worse or no better than for instance Amorbach or any other country place. People who have no taste that way, should not live in the country [. . . ] she must make up her mind to step from the [‘grander circumstances’] she is used to, into comparatively [‘smaller’]” 33 . The marriage took place and was one of the happier ones, though the bride was always kept aware of the fact that one of her sisters, the Queen of Rumania, had done better. Marriage plans dominate most of the letters. To get marriages ‘right’ was vital because a marriage could indicate the rise or fall of a House in a social, political and economic way. When it comes to the aristocracy Karl Marx was of the opinion that “the secret of the nobility is zoology” 34 . This truism can also be used for royal families which had a pragmatic approach to all kinds of breeding patterns. For them good breeding included marriages between cousins. This seemed necessary since to find compatible marriage partners for royals was difficult and could be politically dangerous. However, the criteria by which partners were chosen are entirely different from the way the British aristocracy would have picked their spouses. In Germany the age of the pedigree determines the social status of an aristocratic family (not necessarily 31

32 33 34

See for the German castle politics after 1918: Stephan Malinowski, Vom Konig ¨ zum Fuhrer. ¨ Sozialer Niedergang und politische Radikalisierung im deutschen Adel zwischen Kaiserreich und NS Staat, Berlin 2003, 395ff. RA VIC/Y 44, No. 55: Princess Feodora of Hohenlohe-Langenburg to Queen Victoria, Baden 15 August 1866. RA VIC/Z 148/149: Ernst Leiningen to Queen Victoria, Langenburg 22 June 1895. Karl Marx, Kritik des Hegelschen Staatsrechts, 1843: Werke, eds. Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, vol. 1, Berlin 1964, 310f.

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Karina Urbach

the title), while in Great Britain status and title of an aristocrat rose by the accumulation of money and land. As the Duchess of Westminster so succinctly put it: “English people are accustomed to be snobbish over money and titles but not to care a damn about pedigree” 35 . Her contemporary Nancy Mitford came to a similar conclusion: “[The English aristocrat] marries out of love and loves where the money is. He seldom marries to improve his crest” 36 . The Royal Family seems to have thought along German lines. They married for kinship and, mostly, a solid German pedigree, as Clarissa Campbell Orr shows in her article on the complex Hanovarian marriage market. What everyone feared most, however, were morganatic marriages which could be a social and – most importantly – political threat to the House. John Rohl ¨ has shown in his monumental biography of William II that plans to marry into the Battenberg family were considered by the German Emperor to be politically risky and d´eclass´e. The French aristocracy would have agreed with William’s opposition to such a marriage. Aimery de La Rochefoucauld, who was Marcel Proust’s model for the arrogant Prince de Guermantes, once said about an infatuated aristocratic girl who married down: “her future will be a few nights of passion and then being placed at the wrong end of the table for the rest of her life” 37 . Queen Victoria was less dogmatic on the issue and Monika Wienfort shows in her chapter how the concept of romantic love was on the increase in the nineteenth century. In general the space emotional issues received in many of these letters should not be underestimated. Though there was talk about finances and property control, at the same time the letters are about love and friendship between family members. This contradicts middle class criticisms of the cold and interest-driven upper classes. It has been argued that “the criticism of aristocratic family life by professional men was among the earliest forms of class consciousness” 38 . This was directed not just against the upper classes but also against the working class, which was seen as unfeeling towards wives and children. However, it is a contradiction to accuse a class that is so obsessed with the idea of running a family successfully of a lack of emotions. Because the family expected great sacrifices from its members it had to offer more than just status and financial compensation for this sacrifice. These letters therefore show that advocates of ‘emotionology’ have a point: “Without a parallel examination of emotional ties, structural studies of the links among kin, including extended kin, risk superficiality” 39 . 35 36 37 38 39

22

Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour. The Memoirs of Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, London 1961, 140. Nancy Mitford, Die englische Aristokratie: Der Monat. Internationale Zeitschrift, vol. 9, No. 97 (1956), 40–49. Quoted in: Norman Scarfe, What the French learnt from us about Farming: Literary Review, No. 27 (April 2002). Randolph Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family. Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eigtheenth-Century England, New York 1978, 7. Peter N. Stearns/Carol Z. Stearns, Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards: The American Historical Review 90 (No. 4, October 1985), 817.

Introduction: Royal Kinship

V. The key question all authors asked themselves was, of course: could this group still have an effect on politics or had they just become irrelevant figureheads? In Germany the study of the human factor in politics has been played down since 1945. Even one of the world’s most influential politicians today, Vladimir Putin, a man blissfully unaware of European history, came to the conclusion that: “The system of international relations is just like mathematics. There are no personal dimensions” 40 . While he underestimates the human factor, the writers of these letters tended to overestimate it. They thought solely in personal dimensions, they very often believed that they could still influence events and it is therefore interesting in which letters one can find a ‘restorative nostalgia’, whether they hoped – against the realities of the times – for an increase of monarchical power. This becomes obvious in the correspondence of Prince Albert and also of his grandson William II – which John Davis and John Rohl ¨ are looking at. Both Albert and William tried – with very different methods and outcomes – to be major political players. Dynastic channels still seemed to be useful for informal discussions and could help to minimise, or in William II’s case maximise, problems. For this glittering group the ‘History of Relations’ between states was very literally the history of their relations.

40

Statement by Vladimir Putin 10 February 2007, Munich Security Conference. See also Jonathan Haslam, A Pipeline runs through it: The National Interest, 92, (Nov/Dec. 2007), 73.

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Daniel Schönpflug

One European Family? A Quantitative Approach to Royal Marriage Circles 1700–1918

“Until the end of the Old Regime [. . . ], Europe was ruled by a single family that was divided into many branches, the big family of European dynasties“1, wrote Andreas Kraus. On a similar note, the French historian Lucien B´ely characterised the European soci´et´e des princes as “a closed circle of men and women who shared the same lifestyle [. . . ]. Kings belonged to a ‘family’ and officially considered each other as brothers and sisters. Often, they actually had close family ties”2 . The idea of a European family of dynasties, emphasised by Kraus and B´ely alike, was certainly not invented by modern historians. It was a crucial element of the selfperception of members of dynastic families and was based on visualisations of genealogy that were influential until the nineteenth century. The best known form of genealogical representation is the family tree that displays the family along the male line of descent. Another type of genealogy uses the tree diagram to display links between two or more houses by including connections through female members. This particular type was often used to encourage or legitimise royal weddings by placing them in a longer tradition. Other genealogies crossed large numbers of houses to show connections between the reigning prince and one or several prominent ancestors3 . These latter forms are particularly suited to documenting the self-perception of royal families as part of a wider European family network. A genealogical tract of 1

2 3

Andreas Kraus, Das Haus Wittelsbach und Europa: Ergebnisse und Ausblick: Das Haus Wittelsbach und die europäischen Dynastien (Zeitschrift für europäische Landesgeschichte 44/1), München 1981, 426. Lucien B´ely, La soci´et´e des princes XVIe -XVIIIe si`ecle, Paris 1999, 8. On genealogy and its visualisations see Gert Melville, Vorfahren und Vorgänger. Spätmittelalterliche Genealogien als dynastische Legitimation zur Herrschaft: Die Familie als sozialer und historischer Verband. Untersuchungen zum Spätmittelalter und zur Frühen Neuzeit, ed. PeterJohannes Schuler, Sigmaringen 1987, 203–309; Karl Schmid, Zur Problematik von Familie, Sippe und Geschlecht. Haus und Dynastie beim mittelalterlichen Adel: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 105 (1957), 1–62; Peter Schuster, Die Familie des Adels. Forschungsergebnisse und -fragen in der deutschen Mediävistik: Adelige Familienformen im Mittelalter – Strutture di famiglie nobiliari nel Medioevo: Geschichte und Region / Storia e regione 11/2 (2003), 13–36; Gudrun Tscherpel, The Importance of being noble. Genealogie im Alltag des englischen Hochadels im Spätmittelalter, Husum 2004.

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Daniel Schönpflug

1707, written by the Berlin Academician Johannes Heineccio, for example, presents the Prussian king as a descendant of Charlemagne4 . The tract constructs the family line through nine centuries and six houses scattered all over Europe: the house of Karlmann, the counts of Nuremberg, the dukes of Lorraine, the house of AltenburgHabsburg and finally the house of Zollern. Two hundred years later, Freiherr Axel Albrecht von Maltzahn published his Die 4096 Ahnen Seiner Majestät des Deutschen Kaisers und Königs von Preußen Wilhelm II., in which the Emperor’s blood ties with many famous dynasties and kings, including Louis XIV, were reconstructed5 . In modern historiography and the perceptions of historical actors alike, kinship is often understood as a factor of cohesion, communication and cooperation in Europe. It is certainly true that blood relations can be constructed from almost every member of a European ruling dynasty to any other one. But the vast majority of these links had little practical relevance. This essay thus focuses on European kinship networks that were spun by interdynastic marriages. They represent a specific kind of family relation that required thorough preparation, planning and legal acts, involved the relocation of a female family member, were believed to have a binding effect, were celebrated with huge festivities and international guests, and were thus likely to produce intense bonds between dynasties. A bird’s eye view of marriage networks between 1700 and 1918 reveals that they were not only inclusive but also exclusive, and that they were less far-reaching than the discourse of the European family of dynasties implies. The focus of interest in this essay will be the boundaries and divisions outside and inside the European family of dynasties, it will be argued that Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not ruled by one big family, but rather by several smaller networks of relatives that were shaped by frequent endogamy as much as by distinctions of rank and confession and by regional identity. The argument will be based on a quantitative analysis of 386 marriages concluded by European kings and queens and their families.

I. Mutual confirmation of status The archives of the Hohenzollern family in Berlin contain a document in which the parents of the future Emperor William II discuss possible brides for their son. This document is a very enlightening source because it speaks quite openly about the qualities expected of a bride for the heir to the Prussian throne. What kind of bride were the royal parents actually looking for? First, William’s parents emphasise that princesses of royal blood are not available to him, which suggests that a marriage with another 4

5

26

Diatribe Genealogica de Domus Augustae Prussico-Brandenburgicae ex stirpe Carolina originibus nec minus utriusque stirpis celebritate, regiae societati scientiarum Brandenburgicae exhibita a Io. Michaele Heineccio, Quedlinburg 1707. Berlin 1911.

A Quantitative Approach

royal family would be the most suitable option. Secondly, they state that they do not wish to marry their son to the daughter of a Catholic or Orthodox family because her life at the Protestant Prussian court would be too uncomfortable. Having thus made a clear statement on questions of rank and confession, the parents evaluate fourteen Protestant princesses from German houses on the basis of their personal qualities such as health, education and beauty, and of their fathers’ and families’ political attitudes towards Prussia6 . This is one of many documents which show that although the sovereign houses of Europe, as a general rule, accepted all the other sovereign (or formerly sovereign) houses as equal, they would not even consider, let alone conclude, marriages with most of them. This is partly because families aspired to marry into houses of comparable or higher rank. These observations suggest that there may have been a fairly closed marriage circle which included mainly the highest ranking families, while most lower ranking families, even those that were formally equal according to European legal standards, were excluded. This hypothesis can be tested with the help of the ample – though certainly neither exhaustive nor always accurate – genealogical data collected in Detlev Schwennicke’s Europäische Stammtafeln7. In a first step, the brides and grooms of the highest ranking branches of noble families in Europe were analysed. Highest ranking here is defined as synonymous with royal, which is a clear but nonetheless problematic criterion, since the crown was not invariably a sign of the highest rank in the soci´et´e des princes. In the eighteenth century, eighteen crowns existed in Europe; they were held by fifteen different houses. Between 1800 and 1918, there were twenty-nine crowns in Europe because new kingdoms had been created in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and the Balkans during the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic era. As some royal families died out and others, such as the Bernadotte, the Bonaparte, the Karadjordjevic, the Petrovic and the Wurttemberg, emerged, the number of royal houses stayed the same. Altogether, between 1700 and 1918, a total of nineteen houses – or, to be more precise, thirty-two lines of these houses – were in possession of a crown8 . An analysis of the connubium of these thirty-two lines allows the following conclusions to be drawn:

6

7 8

Memoire des Kronprinzen Friedrich Wilhelm und seiner Gattin Victoria vom 30. April 1879, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz (GStA), Brandenburgisch-Preußisches Hausarchiv (BPH), Rep. 53, N I, Nr. 1a, Bl. 9–24. Detlev Schwennicke, Europäische Stammtafeln. Neue Folge, Frankfurt a.M. 1997f. These are the houses and lines in question: Kings of Prussia and Rumania (Hohenzollern); Kings of the Netherlands (Orange); Kings of Great Britain and Hanover; Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and Austria (Habsburg); Kings of France, Spain, Sicily (Bourbon); Russian Tsars (Romanov); Kings of Sweden, Bavaria and Greece (Wittelsbach); Kings of Saxony, Poland, Belgium, Portugal, Great Britain, Bulgaria (Wettin); King of Sweden (Hesse); Kings of Wurttemberg; Kings of Denmark, Sweden, Greece and Norway (Oldenburg); Kings of Portugal and Emperors of Brazil (Braganza); Emperors of France (Bonaparte; the ephemeral Napolenic kingdoms such as Westphalia have not been taken into account); Kings of Sweden (Bernadotte); Kings of Poland (Lesczynki, Poniatowski); Kings of Serbia (Karadjordjevic); Kings of Montenegro (Petrovic).

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Daniel Schönpflug

First, there were some royal houses that never, or only exceptionally, concluded marriages with a member of another royal house, or with a member of any other European noble familiy. The houses of Kardjordjevic and Petrovic that ascended to the thrones of Serbia and Montenegro in the early twentieth century thus cannot be considered as part of a European family of the highest ranking dynasties. Two of the houses that provided a king for the throne of Poland in the eighteenth century – the Lescynski and the Poniatowski – were also only loosely connected to the other royal families of Europe. Second, about one-quarter of the marriages of the remaining twenty-eight royal lines were concluded with partners from the same exclusive group, and another quarter with partners from sidelines of these twenty-eight royal lines. Moreover, approximately 15 percent of the marriages of the highest ranking lines were concluded with partners from the same line or house. Adding these figures together, we can conclude that a royal line on average chose almost two-thirds of its partners from royal houses and about one-third from non-royal houses of the high nobility. Among the latter the princes and princesses of the house of Mecklenburg played an important part. The data for the house of Mecklenburg shows that although they were not royal, the lines Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz were able to conclude even more prestigous marriages than some royal lines. More then threequarters of their marriages were concluded with royal houses. The differences between the marriage practices of these royal lines were considerable. The powerful dynasties of southern Europe were far more exclusive than those of northern Europe. The most select marriage circles were cultivated by the royal lines of the Bourbon dynasty in France, Spain and Italy which, by marrying either other royals, their close relatives or members of their own houses, successfully avoided direct relations with non-royal families. The Habsburgs, the houses of Savoy and Braganza, the Bavarian kings from the house of Wittelsbach and the kings of Saxe, Portugal and Belgium from the house of Wettin, all Catholics like the house of Bourbon, were almost equally selective and hardly ever mingled with families without a crown. The marriage circles in the Holy Roman Empire were, at least theoretically, regulated by the rules of the Fürstenprivatrecht (private law of princes), that forbade marriages between ruling families and houses not represented in the diet of the Reich. While the Catholic royals of Germany, as a general rule, did not use the opportunity to marry into the non-royal high nobility, Protestant royal families, such as the Prussian Hohenzollern and the house of Wurttemberg, for example, allowed marriages with families down to the rank of a Reichsgraf and thus established family networks that were not purely royal. Compared with the Catholic south and the Reich, the families that ruled over the kingdoms in northern Europe were rather unpretentious. In Great Britain, Scandinavia and Russia marriages with partners from the lower ranks of the nobility – including not only non-royal, but also non-ruling houses, who were their subjects – were not formally forbidden. These differences faded away as the British royals tightened 28

A Quantitative Approach

their control in the Royal Marriage Act of 1772 and even the Romanovs gradually adapted their house laws to those of the Reich during the nineteenth century. It is obvious that the vast majority of partners of royal branches of European houses came from a small group of houses, most of which were royal themselves; only some twenty dynasties seem to have been regularly involved in top-ranking marriages between 1700 and 1918. Most of the twenty families in this exclusive circle had royal blood; but royal blood was neither a guarantee of inclusion, as some of the Balkan and Polish dynasties show, nor a condition of inclusion, as the case of the non-royal house of Mecklenburg demonstrates. Even though we can see a tendency towards the formation of an elite marriage circle, the ranks of the most influential families were never entirely closed. From 1700 to 1918, about one third of partners of elite families came from houses that did not belong to the most glamorous group of twenty. Moreover, we have to take into consideration that marriage patterns in royal houses were not at all homogenous and that some sidelines of these houses made choices that were much less prestigous then those of their royal relatives. Members of certain sidelines regularly looked for suitable partners in families that members of the main lines would rarely consider. These findings might give us a better understanding of the hierarchical structure of kinship relations between sovereign families in Europe. It seems that there was a group of highest ranking lines (A-lines), whose status was marked by their frequent relations with other A-lines and to sidelines of A-lines. Some of the sidelines of Alines did not have the same status as the A-lines, which was expressed in the fact that they connected with A-lines less frequently. Those sidelines should therefore be considered as A-minus lines. A-lines did not often conclude marriages with lower ranking lines (B-lines), but A-minus lines did. There were close relations between A and A-minus lines and close relations between A-minus and B-lines. A-minus lines were part of two dense networks and linked them together; they can therefore be seen as an intermediate elite. The European family of dynasties thus consisted of a closely related in-group of highest ranking lines from twenty houses which were more loosely related to a wider and less prestigous kinship-network through their sidelines.

II. Confessional harmony The network of the twenty highest ranking European houses contained very dense zones on the one hand, and large holes on the other. The main factor responsible for these holes was certainly religion. The three major confessions – Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox – usually avoided each other in family matters; the confessional question was also raised by the parents of the future Emperor William II who were uncomfortable with the idea of their son marrying a Catholic or Orthodox princess. This does not mean that mixed marriages did not exist at all. Marriages between Calvinists, Lutherans and Anglicans were frequent, and the religious differences between these confessions were dealt with pragmatically. Marriages between Catholic, 29

Daniel Schönpflug

Protestant and Orthodox families did occur but, as each of these confessions regarded the others as heretics, they were rather complicated. A mixed marriage involving a Catholic dynasty depended on the permission of the pope. In every kind of mixed marriage, arrangements had to be made to bridge the confessional gap. In some cases brides and grooms were permitted to adhere to their original family’s faith. In those cases they would receive guarantees that they could freely practise their religion in their new home. And they would have to agree to their children being raised in the religion of their future family. In other cases conversion was required, which could be an unsettling experience, as we know for example from the private letters of the Prussian princess, Charlotte, who was married to the the future Tsar Nicolas in 18179 . Even with the help of Gotha and other genealogical sources, to identify the changing confessional affiliations of noble families and their individual members is a challenge10 . According to my data, which is certainly unsufficient, the vast majority, that is, about 85 percent of marriages between 1700 and 1918 were concluded between families of the same faith or between non-conflicting confessions. The remaining 15 percent were mixed marriages, of which two-thirds involved a Protestant and an Orthodox partner; while the rest united a Protestant and a Catholic family. Weddings between members of Catholic and Orthodox royal houses were very rare. It is particularly interesting to see how the number of mixed marriages varied from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century just under ten percent of all marriages recorded in the database were mixed, and the vast majority were between Protestant and Orthodox families. These unions, which would have been unthinkable in the seventeenth century, were made possible by Peter the Great’s successful reorientation towards the West that was reflected in new east-west marriage circles11 . After 1800, the percentage of mixed marriages increased to about 16 in the years between 1800 and 1918. The percentage of marriages between Protestant and Orthodox families was still high. This was undoubtedly the result of the progressive integration of the Romanovs and the foundation of new Orthodox monarchies in the Balkans12 . But it is even more remarkable, that unions between Catholics and Protestants became more frequent. It is obvious that the confessional factor had a decisive influence on the inner structure of marriage circles of the highest ranking families in Europe. The trenches that separated confessionally defined marriage circles thus became shallower, but were 9 10 11 12

30

Brief Prinzessin Charlotte an Friedrich Wilhelm III, 21. Oktober 1813, GStA, BPH, Rep. 49, W 12. The following argument is based on the analysis of 316 of the 386 royal marriages in which confessional identity could be identified for both partners. On the gradual Westernisationof the Romanov family, see Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power. Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, 2 vols., Princeton 2000. Heinz Gollwitzer, Das griechische Königtum der Wittelsbacher im Rahmen der dynastischen Politik seiner Epoche. Familieninteresse und Staatsräson in den osmanischen Nachfolgestaaten: Europa im Umbruch 1750–1850, ed. Dieter Albrecht, München 1990, 85–102.

A Quantitative Approach

not filled in before 1918. Some houses, such as that of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha with its Catholic, Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox branches, were particularly open to conversion and mixed marriages and thus operated as mediators between the spheres of Catholism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy.

III. Neighbours as relatives As European dynasties were bound to their residences and territory, European family networks also had a spatial dimension. One of the few historians who has approached this problem using quantitative methods is Walther Demel, who analysed data on the peers of England, the ducs et pairs of France and the high nobility of the Holy Roman Empire. His conclusions are suprising. Even if there were some families that cultivated an international lifestyle by marrying partners from beyond the borders of their kingdoms, there were few of them in the second half of the seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Even in the comparably peaceful phase between 1714 and 1740, which could have been favourable for extended marital migration, according to Demel, fewer then two and a half percent of marriages were international in character13 . Royal dynasties and other high-ranking houses were, of course, different from the lower nobility over which they ruled. Their marriages and family connections clearly had a European dimension, and the space inhabited and ruled by princely lines that were linked by bonds of blood expanded considerably after 1700. The inclusion of the Romanovs in the early eighteenth century and the establishment of new houses or lines in the Balkans in the nineteenth century meant that the eastern border of the space ruled by the European family of dynasties moved steadily to the east. In 1829 the kingdom of Greece was founded; it was ruled first by a Wittelsbach king, than by members of the Oldenburg dynasty. In 1881 the kingdoms of Rumania and Bulgaria allowed the Hohenzollern and the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to extend the reach of their dynastic dominion to the east. Despite the widening of the space that was ruled by entangled European houses, however, the marriage circles of the majority of royal houses still had a strong regional focus, and voisinage was a frequent argument in marriage negotiations and treaties. Even a big European player such as the house of Bourbon confined its kinship networks to a limited region. Since the beginning of the eighteenth century it had ruled not only over France, but also over Spain and parts of Italy. Of the 87 marriage alliances that these three royal branches formed, about one third were endogamous14 , 13

14

Walter Demel, “European Nobility” oder “European Nobilities”? Betrachtungen anhand genealogischer Verflechtungen des europäischen Hochadels (1680–1800): Rostocker Beiträge zur deutschen und europäischen Geschichte 4 (1981), 81–105. The tendency to conclude marriages within the dynasty is most obvious in the Spanish branch of the house of Bourbon. Almost 40 percent of its marriages were endogamous.

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and another third united this Latin dynasty with the neighbouring houses of Savoy and Braganza. The majority of Bourbon marriages thus had a clear regional focus and were concluded within or near Bourbon lands in France, Spain and Italy. Brides from houses that were based in northern or eastern European regions, such as Maria Lescynksaja from Poland who was married to the Dauphin Louis in 1725, were the exception to the rule of voisinage. Moreover, half of the marriages of the royal house of Braganza and about one-third of the marriages of the royal house of Savoy were concluded with one of the many lines of the house of Bourbon. These findings point to the fact that the Catholic houses that ruled the countries around the Mediterranean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were connected by a dense kinship network. The houses of Bourbon, Savoy and Braganza can without any doubt be called one big family. The Catholic families of the Reich were not completely excluded from this interdynastic family formation of the south. The Habsburgs had many connections with the house of Savoy and with the Italian branches of the house of Bourbon. The Wittelsbachs and the Catholic lines of the house of Wettin did eventually marry into the Mediterranean family clan, but looking at numbers only, the German influence in the Latin-Catholic marriage circles was not very strong. The Protestant part of the European network of highest ranking dynasties, to which the Orthodox world had been linked since the beginning of the eighteenth century, seems to have had a different structure. The biggest dynastic player in this area was certainly the house of Oldenburg which was rooted in northern Germany and ascended to thrones in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia and Greece. Through marriage, it was well connected to almost all the relevant Protestant families on the Continent, and had particularly strong ties with the houses of Hohenzollern, Wettin, Hanover, Hessen-Kassel and Mecklenburg. Looking only at Oldenburg, one might gain the impression that the highest ranking Protestant houses had a much wider regional focus than their Catholic counterparts. On the other hand, not all houses of the northern sphere had similarly far-reaching family ties. Between 1714 and 1840, the house of Hanover ruled over a global empire, but its members were usually married to German ruling families that had territories nearby. The Hanoverians drew many of their partners from the Ernestine branches of the house of Wettin, and from the houses of Hesse and Mecklenburg. Only few marriages of the British royal family, like those concluded with members of the Danish ruling house in 1743 and 1766, established relations with a different European region and culture. The same can be said of an emerging dynasty such as the Hohenzollern that was a European power in the nineteenth century but concluded four-fifths of its marriages with the seven neighbouring houses, namely, Hesse, Guelf, Wettin, Oldenburg, Anhalt, Mecklenburg and Orange. Only few marriages, like those with the Romanovs in 1817 and with the Greek crown prince in 1889, pointed towards foreign European regions. The vast majority of brides and grooms for Prussian princes and princesses came from the neighbouring Protestant families of the Reich. 32

A Quantitative Approach

The marriages of the Romanovs followed a similar pattern. They were interested in finding partners mainly in their own realm or among high-ranking Protestant German houses. They also concluded some marriages with the ruling houses in Scandinavia. For confessional and certainly for political reasons, no member of the Romanov family ever married a Hanoverian after their ascension to the British throne. But despite this fact, there is not much evidence that the northern sphere was divided into an eastern and a western part. Looking at the houses and marriage circles of Europe, we are able to appreciate the exceptional character of the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the second half of the nineteenth century: “From Lisbon to St. Petersburg, from Scotland to Adrianople the spheres of our material and spiritual [. . .] power extend“, wrote Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria to his “dear uncle“ Duke Ernest II of Coburg in 188715. And there has probably never been a house whose branches extended further over the European Continent, and which was more flexible in adapting to different constitutional, confessional and ethnic contexts.

IV. Conclusion The material presented in this essay shows that even if the European family of dynasties existed in the sense that every ruling house in Europe had kinship relations with almost every other ruling house, this certainly did not mean that every house concluded marriages with every other house. There was obviously an elite of mainly royal houses that kept a certain distance to formally equal, but lower ranking houses; there was a Catholic and a Protestant/Orthodox sphere; and the marriage choices of most families seem to have had a circumscribed regional focus. To make sense of these findings, we must keep in mind that marriage is a very specific type of kinship relation that a family consciously engages in at a certain point of its history, whereas other types of kinship relations are the consequences of decisions taken by the forefathers. The fact that the European family of dynasties consisted of different marriage circles means that it consisted of zones in which kinship relations were particularly dense and created by deliberate decisions, which might imply that they were particularly meaningful. But meaning can hardly be reconstructed by means of quantitative analysis. One can certainly entertain some doubts about quantitative analysis in the field of dynastic history. First of all, we have to be aware that the number of links created by marriages between two families might be less important than their quality. Only one member of the royal Prussian family, for example, ever married a Romanov (Princess Charlotte’s marriage to the future Tsar Nicolas I in 1817), but family relations between those two families in the first half of the nineteenth century could not have been more intense. Secondly, the transformation of events in the life of a family into 15

Gollwitzer (note 12), 101.

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statistical data is rather difficult. One has just to think of the huge differences between the marriage of a prince or a princess, a first-born or a younger son, a first or a second marriage. These important distinctions can hardly be explained to a computer. Quantitative analysis of dynastic relations, even of a more sophisticated kind, can only supplement but never replace thick descriptions of kinship relations in Europe.

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Noble Siblings: Rivalry and Solidarity in Aristocratic and Noble Families

A fierce legal battle recently erupted within the Hohenzollern family over who was to be the legitimate head of this noble house after the premature death of Prince Louis Ferdinand jr. in 1977. Was it to be his son, the young Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia, or his cousin Philip Kiril whose father, Friedrich Wilhelm, would have been the legitimate heir to the throne had he not married a bourgeois woman and therefore been actively excluded by his father from the position as head of the Hohenzollern dynasty? A family contract based on traditional house rules and set up in 1938 by the Ex-Kaiser, his son Friedrich Wilhelm and his grandson Louis Ferdinand sr. stipulated that a marriage outside the aristocracy had to result in exclusion from the aspiration to the lost Hohenzollern throne and, therefore, also from the position of head of the house. However, Friedrich Wilhelm and his son Philipp Kiril, a Protestant priest, now maintained that a treaty like this was against basic rights guaranteed by the modern German constitution and should therefore be considered void. At stake was not only the unlikely future accession to the throne but also the inheritance of the family fortune of then about 100 billion German Marks. In 2004 in a controversial judgement the German Constitutional Court found in favour of Friedrich Wilhelm and his offspring, ruling that the Hohenzollern house rules were unconstitutional and that free choice of marriage partner ranged higher than the preservation of a pure aristocratic and Protestant line1 . However, the Constitutional Court handed the case back to the local court of Hechingen for a final settlement of the affair. This court, in whose jurisdiction the Hohenzollern Castle lies, decided in 2005 in a compromise ruling that the young Georg Friedrich was to be head of the house but that his uncle and aunts and their offspring were entitled to their share in the heritage. Ongoing litigation has so far prevented a final decision as to whether they will be able to enjoy this as their property or only have temporary usage of it. This late-twentieth-century Hohenzollern family feud reveals three features of noble and particularly of aristocratic families which are at the centre of this chapter’s focus on conflict and solidarity between siblings. Firstly, even at the beginning of the 21st century the Hohenzollern family still perceives itself not as an assembly of 1

http://www.ruby-erbrecht.de/tipp-der-woche/2006/tipp 060225.php.

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related modern nuclear families but as a ‘house’. This implies that there is a head of the house with the potential claim to the throne (lost almost hundred years ago) and far-reaching rights to regulate affairs within the house, i.e. interfere on various levels with the decision-making of the individual nuclear families belonging to the house. Secondly, the family members’ choice of marriage partners cannot be left to their individual decision but is the business of the whole house and to be approved of by its head or even a wider family council. The choice of a marriage partner of adequate noble rank and the same denomination is still of prime importance. Thirdly, the primary role of the family fortune is to support the head of the house and his claims to power. The other children have to comply with this. There may be major disagreement within noble families over the extent to which this should still apply. Such disagreement is not a contemporary phenomenon but can be traced back at least to the times of the French Revolution. Although the character of nobility was diverse, and a member of the aristocracy had very little in common with an impoverished country nobleman, there were certain challenges which were common to all noble houses and most frequently at the centre of family strife2 . The structural elements mentioned above were not the only but probably the most important ingredients for potential conflicts within noble houses. However, they were also the touchstones for solidarity, particularly between brothers and sisters. For even though this system of patriarchal control over the fortune and politics of the house seems to be potentially unjust to some of the children, by no means did it automatically result in sibling conflict. This article will look at the factors of conflict as well as the forces of integration and solidarity in noble families using the three fields mentioned above as a framework for analysis.

I. The noble ‘house’, its patriarchal order and intergenerational conflict The Hohenzollern conflict shows that even today there is considerable pressure particularly on members of the old aristocracy not to think in terms of nuclear families or even individual fortune, but to conceive themselves primarily as part of a larger unit, ‘the house’, such as the ‘Haus Hohenzollern’ or the ‘House of Windsor’. This frequently has far-reaching consequences for the members’ private conduct and personal prospects. In modern society, thinking in such larger genealogical units seems to be restricted to the aristocracy, but in the early modern period it was quite common for those parts of society which had some kind of property and social standing. How important the ‘house’ as a concept of social organisation was, becomes particularly clear in the German case, where the term was in common use until the late 18th century. Unlike in English, French or Italian the Latinate term ‘family’ (‘Familie’) was 2

36

For a concise overview over the differentiations within the European nobility see Ronald Asch, Nobilities in Transition 1550–1700. Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and Europe, London 2002, 20–29.

Noble Siblings

not adopted into the vernacular German language until very late. It was only in the late 17th century that it began to intrude and not before the late 18th or even early 19th century that it actually replaced the older term. At first ‘house’ and ‘family’ were used synonymously. Both terms denoted a larger household unit comprising not only the members of a nuclear family but also all other people under the rule of the head of a household (Hausvater) as well as its mobile and immobile property3 . Despite this general importance of the house rather than the nuclear family as a social unit, noble houses seem to have felt the need to strengthen their importance by adding a special temporal dimension. This was the reconstruction or invention of genealogies and heraldic images and their representation in family trees, a practice which has been common since the mediaeval period4 . This type of representation created a common space which the latest members of the genealogy shared with the earliest ones, creating a visible and apparently indisputable unit5 . Many noble families managed to trace their families back to saints, thus adding particular religious venerability to their origins and honour to their house and lineage and also creating obligations not only to their subjects but also to the members of the house themselves6 . The burden of preserving the house or, as it was also frequently called in German noble family charters, ‘the noble line and name’7 and keeping up its traditions and honour lay on the head of the house as well as on his children. For the head of the house preserving the noble line posed first of all the onerous task on the one hand of producing sufficient – preferably male – children in order to safeguard the biological continuity of the agnatic line even in times of high mortality as a result of epidemics or war, and on the other hand of ensuring that his duty of providing an adequate noble lifestyle for so many children did not ruin the material basis of the house and its main heir.

3

4 5 6

7

To a certain extent this was also the case in late medieval and early modern Italy, where famiglia and casa seemed to have been interchangeable. However, casa was not used as frequently as famiglia. See e.g. Leon Battista Alberti, The family in Renaissance Florence. A translation by Ren´ee Neu Watkins of I libri della famiglia, Columbia 1969. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Stammbäume. Eine illustrierte Geschichte der Ahnenkunde, Munich 2004, 46. Peter Czerwinski, Gegenwärtigkeit. Simultane Räume und zyklische Zeiten, Formen von Regeneration und Genealogie im Mittelalter, Munich 1993, 161. In the nineteenth and twentieth century this aspect was particularly stressed by a romantic revival of noble traditions. See e.g. Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein, Adelsherrschaft und Adelskultur in Deutschland, Frankfurt a. M. et.al. 1989, 121f. For the general context see Kilian Heck / Bernhard Jahn (eds.), Genealogie als Denkform in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, (Studien und Texte zur Sozialgeschichte der Literatur, Bd. 40) Tübingen 2000; ibid., Das Fundament der Machtbehauptung.Die Ahnentafel als genealogischeGrundstrukturder Neuzeit: Genealogie und Genetik. Schnittstellen zwischen Biologie und Kulturgeschichte, ed. Sigrid Weigel, Berlin 2002, 45–56; ibid., Genealogie als Monument und Argument. Der Beitrag dynastischer Wappen zur politischen Raumbildung der Neuzeit, Berlin 2002. Regarding „Erhaltung adeligen Stamms und Namens“ see Heinz Reif, Westfälischer Adel 1770– 1860. Vom Herrschaftsstand zur regionalen Elite, (Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft 35) Göttingen 1979, 79.

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This was a difficult balancing act which involved careful internal family planning as well as some legal framework for the inheritance of the family’s fortune. The most important legal instrument proved to be regulations which defined certain parts of the heritage as family property which could neither be divided up nor sold, but belonged to the house and had to be passed on intact from generation to generation. Many of the European ruling houses were able to create such house property (Hausgüter) since the 14th century by the simple act of defining them as such. In the Reich, however, the division of major territories through inheritance was still quite common as late as the 16th century, but then ceased to be practised – with the major exception perhaps of the house of Saxe-Anhalt which saw continuing partitions until the late 18th century. The lower nobility could not simply declare their property exempt from general inheritance regulations but had to resort to a particular mechanism in Roman inheritance law, the fee tail or entail. This allowed them to register some or all of their immobile family property as exempt from normal inheritance customs and so to be handed down intact not as individual but as family property which could neither be divided, nor sold nor mortgaged8 . This was normally combined with a system of male primogeniture, which made the eldest son the prime heir and future head of the house entitled to the sole usage of this house property (fee tail male)9 . This system of entailment spread from southern Europe to the German Empire where the Fideikommiss (entail) became particularly popular amongst noble families in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was, however, not adopted by all noble families and there were regions in the Reich such as Hesse, where there were hardly any entails in the lower nobility before the mid-nineteenth century10 . In Prussia, where entails became very popular amongst the Junkers, an 1807 edict allowed families to reverse an entailment of their property by a general family resolution. However, it was only after World War I when this peculiar institution was finally abolished in most European countries except Britain where it can still exist11. Entails limited individual family decision-making and thus contributed towards lowering potential tension between the generations and siblings who, as far as inheritance was concerned, had to be treated in an unequal way in order to preserve the house and the line. However, even if it was not at a father’s discretion to choose his heir and stipulate his inheritance, he was still under obligation to compensate the other children and provide them the basic material security to permit them a way and standard of living which was neither detrimental to their own nor the family’s honour. 8 9

10 11

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For a detailed analysis of why and how this system of entailing spread among the Westphalian nobility particularly after the Thirty Years’ War see Reif (note 7), 80–103. A famous literary case where ‘fee tail male’ resulted in the complete exclusion of five daughters from their father’s inheritance and the handing over of the whole estate to the next nearest male heir is presented in Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, where the Longbourne estate had to be handed over to cousin William Collins, and the five Bennet daughters had to do without. Gregory W. Pedlow, The Survival of the Hessian Nobility, 1770–1870, Princeton 1988, 61f. In Germany the Fideikommiss was abolished in 1938. However, German courts also have to deal with some consequences of these older regulations up to the present day.

Noble Siblings

For children, particularly of the aristocracy, had a right to an appropriate standard of living which allowed them a certain way of life and particularly, in the case of daughters, a marriage partner of equal standing. The way this was accomplished or denied could cause considerable disagreement not only between fathers and their children, but also between siblings who competed for their share in the inheritance.

II. Bachelors, spinsters and unsuitable marriages For aristocratic or royal houses the choice of suitable marriage partners for their children was a question of the highest political importance which affected not only their house but also their territory and the state in general. Marriages were never a mere family affair but a state matter, as they established potential claims not only of one’s own house to other territories or crowns, but also, through the out-marriages of daughters, those of other aristocratic houses to one’s own, if a generation happened to fail to provide a male heir. The choice of marriage partners was therefore embedded in a complicated system of political alliances and, in fact, often limited to a small number of eligible families12. This placed considerable strain on aristocratic children who (against general European custom) frequently had their marriage partners chosen for them at a very early age and had little chance not to consent to their family’s decision. This choice was rarely made without internal family conflict, especially as resistance on the part of the children could threaten the honour of both parties. And even noble children could not be married against their will according to the doctrine of both Catholic and Protestant churches. Under no circumstances could there be a legally valid marriage without free consent. So early promises made by parents could be at risk if children resisted their parents’ choice as they matured. However, the disinclination of a child towards a prearranged marriage was sometimes used as a pretext to get out of a politically no-longer desirable arrangement, a development which could prove particularly harmful to the honour of the refused party. Not all, however, resorted to such drastic measures as Count Franz Christof von Khevenhüller, who in May 1613, after having been kept waiting under this pretext, but in fact for entirely different reasons, abducted his promised bride (with imperial consent) in Mai 1613 and married her on the same day13 . For the lesser nobility finding a suitable marriage partner for the heir apparent was of no less importance than for the aristocracy. Equally important, however, was the successful prevention of the other children from marriage altogether. Since economic resources were more limited, the preservation of the status of the house depended increasingly on ensuring that if family property had to be divided through inheritance, 12 13

For the quite narrow and fragmented marriage circles of the European ruling houses see Daniel Schönpflug’s analysis in this volume. Beatrix Bastl, Tugend, Liebe, Ehre. Die adelige Frau in der Frühen Neuzeit, Cologne/Weimar/ Vienna 2000, 156.

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it became reunited in the next generation by preventing some children from having heirs of their own. It is a general feature particularly of the agrarian marriage pattern in Western Europe not only that the age of first marriage was comparatively high, but also that well into the nineteenth century a large proportion of any given birth cohort stayed single14 . The European nobility was no exception to this. On the contrary, particularly in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in most European countries (with the exception of Britain) well over thirty percent of the young men and women of the nobility never married. In early-eighteenth-century France over fifty percent of young noble men and over sixty percent of noble women did not enter marriage. These figures gradually decreased during the eighteenth century. Low marriage rates occurred in particular in states or territories where the rules of noble endogamy were strict, whereas in Britain or in the German state of Hesse, where the boundaries between the nobility and the commercial bourgeoisie were more permeable, the rate of married adult nobles was constantly much higher than in the rest of Europe15 . Having to stay single was a requirement noble offspring did not always find easy to comply with and parents did not always succeed in their efforts to make their children submit to this demand for family solidarity. The Catholic nobility in most territories could provide their younger sons and daughters with posts and positions in the Catholic church – some high up in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, others only in small benefices in nunneries or similar institutions16. Protestant families had no such outlets and had to endeavour to provide their children with posts in the military or in state administration – or make them stay single without the support of the particular spiritual background provided by the Catholic church. In Catholic as well as Protestant families this system resulted frequently in illegitimate children, m´esalliances or morganatic marriages17 . Several studies, however, show that overall this system of family limitation also functioned reasonably well and must have rested on a considerable degree of family solidarity. This seems to have been true at least for the period up to the late eighteenth century when there was little open revolt by children against this kind of parental family planning. However, the political upheaval caused by the French Revolution 14 15 16 17

40

See John Hajnal, European Marriage Patterns in Perspective: Population in History. Essays in Historical Demography, ed. D. V. Glass / D. E. C. Eversley, London 1965, 101–143, 130ff. Pedlow (note 10), 37f. For a comprehensive analysis of this system for the Westphalian nobility see Reif (note 7), 118– 122. Andreas Gestrich, Neuzeit: Geschichte der Familie, Andreas Gestrich / Jens-Uwe Krause / Michael Mitterauer, Stuttgart 2002, 364–652, 457. For the financial burden of paying for the illegitimate offspring of their sons see e.g. Thomas Barth, Adelige Lebenswege im Alten Reich. Der Landadel der Oberpfalz im 18. Jahrhundert, Regensburg 2005, 157. As already mentioned it was particularly Britain and a few German territories like Hesse, where the lower nobility was – at times – more open towards marrying their younger children into the commercial classes. Here, marriage ratios within the nobility were much higher. In the English aristocracy, however, celibacy was on the increase after the mid-sixteenth century. See Lawrence Stone / Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, An Open Elite? England 1540–1880, Oxford 1984, 87–93. For the controversial debate on the peculiarities of the English nobility see Asch (note 2), 25–28.

Noble Siblings

in most of Europe, which for many territories under French influence brought the breakdown of the old legal privileges of the nobility and the introduction of French revolutionary law, seems to have upset this system of controlling the physical reproduction of the house through enforced celibacy. For the Westfalian nobility Reif has pointed out that the willingness of younger sons to comply with these rules was declining towards the end of the eighteenth century18 . Backed by a constitutional state which stressed legal equality, younger sons and daughters from noble families increasingly put the fulfilment of their own aspirations before the maintenance of the house. An increasing number of younger sons and daughters who would have stayed single earlier on, married and also started to question parental inheritance settlements. Particularly in the period around 1800 many eldest sons of the Westfalian nobility took bourgeois marriage partners or partners from outside the usual marriage circles of their families. This, and also the fact that in the late nineteenth century they were more prepared to act according to the house rules, shows how much the young nobility was affected by the Zeitgeist of the time19.

III. Inheritance disputes and rivalries The discrepancies in individual prospects and fortunes between noble siblings were caused by the limited material assets of most noble families and their maxim of keeping them together at all costs in order to preserve the social status of the house. Envy of the fortunate heir by the unfortunate brothers and sisters who had to stay single or make do with only a small portion of the family’s wealth was therefore one of the permanent features in family documents and also features prominently in eighteenthand nineteenth-century European literature. The Prussian noble and Romantic writer Achim von Arnim dedicated a whole story to the Majoratsherren, the favoured male heirs who were allowed to take over the estate. He criticised them for their stinginess and lack of sufficient care for their impoverished younger relatives who regarded their riches with envy20 . That this envy between brothers and sisters posed a potential risk 18

19 20

See particularly Heinz Reif, Väterliche Gewalt und ,kindliche Narrheit’. Familienkonflikte im katholischen Adel vor der Französischen Revolution: Die Familie in der Geschichte, ed. Heinz Reif, Göttingen 1982, 82–113, but also ibid. (note 7), 261–283. Without giving exact figures Reif also maintains that at the same time the eighteenth century saw a decline in the numbers of illegitimate children in the Westphalian nobility. See ibid.. (note 7), 106. For Britain Stone reports developments in the opposite direction, where sexual promiscuity among the higher aristocracy seemed to have increased during the eighteenth century. He refers, however, mainly to extramarital relationships, and not to the consequences of enforced celibacy. See Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800, Harmondsworth 1979, 330–332. Reif (note 7), 259. See Achim von Arnim, Der Majoratsherr (1820): Isabella von Ägypten und andere Erzählungen by Achim von Arnim, Zürich 1959, 315–326, 315: „Der Majoratsherr lebte mit seiner Mutter in der Fremde und brauchte bei dem übrigen Umfange seiner Einnahme nicht zu vermissen, was er in diesem Hause unbenutzt ließ. Der Haushofmeister zog der Stiftung gemäß alle Uhren auf

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to the preservation of the family was clearly seen by many parents. After the Prussian noble Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz had entailed his estate he wrote in his will in 1831 that he hoped that his children would always regard the house as a whole and remain for ever in unity and affection to one another and not envy their older brother if fortune favoured him before themselves21 . In many families these parental admonitions did not in fact prevent disputes over the inheritance after the father had died. A particular risk of a family feud arose when there were male heirs from different marriages. The Bavarian noble von Vieregg, for example, left his entailed estate to a son of his third wife, explicitly excluding his eldest son because he did not consider him fit to marry well and continue the line. However, this regulation also served him well as he was able to stay in power for longer without having to hand over parts of the estate to his older children. This seems to have proved a very difficult regulation after all, since shortly before his death von Vieregg must have changed his mind, and handed over the estate to the second son of his second marriage. After some negotiation his third wife agreed to this settlement only after it became clear that one of her children was going to inherit a larger estate from the side of her family. She also made sure that the newly designated heir was to be financially responsible for her upkeep and the education of her children. Even though settlements such as these were reached without litigation there were rivalries between the children of different marriages which required a careful legal framework to avoid future conflict22 . In Hesse, where the lower nobility, the Ritterschaft, did not resort to entails to preserve their social status the partitioning of estates posed a problem, as they were frequently simply not large enough to provide a noble living to several independent families. However, not having an estate excluded a man and his family from the Ritterschaft and its privileges, in particular from the access to church benefices for widows and daughters. The Hesse nobility reacted to this problem by frequently passing estates down as common heritage of several brothers who ran it in joint ownership. In some cases this worked well but in others it proved very difficult and caused permanent conflict: “Joint ownership enabled a large number of family members to partici-

21

22

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und fütterte eine bestimmte Zahl von Katzen, welche die nagenden Mäuse wegfangen sollten, und teilte jeden Sonnabend eine gewisse Zahl von Pfennigen an die Armen im Hofe aus. Leicht hätten sich unter diesen Armen, wenn sie sich dessen nicht geschämt hätten, die Verwandten dieses Hauses einfinden können, dessen jüngere Linien bei der Bildung des großen Majorats völlig vergessen worden waren. Überhaupt schien das Majorat wenig Segen zu bringen, denn die reichen Besitzer waren selten ihres Reichtums froh geworden, während die Nichtbesitzer mit Neid zu ihnen aufblickten.“ Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz, Ein märkischer Edelmann im Zeitalter der Befreiungskriege, ed. Friedrich Meusel, vol 1, Berlin 1908, 716: „Ich hoffe, dass alle meine Kinder sich beständig des Geschlechtes erinnern werden, aus dem sie entsprossen sind [. . . ] und in steter Einigkeit und Liebe zueinander verbleiben werden, so daß sie den Bruder nicht beneiden werden, wenn das Glück ihn begünstigen sollte“. See Beate Spiegel, Adliger Alltag auf dem Land. Eine Hofmarksherrin, ihre Familie und ihre Untertanen in Tutzing um 1740, (Münchner Beiträge zur Volkskunde 18) Münster 1997, 57f., 62–64.

Noble Siblings

pate in the ownership of noble status, but this was not always conducive to harmonious family relations. Meetings of the von Dörnberg family in the eighteenth century, for example, were sometimes so tense that family members are said to have taken loaded pistols with them”23 . So not dividing up the heritage did not necessarily mean less tension between siblings, and even if they did not take such an extreme form as with the von Dörnbergs, conflicts were frequent in Hesse, and the “records of the Hessian law courts are full of lawsuits between different families, different branches of the same family, and individuals within the same branch of a family”24. The same was the case in the Westphalian nobility, where lawsuits between brothers and sisters increased towards the end of the eighteenth century, and the old culture of waiving one’s owns claims for the benefit of the house came to an end – at least for a transition period until the nobility had adjusted economically and otherwise to the new post-revolutionary era25 . It was not only the rivalry of younger brothers that was behind this development. It was also driven by the sisters who, in the nobility, gained not only more control over their financial matters, but were also much less likely to be forced into marriages without their consent. This is apparent for the English aristocracy as well as for the lower German nobility26. The position of noble women appears to have changed considerably, in private as well as in public, and provides a very sensitive indicator for power relations within the family. This affected the intergenerational relations as well as relations between brothers and sisters which also became less hierarchical. They addressed each other less formally, and particularly sisters frequently became the confidantes of their brothers in a new culture of friendship following the rising model of the closely knit nuclear family unit of the bourgeois family27 . However, the fact that even before the end of the eighteenth century women cooperated closely with their brothers in planning their own careers and actively participated in the task of furthering the general family interest is demonstrated by the somewhat dubious career of a countess von Grävenitz who became mistress to Duke Eberhard Ludwig of Württemberg in the early 1700s. The two siblings von Grävenitz worked their way into the court society of this petty prince and enjoyed considerable advancement, having titles to offices and land transferred to them. They both worked in the interests of their family, trying to secure their newly acquired status and estates for their offspring, but, interestingly enough, fell out with each other, when Christina von Grävenitz refused to accept the superiority of her brother as the head of the 23 24 25

26 27

Pedlow (note 10), 61. Ibid., 57. Reif (note 7), 272f. For lawsuits between brothers and sisters of the lower nobility in Bavaria see e.g. Barth (note 17), 151–158, where the author also points at the severe economic consequences of many of these lawsuits. For England see Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of Aristocracy 1558–1641, London 1965, 670f.; for Westphalia see Reif (note 7), 263f. Reif (note 7), 269–278. However, how bourgeois the origins of this model of the bourgeois family really were, has been widely debated among family historians. See Stone (note 18), 411ff.

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Andreas Gestrich

house28 . Thus it was not the new type of friendship that bound these two together, but a very rational plan and conventional aims. But even in this case the social rise of women could upset the older hierarchical structures between brothers and sisters.

IV. Conclusion Social relations within noble families were under particular strain from a combination of patriarchal traditions and the need to maintain the social status of the family. This frequently resulted in unequal treatment particularly of daughters and younger sons who had to comply by sacrificing their own careers and expectations for the good of the noble house. Even though there may have been discontent and unhappiness, in general the hierarchical structure of the family and the power of the collective over the individual seems to have been accepted, and children did mostly comply with the wishes of their parents. This seems to have been possible only on the basis of relatively formal and distant relationships not only between children and parents but also among siblings. It is only in the eighteenth century that this seems to have changed on a larger scale. Children then not only questioned parental authority to decide over their lives, but also demanded equal treatment where the family inheritance was concerned. This could change sibling relations for the better or the worse. The dominant position of the eldest brother as the head of the house was no longer as easily recognized as had been the case in earlier times. Brothers and sisters were also able to become closer and develop proper friendships, thus transforming the older type of solidarity with the house to a modified modern basis. However, as the Hohenzollern case has shown, there seem to have been differences in this development between the different social strata of nobility. As there was much more at stake, the rules of aristocratic and royal houses stayed much tighter, their structures more hierarchical and sibling relationships more exposed to strain from traditional inequality.

28

44

Sybille Oßwald-Bargende, Die Mätresse, der Fürst und die Macht. Christina Wilhelmina von Grävenitz und die höfische Gesellschaft, Frankfurt a. M. 2002, 217–221. Oßwald-Bargende describes the relationship between the two siblings as a very functional and not particularly affectionate one.

Clarissa Campbell Orr

Anglo-German Kinship Networks in 1832 Dynastic Survival and Adaptation∗ I. Continuity or Rupture? In 1835 Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha took part in his first official royal function: he attended the golden jubilee celebration of his great-grandfather’s accession to power as Duke Frederick Francis I of Mecklenburg-Schwerin1 . This was a significant celebration of continuity for a conservative-minded principality within the post-Congress of Vienna German Confederation. In Great Britain in 1835, William IV, third son of George III and Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had enjoyed five years of rule, as King of both Great Britain and of Hanover, still linked by the Personal Union. His wife was Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, whose family was closely linked to the Saxe-Gotha branch of the Saxon duchies (see Table)2 . As she looked extremely unlikely to bear healthy children after the death of two infant daughters, the heiress presumptive Princess Victoria was a product of another Hanoverian/Saxon marriage, that of Albert’s aunt, Victoire, to William’s next brother, Edward Duke of Kent. Only five years after Albert’s attendance at the Schwerin jubilee Albert married his cousin Victoria. Their partnership and marital links to the Danish monarchy would constitute a powerful set of kinship networks through which, together with Albert’s Coburg relatives, the descendants of Victoria as ‘grandmama’ of Europe, and Chris∗

1

2

I would like to thank Karina Urbach for inviting me to contribute to this volume, and Peter Wilson and Torsten Riotte for helpful comments on draft versions. Genealogies have been consulted in Europäische Stammtafeln, Neue Folge, Band I: Die Deutschen Staaten, Marburg, 1980; Burke’s Royal Families of the World, vol. I: Europe and Latin America ed. Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, 2 vols., London, 1977; and Thomas Nugent, History of Vandalia, 3 vols., London, 1772, vol. I. Silvia Böcking, Ich mag die Geister der Entfernten. Aus der Autographensammlung der Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg, Coburg 2006, 52. Unfortunately Albert’s great-grandfather is incorrectly referred to here as Grand-Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz instead of MecklenburgSchwerin. Most British biographers of Prince Albert ignore this episode. George III’s uncle Duke Fredrick III of Saxe-Gotha-Altenberg had married Louise Dorothea of Saxe-Meiningen, a leading light in the German Aufklärung and a friend of Frederick II of Prussia; their son Ernest married his Saxe-Meiningen cousin, Charlotte; and her niece was Adelaide, William IV’s consort.

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tian IX of Denmark as ‘grandfather’, would occupy most of the thrones of Europe. The principle of monarchy would persist until 1914 and family members would seem ever more tightly linked together. The social and ceremonial rituals of European royalty, led by the British, German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, would become ever more fluently orchestrated and displayed, encoded in increasingly complicated forms of precedence, court dress and uniform, whether these were the state occasions of accessions, coronations, marriages and funerals, or the regular off-duty gatherings at spas, summer residences and yachting holidays-cum-naval reviews these royal kin enjoyed3 . Yet the dynastic continuity suggested by this genealogical data gives a false impression. The bare facts conceal ruptures of inheritance patterns, different configurations of the territories these royal kin ruled, changing relations between rulers and their subjects, and altered styles of monarchy. The principal rupture was the French Revolution and the re-organisation of Europe occasioned by the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Until Bonaparte re-asserted the principle of monarchy by elevating his own dynasty, it even looked as though republics might replace princes and kings. Frederick Francis of Schwerin could indeed celebrate fifty years of rule in 1835, but in successive state formations. He had first been a Duke of the Holy Roman Empire in a principality that had only settled its relationships with the Strelitz cadet branch thirty years before his accession, and had only established ducal control over a key port and university city, Rostock, in 1788. He was still trying to enlarge territory: the Bavarian succession crisis of 1778–9 gave an opportunity to reinstate (unsuccessfully) old claims to the margravate of Leuchtenberg. By 1803, Frederick Francis had regained control over Swedish Wismar by granting a 99 year mortgage to the Swedish king, but in the same year, despite efforts to remain protected by the Prussian patrolled neutrality zone, he had been dispossessed by the French of his territory. He was reinstated with Russian support in 1807 after the Treaty of Tilsit between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander, but was obliged to join Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhine4 . The 1815 Congress of Vienna had enabled him to become a Grand Duke in the new German Confederation. The same person ruled Schwerin but titles and territory had all been modified. Fredrick’s political survival as a ruler was as remarkable as his longevity: he even outlived his heir. Across the channel, in 1832 William IV’s Britain may have seemed the least disturbed monarchy of any in Europe, and enjoyed great power status as one of the victors against Napoleon. Unlike those of France, Spain or Portugal, the British throne had never been occupied by Napoleon or his relatives, nor unlike the Austrian monarchy, the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic, or the states of the Italian peninsula had it been subject to territorial rearrangement. As a composite monarchy, the 3

4

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Theo Aronson, Grandmama of Europe. The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria, London 1973; Theo Aronson, A Family of Kings. The Descendants of Christian IX of Denmark, London 1976; David Duff, Hessian Tapestry, London 1967; Philip Mansel, Dressed to Rule. Royal and Court Costume from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II, London and New Haven 2005. Walther Killy and Rundolf Vierhaus (eds.), Dictionary of German Biography,Munich 2002, vol. 3.

Kinship Networks in 1832

United Kingdom had certainly cohered, weathering Irish rebellion in 1798 and creating union with its old dependent kingdom in 1800. Linda Colley has also argued that the wars against Napoleon finally consolidated the Scottish Union of 1707 by integrating its military and naval elites5 . Should anything befall Princess Victoria of Kent, the dynastic succession could pass to her cousins George of Cambridge and George of Cumberland. If she succeeded, the Hanoverians would retain their continental position by starting a second line of inheritance, since Victoria’s living male relatives, beginning with her uncle Ernest Duke of Cumberland and his heirs, would take precedence over any female succession to Hanover. But again, this appearance of dynastic success and national stability is deceptive. Despite twelve children of George III and Queen Charlotte surviving to adulthood, by 1817 the Royal Family faced dynastic oblivion when their only legitimate grandchild, Princess Charlotte of Wales, died in childbirth, together with a still-born son. The marriages between 1816 and 1818 of some of her uncles and aunts had begun to replenish the supply of lawful ‘heirs and spares’, but in 1832 none was of age to rule without a regent. In addition from the 1790s, a sophisticated political critique of monarchy had developed that could feed on the moral transgressions or failures in dignity of any king or his kin – of which there were plentiful examples, particularly from the Prince of Wales, Regent after 1811 and king 1820–1830. This was reinforced by a feminist demand for the rights of women; and notorious examples of mistreated women included a mistress and wife of the same prince6 . Although republicanism commanded only minority support, there was a growing demand for the reform of parliament, which would limit royal power. In 1830 there was a further chapter of European revolution, which underlined the contingency of the 1815 settlement, while admittedly providing a new kingdom of the Belgians for Albert’s uncle, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Princess Charlotte’s widower. The revolutionary year of 1830 also served as a warning to William IV that resisting constitutional change was imprudent. So 1832 marked an important stage in the development of British monarchy when he bowed to parliamentary reform, although his consort was accused of urging him to reaction. His brothers reflected the divisions created by the pressure to reform, with Ernest resisting constitutional reform and its confessional counter-part, Catholic Emancipation, while Augustus Duke of Sussex had supported both. Furthermore if we look at the Hanoverian side of the personal union, instead of looking only at their British experience, the Anglo-Hanoverian Royal Family had experienced similar changes to many of their continental counter-parts. After Prussia’s peace with France in 1785, Hanover endured Prussian control over the north German neutrality zone. The Hanoverian electorate was awarded the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabruck when the ecclesiastical territory of the old Holy Roman Empire was 5 6

Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707–1837, 2nd ed., London 2005. Anna Clark, Scandal. The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution, Princeton and Oxford 2004; Steven Parissien, George IV. The Grand Entertainment, London 2001; Clarissa Campbell Orr, The Feminisation of the Monarchy 1780–2000. Royal Masculinity and Female Empowerment: The Monarchy and the British People, ed. A. Olechnowicz, Cambridge 2007, 76–107.

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mediatised in 1803. (It had been previously ruled by alternating Catholic and Protestant nominees; in 1803 its ruler was Frederick Duke of York, George III’s second son, who had been trained to assume his German role). But this was swiftly followed by French occupation without resistance from Prussia, despite family ties between the respective ruling families of Britain and Prussia. The Congress of Vienna awarded Hanover more territory, chiefly Hildesheim and East Frisia, as well as royal status in compensation for loss of the Electoral title. However, further tensions developed between the two dynasties which hindered Prussian cession of these territories. During the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, Britain had upheld monarchical legitimacy by playing host to exiled rulers, from France, Brunswick and the Netherlands, the last two being dynastic relatives. But the dynasty was not immune from Napoleon’s dynastic aggrandisement, since Charlotte, Princess Royal, eldest daughter of George III and Queen Charlotte, had become related by marriage to the upstart Napoleonic dynasty. In the Restoration era it was plain that AngloGerman kinship would continue: but which of the numerous dynastic cousins would flourish through alliances with powerful Britain was by no means inevitable. Would it be the Saxon, Hessian, Prussian, Danish or Mecklenburg ones? Initially Queen Charlotte’s Mecklenburg relatives seemed on the ascendant. Not only had her Schwerin relative become a Grand Duke, her brother Charles, the ruler of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had been similarly elevated. But their dynastic aggrandisement would be halted by the Saxon duchies’ success at providing consorts. In 1803 George III’s Hessian relatives in Cassel had become Electors, and in 1806, in Hesse-Darmstadt, Grand Dukes. Surprisingly it was this junior branch which would prove the more adept at surviving within Prussian-led German unification, and at advancing itself through marriage into the British and Russian imperial families, at the same time as the king of Hanover was dispossessed of his kingdom. In fact, then, the Anglo-German network of 1832 depended on the successful surmounting of two challenges. First of these was the need to make or perpetuate useful strategic dynastic alliances through marriage, which would produce healthy, longlived, adult offspring. This was a challenge endemic to all royal families at all times, but twenty-two years of intermittent war also meant that princes who participated directly in the wars might not survive at all to rule whatever territories they still possessed. The most notable casualties were the ruling Duke of Brunswick, Charles William Frederick, George III’s brother-in-law, who perished at Jena, and his son and heir, killed at Quatre Bas. Second, for the surviving princes there was the particular political challenge of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, which had changed the eighteenth century dynastic state into the nineteenth century nationstate, and demanded that monarchies, whether surviving or restored, adapt to modified or new state institutions. This required of royal dynasties not only adroit political adjustment to the varying constitutional arrangements of their pre- and post-ancien r´egime states, but also military, naval, patriotic and moral leadership. Yet at the same time, the days of unquestioning acceptance of hereditary right were over. A mood of legitimism and religious revival could not annul the recent historical fact of so many 48

Kinship Networks in 1832

dethronements at the hands of Napoleon, not to mention the execution by Jacobin extremists of Louis XVI, the anointed Christian Majesty of France, representative of one of Europe’s oldest Christian monarchies. In 1832 the surviving Anglo-Hanoverians represented rather an odd mix of the ageing children of George III and Queen Charlotte, and a handful of their grandchildren, most of whom were young enough themselves to be the grandchildren of their elderly fathers. The main members of the Royal Family resident in Britain were William IV, formerly Duke of Clarence, third son of George III, and his wife Adelaide; Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Duchess of Kent, widow of George III’s fourth son Edward, and her daughter Victoria, (and also her daughter from her previous marriage, Feodore of Leiningen); and Augustus Duke of Sussex, the sixth son. He was unofficially married to a widow, Cecilia Buggin in 1832, and he also had two children not considered royal from a previous unofficial marriage. Then there were the unmarried Princesses Augusta and Sophia, and the childless Mary, who had married her cousin William Duke of Gloucester (died 1834). Abroad in Hanover, acting as regent for his brother William, was the seventh son Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, with his wife Augusta of Hesse-Cassel and their three children, George, Adelaide and Mary Adelaide, while Ernest, the fifth son, his wife and cousin Frederica, n´ee Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and their son George, lived in Berlin. Finally in Homburg there was Elizabeth, childless widow of Frederick of Hesse-Homburg (died 1840). In what follows I will probe the roots of Victoria and Albert’s marriage in the unprecedented alliances of her great-grandfather, Frederick, and her grandfather George, to Saxon and Mecklenburg brides, and the links between the Saxon and Mecklenburg dynasties. I will discuss how contingent was Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’s emergence and survival in the immense historical rupture of the Napoleonic era, and how much it owed to the capacities of Albert’s grandmother, Augusta of Reuss-Ebersdorff. I will then explore the limitations of George III’s dynastic strategy, the Hanoverian patriotism of his sons, the failure of Mecklenburg to benefit from its Hanoverian links, and the contrasting advancement of Hessian and Danish prospects. I will conclude with a brief look at how the consorts of William IV of Britain and Ernest of Hanover helped their husbands adapt to the new manners and morals of the 1830s.

II. The roots of the dynastic networks of 1832: opportunities for Mecklenburg and Saxe-Gotha To understand the networks of 1832, it is necessary to remember first that AngloGerman dynastic networks were nothing new. Secondly, the dynastic generation ruling in 1832 in Great Britain and Hanover was the product of a marriage fashioned seventy-one years earlier when George III had married a princess from MecklenburgStrelitz, Sophie Charlotte, sister of ruling Duke Adolphus IV, and that this was a departure from traditional marriage patterns. Up to this point the House of Hanover had mostly intermarried with the elder Brunswick branch of the family, that of 49

Clarissa Campbell Orr

Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, with the Prussian Hohenzollern, or with the House of Orange (where the hereditary Princes of Orange were Stadholders of the seven United Provinces, not hereditary monarchs). The links to Hesse-Cassel and Denmark, formed by the marriages of George III’s aunts Mary and Louise, will be discussed below. Frederick Prince of Wales, (died 1751), father of George III, had also departed from dynastic precedent in marrying Augusta of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, sister of the ruling Duke Frederick III. Neither the marriage of George III or of his father Frederick had therefore reinforced links with the House of Orange, the Prussian Hohenzollern, nor with the Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who had themselves made three marriages into the Hohenzollern (Fredrick II of Prussia and two siblings: see family tree). When in 1762 the British-Prussian alliance was ended this presented a dilemma for the BrunswickWolfenbüttel dynasty as to the desirability of intermarriage with the younger House of Brunswick, i.e. the House of Hanover, as opposed to continuing their links to Prussia. The Hereditary Prince, Charles William Frederick, did marry Augusta, sister of George III. The latter made efforts to renew the Hanover-Orange alliance of his aunt, Anne, by marrying one of his sisters to the young Dutch Prince Willem IV, but this was thwarted by Prussian influence in the Netherlands, and Willem married Wilhelmina of Prussia instead7 . The normal dynastic pattern was not resumed until the 1790s, but as the next section demonstrates, it failed to last. The corollary to this was that two minor dynasties, the House of MecklenburgStrelitz and that of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, gained the opportunity to lever themselves upward by their marriages, and in so doing to become competitors as to which of the two would reap the greatest benefit from these links. Both houses could boast long lineages and impeccable Protestant credentials, but were of lesser status in the Holy Roman Empire, ranking beneath the secular electorates such as Saxony, Hanover and Brandenburg (the Hohenzollern electorate), or the middle-ranking principalities such as Hesse-Cassel or Württemberg, who both cherished electoral ambitions (finally fulfilled in 1803). Hanover and Brandenburg-Prussia had been rivals over influence in Mecklenburg-Schwerin in the 1730s and 40s, when an Imperial Commission ruled in place of its deposed duke Charles Leopold, (deposed 1728, died 1747). The marriage of George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was to some extent a deliberate snub to Frederick II of Prussia, who had territorial disputes and inheritance rights with both branches of the Mecklenburg ducal family, although the implications for George III’s marriage of this Hanoverian-Prussian rivalry has been little appreciated8 .

7 8

50

Clarissa Campbell Orr, Dynastic Perspectives: The Hanoverian Dimension to British History, 1714–1837, ed. T. Riotte and B. Simms, Cambridge 2007, 213–251. Peter H. Wilson, From Reich to revolution. German History, 1558–1806, Basingstoke 2004; ibid., German Armies. War and German Politics 1648–1806, London 1998; Thomas Nugent, History of Vandalia, vol. 3, passim, London 1763–1770. I hope to explore this Prussian/Hanoverian background to the marriage of Queen Charlotte more fully in my forthcoming study of Queen Charlotte, provisionally entitled ‘A Consort and her Worlds’.

Catherine (r.1762-96)

Peter III (r.1761-2)

Nicholas *(r.1825-55, m. Charlotte of Prussia*)

m.2 Sophia Dorothea of Württemberg

m.1 Wilhelmina of HesseDarmstadt

Helen*

Ivan, deposed 1741, assassinated 1764

Anna m. Anton Ulric of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel

Catherine

Ivan (r.168276)

iii) Frederick*

Charles Leopold II (deposed 1728, d.1747)

Paul Frederick

Augusta of Hesse (=3rd wife)

Christian Louis (r.1728, suc.1747, d.1756)

August of SaxeGotha* Alexandrine of Prussia*

i) Louisa*

Frederick Francis*

Charlotte of Saxe-Saalfeld

Louisa of Saxe-Gotha*

Frederick William of Gustrow d.1695 (no issue)

Frederick I (1638-1688)

Dukes of Mecklenburg-Schwerin

ii) Charlotte

Louis

Christian VIII of Denmark

Sophia m.Frederick of Denmark

Gustave Caroline of Strelitz*

Ill. 2: Family Tree (1): Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Romanov. (Not all children indicated; birth order sometimes ignored for clarity. – * Denotes person appears also in Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Saxe-Gotha and Hanover chart [Ill. 3]).

Alexander (r.1801-25)

Paul (r.17961801)

Elizabeth (r.1741-61)

Anna (r.173040)

Romanov Tsars

Peter (r.1727-30)

m.2 Catherine (r.1725-7)

m.1 Eudoxia

m.2 Natalia

m.1 Maria

Anna m. Peter of Holstein

Peter the Great (r.1682-96)

Alexis (r.164576)

Kinship Networks in 1832

51

52

Louisa*

John August

Frederick Francis of Schwerin*

Louisa of Reuss Frederick Prince of Wales

George V of Hanover

Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, King of Hanover, suc.1837

George III, King of Great Britain, Elector of Hanover

Augusta

Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst (d. of Charles William, gt-uncle of Catherine the Great)

m.2) Christine of Baden-Durlach

m.1) Magdalena of Saxe-Weissenfels

Gustave Caroline*

Marie of SaxeAltenburg

Christine

Ts ar Nicholas I*

Alexandrine*

Louisa

Caroline of Hesse-Darmstadt

Paul Frederick of Schwerin*

Frederick William III of Prussia

Elizabeth Albertine of SaxeHildburghausen

Frederica of Hesse-Darmstadt

George

Charles

Frederick of Saxe-Altenburg (formerly Saxe-Hildburghausen)

Charles (suc.1794)

Charlotte*

Charlotte Frederica granddaughter

Charlotte

Ernest

Adolf Frederick III (no male issue)

m.3) Emilie of Schwarzburg-Sonders hausen

m.2) Johanna of Saxe-Gotha no issue

m.1) Marie of Mecklenburg-Gustrow no issue

Adolf Frederick IV (suc.1752)

Christian Louis of Schwerin*

Adolf Frederick II (16581708, suc 1688)

Dukes of Mecklenburg Strelitz

Ill. 3: Family Tree (2): Mecklenburg-Strelitz,Saxe-Gotha and Hanover. (Not all children indicated; birth order sometimes ignored for clarity. – * Denotes person appears also in Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Romanov chart [Ill. 2]).

Louisa*

Charlotte of SaxeMeiningen

Ernest II 17451804

August 17731822*

Louise Dorothea of SaxeMeiningen

Frederick III (16991722)

Frederick II (16761732)

Frederick I (164891)

Dukes of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg

Clarissa Campbell Orr

Kinship Networks in 1832

At the same time as Prussia’s rise to greatness in the reign of Frederick II, the Mecklenburg and Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg families had been able to deploy the strategy of dynastic marriages to improve their status within the Old Reich, providing brides to each other and to more powerful ruling dynasties. Charles Leopold of MecklenburgSchwerin had become the client of Peter the Great of Russia by marrying Peter’s niece Catherine. This Russian strategy was to continue for the next two centuries. At the start of the nineteenth century, as we will see in more detail below, Tsar Paul’s daughter Helen married the hereditary Prince Frederick of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (who predeceased his long-lived father, Frederick Francis). More prestigious and less problematic, given the Russian imperial family’s orthodox faith and recent orientation to western interests, was Charlotte of MecklenburgStrelitz’s marriage to George III. He had eschewed a marriage with his Saxe-GothaAltenberg first cousin, Frederica, but another Saxe-Gotha cousin, Louisa, (daughter of George III’s uncle John August) had married Frederick Francis of Schwerin. There were therefore good links between Hanover, Saxe-Gotha-Altenberg, and the two branches of the Mecklenburg dynasty in Schwerin and Strelitz, and these links provide continuities to the better known alliance of Albert and Victoria. Frederick Francis’ and Louisa’s daughter, another Louisa, was the consort of her cousin, the penultimate Duke August of Saxe-Gotha Altenberg. The succession passed first to his brother Frederick her uncle, and on his death in 1825 the duchies were rearranged, to his daughter, another Louisa, who had already been married to her cousin Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld with this dynastic prospect in mind. In 1826 he became Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha after surrendering the Saalfeld part of his patrimony. It was their son, Albert, who would attend the Schwerin Golden Jubilee of his great-grandfather in 1835, and then married his British cousin. The dynastic links between Hanover, both Mecklenburg duchies and Saxe-Gotha, formed in the 1760s and 1770s were therefore to come to spectacular fruition in Albert’s and Victoria’s marriage, and the marriages of their children to Danish, Prussian and Hesse-Darmstadt kin. But it is important to underline how contingent this succession was. The status of the small Saxon duchies, descendants of the Protestant, Ernestine line who had been dispossessed of the Electoral bonnet at the Reformation, were especially vulnerable to genealogical pressure and amalgamation into territory ruled by other Saxon kin. As these small duchies subdivided their territory to provide patrimonies for younger sons, they risked becoming economically unviable. Queen Charlotte’s cousin, Ernest Frederick III, ruling Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen, is a case in point: by 1769 his duchy was bankrupt and under imperial administration, with his paternal great-uncle Joseph Frederick as regent. He was an enormously successful and wealthy general in imperial service. Younger brothers of lesser ruling princes like these Saxon dukes often needed for financial reasons to be career soldiers. Prince Albert’s military forbears included his great-great uncle, Frederick Josiah of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Commander in Chief of the First Coalition against France, who was in Austrian service, and his

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uncle Leopold, who was in Russian service9 . When Frederick Josiah died in 1815, Augusta of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, widow of his great-nephew Frederick Anton, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and mother of Leopold and Victoire (the future Duchess of Kent), reflected “he became a very distinguished soldier and a good leader, the pride of his whole family, who probably without him would never have taken such a prominent place in the annals of the times”10. If men could advance their family’s fame and fortune through soldiering, the contribution women could make to advance their families and secure their dynastic capital was through carefully arranged marriages. John Davis’ chapter explores the very effective dynastic links established by the marriages of Augusta’s children in greater detail. In the Saxon duchies, there were always dynastic advantages to marriages between the related branches; but this could have miserable personal results. Albert’s mother Louise had been married to Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld because her claims on Saxe-Gotha-Altenberg helped him secure the latter duchy; but by the time this happened, she had been banished from court in 1824 and never saw her children again, as the personal unhappiness of her marriage drove her to a love affair. This meant that Albert became close to his redoubtable grandmother Augusta, by birth a princess of Reuss-Ebersdorff. Augusta may have married into a dynasty that was on the rise, but she and her children then experienced very directly some of the changes Napoleon brought to the old German states and their traditions, which threatened their survival in every sense. Women left to manage a family when husbands and sons were away fighting had an acute grasp of the disruptions and threats visited on dynasties by the French and Napoleonic wars, and their testimony is extremely valuable. Augusta confided her feelings about these to her diary, which survives in the Windsor Archives. The Prussian defeat at Jena and Auerstedt in 1806 spilled directly onto her territory, and she witnessed the fatal casualties being brought into the Schloss at Saalfeld, including the dashing Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia: “the corpse of a grandson of a King abandoned on the ground, like some victim of a common murderous assault”11. The prince’s grandparents were Frederick William I of Prussia and Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, sister of George II. A few months earlier when the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved Augusta deplored Francis II’s “cowardly resignation of the crown worn by the Hapsburgs [sic] for so many centuries” which “now gives the poor country entirely over to the successful adventurer, who founds his greatness on destruction . . . ” 9

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Fredrick Duke of York, George III’s second son, and in command of the British troops in the Netherlands, 1793–5, refers constantly to Frederick Josiah in his letters to George III; A. Aspinall (ed.), Later Correspondenceof George III, Cambridge 1962–70.The failures of the First Coalition tarnished the Frederick Josiah’s military reputation considerably. HRH Princess Beatrice (ed.), In Napoleonic Days. Extracts from the private diary of Augusta, Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Queen Victoria’s maternal grandmother, 1806–1821, London 1941. Princess Beatrice published these extracts when Britain faced another continental tyrant. Quotations are from this published edition. Princess Beatrice (note 10), 8.

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Saxony became a kingdom in 1806, but “The king (Frederick Augustus) wears his thorny crown with the feelings of a slave in chains . . . ”12 . On December 26th 1810, she recorded further repercussions from Saxony’s advancement: “Leopold has returned this evening. He has succeeded in obtaining the St John’s Cross (Johanniter-Kreuz). This venerable order of knighthood, whose foundation dates from the time of the Crusades, is now also to cease. The big revenues amassed by the Order are to be surrendered to the Crown, which owing to Napoleon’s spoliation is badly in need of funds. Thus disappears from the earth, everything that is ancient and revered. The spirit of chivalry no longer fits in with our present egotistical times, when success is all that is cared for and seems to flourish”13. The secularisation of ecclesiastical principalities had affected her Coburg sister-in-law Caroline, who was dispossessed of her position as canoness in the imperial abbey of Gandersheim. “The times have dealt hardly and devastatingly with her simple life, and the Institution to which she belonged has been closed down after 1000 years!”14 . Imperial Protestant abbeys like this, Herford and Quedlinburg provided useful income and dignified status to unmarried daughters of princely houses, without requiring religious vows. States which like Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld were able to retain their identity only did so through precarious and uncertain mediation to Napoleon, and after 1806, to Alexander I of Russia, whose patronage was sought in order to influence his new ally. Dynastic links could help small principalities navigate through very choppy waters in times of international tension. Augusta’s son Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, whose sister Julie was married to Alexander’s brother, Grand Duke Constantine, inherited the duchy in December 1806, and spent the next two years in prolonged and expensive visits to both French and Russian Emperors, trying to get security and better terms for his duchy. Augusta journeyed personally at very short notice to Weimar in 1808 to meet the Russian Tsar, whose German wife was a Princess of Baden. Ignoring the opportunity to meet the Tsar would have been a breach of etiquette; and as Julie was separated from her husband, ostensibly travelling for her health and to visit family, family etiquette was especially important. Unquestionably, the dynastic ties to the Romanovs helped preserve this tiny duchy as an independent state in the post-1815 German Confederation. Over these years Augusta met some of Queen Charlotte’s Mecklenburg-Strelitz nieces and nephews, little knowing her son Leopold would marry Queen Charlotte’s grand-daughter Charlotte of Wales in 1816. In Weimar when she met Tsar Alexander she also encountered the Mecklenburg-Strelitz heir, Queen Charlotte’s nephew, 12 13 14

Ibid., 2–3, 21. Ibid., 75. Ibid., 80–1.

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Prince George. On an earlier visit she had reflected “he is very pleasing and gentlemanlike and has a nice face”15 . Three years later George visited with his sister Frederica, still grieving for another sibling, Frederick William III of Prussia’s adored consort: “she talked incessantly and tearfully about the death of the beloved and unforgettable Queen Louise”16 . In 1810 she entertained the Hereditary Princess of SaxeHildburghausen, whose mother, Charlotte, was Prince George’s sister, and Queen Charlotte’s niece and namesake17 . Princess Augusta found the 1810 visit taxing; it was a tedious formal visit since the whole family was en route to Munich where Theresa, Charlotte of Saxe-Hildburghausen’s daughter, was to marry the Crown Prince of Bavaria. “There is nothing more fatiguing than a state visit. It entails such a lot of rushing about, idle talk, dressing up, and what not! One day like that seems like ten others!”18 . But there were happy, more intimate family occasions, at Christmas or birthdays, when the grandchildren helped lighten everyone’s spirits. In 1808 there was a New Year party when Augusta’s Leiningen grandson Charles was dressed as a Cossack but also carried a Cupid’s bow and arrow. The following year he and his siblings performed tableaux vivants for her birthday. The mixture of princely formality and aristocratic Gemütlichkeit glimpsed in Augusta’s diary suggests an unbroken continuity in these smaller German dynasties to the Hesse-Darmstadt family at the end of the century described in Jonathan Petropoulos’ chapter. But despite the birth of Augusta’s grandchildren, who would ensure the next generation of the dynasty, their fathers were at risk from the fighting. The diary records incessant anxiety as Augusta’s sons and sons-in-law went off to war (though all were to survive), and she witnessed the poignant return of bedraggled remnants of peasant troops requisitioned for service in the Peninsular Wars or the Russian campaign: only 18 out of 250 came back from Spain19 . One son-in-law, Charles of Leiningen, died of natural causes in 1814, greatly broken in health, she believed, by Napoleon’s destruction of his family’s position. When his widow, Victoire, married the Duke of Kent in 1818, having met him only once, Augusta was relieved to find how successful the marriage was, and how amiable the duke20 . As with Leopold’s marriage to Princess Charlotte, this was an all too brief idyll, ended after nineteen months by the unex15 16 17

18 19 20

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Ibid., 39. Ibid., 49. This family had also provided a first wife to Augusta’s husband; this was Ernestine of SaxeHilburghausen (the sister of Ernest Frederick III, Queen Charlotte’s cousin, and father in-law of her niece Charlotte), but she died after six months of marriage, to be replaced by the redoubtable Augusta. The groom’s father, Max Emmanuel, King of Bavaria, was an uncle through marriage of the bride’s mother, as he had married her youngest aunt, Maria Wilhelmina of Hesse-Darmstadt. Bavarian patronage was useful to the Saxe-Hildburghausenfamily; the duke and at least one of his sons, Eduard, were Bavarian generals. The bride’s mother, Charlotte, niece of Queen Charlotte, had married her second cousin, Frederick of Saxe-Hildurghausen, who succeeded as ruling duke in 1780. Princess Beatrice (note 10), 80, 72. Ibid., 79, 89. Ibid., 141, 190–93.

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pected death of the Duke from pneumonia, leaving his daughter Victoria to be looked after by her mother and mentored by her uncle Leopold.

II. George III’s dynastic strategy and its shortcomings: Prussia, Brunswick and Württemberg The rise and survival of the Saxe-Gotha and Saxe-Coburg family and their successful marriages into the British royal families have obscured the dynastic policy of George III before his irreversible illness in 1811. Yet the three marriages George III did arrange had unfortunate results. He returned to a Hohenzollern alliance, but it was childless. Nor were the Hohenzollern-Mecklenburg marriages of his wife’s nieces useful to the union with Hanover. He arranged a Brunswick match, but it was disastrous and scandalous – and its one child was the tragic Charlotte of Wales, whose death occasioned late marriages of Victoria’s father and uncles, as they jostled to discard mistresses and father a legitimate heir. And he yielded to the importunity of the House of Württemberg for a marriage, but this linked him to both an unreliable Russian Tsar and then a Bonaparte king. We also need to bear in mind how difficult royal marriages were in a parliamentary monarchy like Britain’s. George III felt sons should have, as he did, a proper sense of duty when it came to marital choices. When his two brothers, the Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland, had owned up to private marriages with women of problematic rank he had regulated royal marriage with the 1773 Act of Parliament requiring all members of the Royal Family to obtain Privy Council consent. Yet official marriages were potentially contentious where Parliament had to vote the money for a princely royal establishment. In addition, the British system left no room for morganatic marriages, (where children were prevented from making inheritance claims, but which specified a financial settlement for the romantic love affair or a convenient liaison between a prince and someone of lower rank). Furthermore, Queen Charlotte, whose knowledge of German princely families was better than her husband’s, knew her role was not to meddle with the arrangements, which had to be initiated by her husband; yet his choices were invariably over-optimistic as to the desirability and compatibility of the parties concerned. The disaster of George III’s serious illness in 1788–9, and the disruption of the French revolution and likelihood of war with France, delayed his expressed intention to his daughters to go to Hanover, hold court, and help them choose husbands21 . After his recovery the continental situation was too turbulent for their father to keep to his promise, and he may also have been wary of arranging their marriages, knowing how unhappy had been those of his sisters Augusta of Brunswick and, especially, Caroline Matilda of Denmark. Moreover, Britain’s great-power status and her imperial preoccupation in America, the West Indies and India may have 21

A. Aspinall (ed.), The Later Correspondence of George III, 5 vols., Cambridge 1962–70, Introduction, vol. 2; Flora Fraser, Princesses. The Six Daughters of George III, London 2004.

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made them almost too grand for other German dynasties to aspire to. As their father’s health worsened, their mother insisted they remain with her. The net result of these dynastic, personal and political circumstances was that the first official marriage of one of George and Charlotte’s children was not until 1791, when Frederick of York married Frederica of Prussia, daughter of Frederick William II of Prussia by his first wife, Elizabeth of Brunswick22 . This was a double wedding in which her half-sister Wilhelmina married her cousin Wilhelm of Orange, the eventual first King of the Netherlands23 . The double marriage re-established the Hanoverian-Prussian-Orange axis of the earlier part of the eighteenth century, and reflected the rapprochement between George and Frederick II of Prussia when he joined the latter’s Fürstenbund of 1785, quietly supported by Queen Charlotte24 . The Electorates of Hanover and Brandenburg-Prussia, together with other princes, including Frederick Francis, were forming a counter-weight to the ambitions of Joseph II, an emperor who seemed keener on Hapsburg’s dynastic interest than the equilibrium of the Reich as a whole, submerging their own rivalry for influence in northern Germany and leadership of the Protestant interest. A British match had long been the wish of Frederick William II, who was trying to revive the flagging league; as early as his accession in 1786 he contemplated various permutations, such as a marriage of Frederica to the Prince of Wales, in which case the British might demand the future Fredrick William III should marry one of the British princesses. In looking at dynastic networks, it can be equally important to consider the matches that were dreamed of as well as the ones that actually happened. Lord Dalrymple, British envoy in Prussia in 1786, thought that “This Prince loves his family so passionately, and is so dotingly fond of his daughter, that I am persuaded that no political tie would bind him so effectually to the interests of Great Britain as this domestic one”25 . But he also noted that the Crown Prince Frederick William was earmarked at that point for a Dutch marriage. A previous envoy, Gilbert Elliott, thought in 1781 that Princess Frederica was to marry the Danish crown prince, but he had also thought her a suitable bride for the Prince of Wales26 . Since there can be few more incompatible royal marriages than the one that the Prince of Wales eventually made with Caroline of Brunswick – to the great detriment of the British monarchy’s reputation – the alternative of a better partnership with Frederica is worth contemplating. 22 23

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Elizabeth was the younger sister of Karl William Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and thus aunt of Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales. Frederica Louise Wilhelmine was the daughter of Frederick William II of Prussia by his second wife, Frederica Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt; her husband was the son of Frederick William II’s sister Wilhelmina, and William V of Orange Nassau. His mother was Anne of Orange, daughter of George II of Great Britain. Campbell Orr (note 7). Aspinall (note 19), vol. 2, xvi–xvii. Ibid., vol. 1, 546–7.

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By 1791 a Prussian-British connection was particularly welcome given the likelihood of joint action against revolutionary France. George III had not pressed for his son’s marriage but happily acquiesced in his son’s choice. George’s main strategy had been not so much to arrange a marriage as to remove Frederick from his brother George’s pernicious influence, by sending him abroad for his military training, and equip him for his role as prince-Bishop of Osnabrück. But inevitably this put Frederick in the way of meeting a whole lot of pretty or suitable German princesses. He told his brother Augustus, who passed it on to their father, that he had always had a penchant for his bride since meeting her six years earlier: “I am perfectly convinced I shall be as happy as I have had the advantage of knowing her above six years and that it is a marriage of inclination on both sides”27 . We should recognise, though, that inclination coincided with material interest: the marriage settlement would help the Duke pay his debts, as well as sealing his rehabilitation within the family after taking the side of the Prince of Wales during the Regency crisis. These Prussian ties to Hanover were further strengthened in 1793 by the marriages of two of Charlotte’s nieces, Louisa and Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, daughters of her younger brother Charles, to Wilhelmina of Prussia’s brothers Frederick William, the future King William Fredrick III of Prussia, and Prince Louis. A Hanoverian-Hohenzollern-Mecklenburg axis was in the making, and the status of the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt was also in the ascendant, given that Frederica Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt, daughter of Landgrave Louis IX, was the mother of the two Prussian grooms, and her cousin Frederica Louise, was the mother of the two Strelitz brides 28 . The fact that Frederick of York was looked on as the son most likely to provide the British succession, given the Prince of Wales’ stated reluctance to marry officially, (he was already illegally married to the Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert), raises the intriguing dynastic alternative that future kings of Britain and Electors of Hanover would have been half-Prussian. Moreover, if Frederick had not predeceased the Prince of Wales, he might have combined his role of Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück with that of British king and Hanoverian elector. This possibility must have occurred at the time to George III; (naturally he could not foresee either the mediatisation of Osnabrück in 1803, or the elevation of Hanover to a kingdom). In the event, a close Hanoverian/British and Prussian link would have to await the marriage of Victoria and Albert’s eldest child, Vicky, to Frederick William III and Louisa’s grandson, Frederick; integral to this marriage would be Albert’s ambitions to alter the character of the Prussian monarchy within a German confederation. (See Monika Wienfort’s chapter). Yet even without the unprecedented changes within Germany that the dissolution of the Old Reich would bring, this dynastic marriage was not a success, either bio27 28

Ibid., 558–9. Louise’s father Landgrave George William was younger brother of Landgrave Louis X. When Louise died her sister Charlotte married her widowed brother-in-law, Charles of MecklenburgStrelitz.

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logically nor morally. Frederica and Frederick of York were childless, and eventually lived discreetly separated lives. York’s less discreet mistress Mary Anne Clarke created a scandal at the heart of the British military establishment when she was revealed to have been selling army commissions, thereby discrediting her husband’s role as Commander in Chief of the army. This mattered in an era when evangelicalism was urging greater moral probity on the ruling elite, and when political criticism of the system of ‘influence’ and corruption was a dimension of the parliamentary reform movement29 . Nor did the links with Mecklenburg-Strelitz develop as they might have done. Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was soon left a young widow when her husband died, but although her cousin, Adolphus of Cambridge, wanted to marry her she started an affair with Prince Frederick of Solms-Braunfels and married him when pregnant. Adolphus’ ability to provide an establishment for her had been delayed at his father’s request while military duties came first, and his cousin would not wait for him. War too delayed the marriage of Charlotte’s nephew George, Hereditary Prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who in 1805 had intended to come to England to look for a bride (albeit his female cousins were all older than he), but was overtaken by the need to combat French action against Prussia30 . George III’s Brunswick marriage strategy proved even more counter-productive. Against Charlotte’s better judgement – which she had expressed to her brother but not her husband – the king had decided that the errant Prince of Wales should marry his cousin Caroline of Brunswick, once his debts had forced him to consider the financial advantages of a proper settlement. George III dreamed that this Brunswick union, combining younger and elder branches of the family, would also unite his British and Hanoverian patrimonies, and he hoped his son would take well to a life of exemplary royal domestic virtue: “May the Princess Caroline’s character prove so pleasing to you that your mind may be engrossed with domestic felicity, which may establish in you that composure of mind perhaps the most essential qualification in the station you are born to fill, and that a numerous progeny may be the result of this union, which will be a comfort to me in the decline of my years, from thinking that both these Kingdoms any [sic] German dominions may for ages continue governed by my lineal successors and on the same liberal sentiments of their ancestors, the intention of rendering their subjects prosperous and happy”31. However, the fastidious Prince of Wales took an intense, visceral dislike to his slovenly bride the instant they met, while her subsequent indiscreet behaviour bore out Queen 29 30

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Clark (note 6). Campbell Orr, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of Great Britain and Electress of Hanover. Northern Dynasties and the Northern Republic of Letters: Queenship in Europe 1660– 1789. The Role of the Consort, ed. ibid., Cambridge 2004, 368–402. Aspinall (note 19), vol. 2, 329.

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Charlotte’s insider gossip that the princess had forward manners and loose morals32 . The startlingly brief cohabitation nonetheless produced a daughter, Charlotte, but the behaviour of both the Prince, as churlish spouse and stern father, and his estranged wife, did much to lower public esteem for the monarchy. As well as nourishing further republican and reformist criticism of the British constitution, the Prince’s treatment of women, especially his attempts to divorce Caroline after seeking out evidence of her indiscretions, also inspired feminist criticism, first from an early mistress, the actress and writer Mary Robinson, in her Letter to the Women of England (1799), and later from the politically assorted supporters of Caroline, when she attempted to assert her rights as Queen of England on her husband’s succession in 1820. This was a dangerous combination of royal family breakdown combined with political disaffection in a decade when the principle of legitimate royalty had only been recently upheld abroad. At home George IV as Regent and King proved no friend to his earlier Whig allies and their support for parliamentary reform, and his extravagant self-indulgence during the post-war recession helped make the political connection between disaffection, misery, and the necessity of reforming the old system33 . George III’s third essay in dynastic marriages also had mixed results. In 1797 the eldest daughter of George III, Charlotte Princess Royal, married Frederick William, Hereditary Prince of Württemberg. This was a new kinship connection for Britain. As for Württemberg, the marriage represented another stage in the duchy’s ambition to raise its status, useful marriages being a part of the strategy34 . All the impetus for the marriage came from them, especially since there were rumours about the Prince’s conduct toward his first wife, Augusta Princess of Brunswick, sister of Caroline Princess of Wales35 . These were resolved, and Charlotte soon began to espouse her husband’s ambition to become an Elector, his case resting on the confiscation by France of territory west of the Rhine and the French occupation of Mainz, leaving an electoral place vacant. She wrote soon after her marriage to enlist her father’s support: “I should be wanting to the best of husbands, in whose happiness and situation mine is so closely connected: and to the kindness with which I have been received by the ducal family were I to neglect to remind your Majesty of the application I ventured to make to you before I left England in the joint names of the Prince and myself, and to which you gave me a gracious and flattering answer. Permit me therefore to entreat your majesty, who, as Elector of Hannover must have so much weight at the Congress, to give your support to the interests of the Ducal House which has lost considerably by this cruel war . . . though we have received 32 33

34 35

Flora Fraser, The Unruly Queen, London 1996; Saul David, Prince of Pleasure. The Prince of Wales and the Making of the Regency, London 1999. Campbell Orr (note 6); Clark (note 6); Parissien (note 6); Paula Byrne, Perdita. The Life of Mary Robinson, London 2004; E.A. Smith, A Queen on Trial. The Affair of Queen Caroline, Stroud 1994. Peter H. Wilson, Women and Imperial Politics. The Württemberg Consorts 1674–1757: Queenship in Europe (note 29), 221–246, here 246. Aspinall (note 19), vol. 2, xxxi-xxxiii.

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the most flattering promises from the two Imperial Courts [i.e. The Holy Roman Empire and the Russian] as to . . . their nomination to the Ninth Electorate already long promised to this House36 .” Acquisition of the electoral (and in 1806 the royal) title had to await Napoleon’s problematic assistance in 1803. The British link with Württemberg was new, but there were pre-existing Mecklenburg ties to Württemberg. Frederick Francis’ predecessor as ruling duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Frederick II (succeeded 1756) had married Louisa Frederica of Wurttemberg. This was a Prussian-brokered marriage: Frederick’s mother was a Princess of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Similarly Frederick William’s mother and grandmother were also princesses of Brandenburg-Schwedt, while his sister Sophia married Tsar Paul I of Russia. These Prussian and Russian marriages definitely linked Württemberg to great powers; especially since after the Peace of Teschen in 1779 had concluded the War of Bavarian Succession Russia was now a guarantor of the Old Reich. There was also a new Württemberg link to a rising Saxon duchy when Frederick William and Sophia’s brother Alexander married Antoinette of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Prince Albert’s aunt. Queen Charlotte had her reservations about German dynasties who married their daughters to the Romanovs. When Wilhelmine of Hesse-Darmstadt married the future Tsar Paul as his first wife back in 1773, Charlotte told her brother, whose wife was the bride’s cousin, she regretted the fact that the bride could renounce her religion so easily37 . Perhaps her brother had laxer views. It is not known what the Queen thought when her great-niece Charlotte, daughter of Louisa, Queen of Prussia, married Tsar Nicholas I in 1817 and was re-baptised as Alexandra Feodorova, but as Daniel Schönpflug’s chapter shows, her conversion to Orthodoxy was a source of distress to her. If the conversion went the other way Queen Charlotte was less censorious. In 1803 she congratulated the Saxe-Gotha born Duchess Louisa of MecklenburgSchwerin, consort of Frederick Francis, on the marriage of the Duchess’ eldest son Frederick to Tsar Paul I ’s daughter Helen, (a daughter from the Romanov-Württemberg marriage). The daughter-in-law was charming, Queen Charlotte wrote, but she regretted her father had not done more to help Britain38 . This was an allusion to Tsar Paul I’s erratic character and policies, which would lead to his deposition and assassination in 1801. In 1799, he was providing naval assistance to the ill-fated British expedition to the Netherlands. Charlotte, Princess Royal, wrote to her father George III that her sister-in-law Sophia, the Tsarina, was urging her brother the Duke of Württemberg to rally his duchy against the French, and asked for his protection. This letter therefore gives us two instances of female lobbying, one 36 37 38

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Ibid., vol.2, 633–4. Mecklenburg Strelitz Archives, Schwerin: Hausarchiv des Mecklenburg-Strelitzschen Fürstenhauses/Briefsammlung, 4,3–2, No. 869, Letter 17 September 1773. Mecklenburg Strelitz Archives, Schwerin: Hausarchiv des Mecklenburg-Strelitzschen Fürstenhauses/Briefsammlung, 2. 26–1 No. 229, 1–3, Letter 17 February 1803 to Duchess Louisa n´ee Saxe-Gotha.

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of a daughter applying to a father, the other of a sister mediating between a brother and a husband. But the next year, Tsar Paul had formed the League of Armed Neutrality linking Russia, Prussia, Denmark and Sweden, and made several attacks on British shipping. Princess Charlotte then took it upon herself to write to her father, without, she claimed, her husband’s knowledge, suggesting that as her husband knew the Russian court – he had been in Russian military service – and had family ties to both parties, he would be the ideal mediator to resolve these embarrassments39 . Nothing came of this and probably nothing could have deflected the monomaniacal Paul. After the Treaty of Pressburg Württemberg became a kingdom, and Princess Charlotte its new Queen; furthermore, in 1807 her step-daughter Catherine was married to Napoleon’s brother, Jerome, the new King of Westphalia. Although Charlotte liked writing to her mother that they were now both Queens, there would be no reply to a daughter whose elevation had been due to the Corsican Corporal until after the upstart tyrant was defeated40 . These three marriages were the only ones arranged or permitted by George III before illness overtook him permanently in 1811. Meanwhile his daughter Mary had a desultory engagement to her cousin William of Gloucester, her remaining sisters fretted at home, and her brothers William and Edward acquired long-term mistresses. The former’s companion, the leading comedy actress Dorothy Jordan, resulted in a cosy domestic m´enage in Bushey Park, which could be cheerfully ridiculed in the cartoons of William pushing the pram while his wife went on acting between bearing their ten children: hardly a contribution to the dignity or respectability of monarchy41 . Augustus, the fifth son, an asthmatic, was unfit for military service and expressed the hope of one day entering the church, introducing the possibility of a real prince-bishop in the Church of England. His father agreed with his ambitions, but his private marriage with Lady Augusta Murray in Rome foreclosed this option. Adolphus and Ernest were left to carry on with their military careers, but so unpopular was Ernest that it was rumoured both that he had tried to murder his valet, when the reverse was true, and that he was too close to his sister Sophia: both of which also detracted from the image of a moral monarchy patriotically pursuing the war effort that George and Charlotte had managed to sustain in the King’s Jubilee year42 .

39 40

41 42

Aspinall (note 19), vol. 3, 216, 470–1. D.M. Stuart, The Daughters of George III, London 1939; Morris Marples, Six Royal Princesses, London 1969; A. Aspinall (ed.), Letters of George IV, 1812–1830, 3 vols., Cambridge 1938, vol. I, letter 341. Clare Tomalin, Mrs. Jordan’s profession, London 1994. Fraser (note 19) discusses Ernest’s inappropriate behaviour to Sophia which fuelled this rumour; G. M. Willis, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and King of Hanover, London 1954; Linda Colley, The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and the British Nation: Past & Present 102 (1984), 94–129.

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IV. George III’s ‘Hanoverian’ sons If it can be argued, then, that George III by no means had a sure touch when it came to dynastic marriages, it can at least be acknowledged that he took care to ensure that the majority of his sons felt both British and German, and were prepared for military service in the British Empire and Hanoverian Electorate. (William was destined for the British navy, albeit serving under the name of Midshipman Guelf, recalling his Hanoverian ancestors). As we have seen, Frederick was sent to Hanover to prepare himself for his role as Prince Bishop of Osnabrück, and to gain military training in Hanover, Prussia, and with the Imperial army in Vienna. His brothers Edward, Ernest, Adolphus and Augustus all studied in the Electorate. Edward, having made a girl pregnant, was transferred to Geneva and later served in Gibraltar and Canada. He took a French companion, Mme de St. Laurent. Ironically given his later marriage, his long service in Canada meant his German identity was less deeply engrained than that of the other ‘Hanoverian’ brothers43 . Augustus, the invalid and connoisseur, was probably the most cosmopolitan of all the brothers, but his health and romantic misdemeanours ensured he led a largely private life. But Ernest and Adolphus both had Hanoverian army commissions and took part in the military operations against France beginning with the first coalition war when they were respectively twenty and seventeen. There can be no doubt from their correspondence with their father, their mother and their brother, once he became Regent in 1811, that these two brothers identified strongly with their Hanoverian patrimony. Adolphus’ letters during the First Coalition War 1793–5 are brimful of his enthusiasm to be enjoying his first military commission and defending all his father’s territories. In November 1792 he spoke of his new commission in the Hanoverian guards: “particularly at this present moment am I glad to be in it, I mean if your dominions should be attacked by the French, for then I should perhaps have an opportunity of shewing you the ardour I have of fighting for my King and country”44 . Ernest wrote in September 1793 of his pride that “the Hanoverians have render’d themselves immortal through their amazing bravery, for nothing but that has saved us”45 . As soon as the Peace of Basle had been made and the idea of mediatising ecclesiastical principalities to compensate German states for territory lost beyond the Rhine began to be contemplated, Adolphus was alert to how Hanover might benefit. In 1796 he was visiting the spa at Pyrmont, where he encountered Fredrick William II of Prussia, and General Bischoffswerder, who was in the King’s confidence. As he explained later to his father: “I said that it appeared to me that a partition of Germany would take place, or at least that some of the Bishoprics would be sequestered. . . I said that should be the case it would be but very just that the Elector of Hannover should have for his share the Bishoprick of Hildesheim; [Adolphus’ emphasis] . . . He said that 43 44 45

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Mollie Gillen, The Prince and His Lady, Toronto 1970. Aspinall (note 19), vol. 1, 631. Ibid., 90.

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according to the situation of the Bishoprick it was natural it should fall to Hannover’s share.” Adolphus added “. . . should a general sequestration of the ecclesiastical dominions take place, . . . he would be a very dangerous neighbour to this country”46. Hanover was one of the German states which did least well out of the French invasions, which precipitated the collapse of the old Reich. Hanover would always be seen by France as the vulnerable part of the Anglo-Hanoverian personal union, even if constitutionally speaking British and Hanoverian policy was supposed to be separate47 . Neither the Prussian nor the Brunswick alliances of George’s first and second sons proved very useful or effective diplomatically when Britain tried to urge the new king Frederick William III of Prussia, who succeeded in 1797, to abandon his father’s neutrality and re-join a coalition against France. Queen Charlotte’s Reader, the Genevan born savant Jean-Andr´e DeLuc, was sent to sound out her nephew-in-law discreetly, assisted by Duke Carl William Ferdinand of Brunswick, while the Prussian king’s aunt Wilhelmina of Orange also lobbied the Duke of Brunswick’s heir, Prince Karl George, who was her son-in-law, to exert some pressure on the new king48 . None of this was successful. The Dukes of Brunswick however were staunch military allies from the start of the French revolutionary wars, whatever their diplomatic ineffectiveness, and in 1806, having lost her husband at Jena in action against Napoleon, the widowed Augusta, George III’s sister, took refuge in Britain. Charlotte kept in touch with Mecklenburg matters in her letters to the Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and to her brother Charles, ruling duke of MecklenburgStrelitz after 1794. She considered that her brother united the interests of Hanover, where he had been Military Governor and where his children were all born, with that of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. But his daughters Louise and Frederica united him to the Prussian interest through their marriages, and once again Britain and Prussian state interests did not always coincide with their family ties – in which case Realpolitik came first. Queen Charlotte did suggest to her brother that he represent to his daughter Louise, that as she had been born in Hanover she should take an interest in the people of Hanover, and try and encourage her husband to resist France. But Prussian state policy was now at variance with dynastic kinship, and Prussia remained neutral, too preoccupied with her Polish gains and the external and internal unrest they had created49 . Moreover the dynastic ties to Russia which Charlotte had deplored proved useful to those states which had them, as we have seen in Augusta of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld’s case. The ambitious middling principalities of the Old Reich also took their oppor46 47

48 49

Ibid., 499. Adolphus’ military career is followed in detail in Grace E. Moreman, Adolphus Frederick, Duke of Cambridge – Steadfast Son of King George III, 1774–1850, Lewiston 2002. TorstenRiotte, George III and Hanover: Hanoverian Dimension (note 7), 58–85.; T.C.W. Blanning and Carl Haase, George III and the Regency Crisis: Knights Errant and True Englishmen. British Foreign Policy 1660–1800, ed. Jeremy Black, Edinburgh 1989, 135–50. He was married to Louise of Orange. Campbell Orr (note 29).

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tunity to gain mediatised church land, thereby augmenting their territories and their princely sovereignty. Isolated in Britain, Charlotte found these changes bewildering: she trembles, she wrote to Duchess Louise of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in February 1803, each time she opens a letter and finds one friend or another deprived of their properties50 . In 1807 there was better news: Charlotte wrote to the Duchess on behalf of the now blind George III passing on his congratulations to the Duke that his territory had been re-instated. Russian connections had proved useful, though no further land had been gained. Hesse-Darmstadt with her dynastic links to Russia lost left-bank territory but was compensated in 1803. She joined the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, and the ruling Landgrave became Grand Duke of Hesse. The Congress of Vienna confirmed his territory and altered his title to Grand Duke of Hesse and by the Rhine51 . While Hesse-Cassel fell foul of Bismarck’s unification in 1866 and was absorbed into the second Reich, Hesse-Darmstadt retained her status until 1918, and as Jonathan Petropoulos shows, provided Victoria and Albert’s daughter Alice with a husband, as well as Tsar Nicholas II’s wife, Alexandra. The morganatic branch of the family, the Battenbergs, was also to have strong ties to the nineteenth and twentieth century British monarchy, as Matthew Seligman explores. Finally as we have seen Württemberg’s willingness to negotiate with France as well as her links to Russia had served her well, beginning with making peace in 1796, followed by elevation to the coveted electoral status in 1803 after the ecclesiastical mediatisation, and to a kingdom in 1806.

V. Mecklenburg dynastic setbacks after 1815 Although both Mecklenburg duchies had also joined the Rhine Confederation, the heirs to both were the first to leave it as Napoleon’s power in Germany crumbled and Prussia began to lead the counter-attack against Napoleon in unison with Russia. Queen Charlotte must have been pleased that her niece Queen Louise had indeed become a figurehead, between 1806 and her death in 1810, for younger Prussian patriots to rally the state against Napoleon. But Charlotte did not want the close co-operation in 1813 between the Mecklenburg troops, led by her nephews George and Charles, and the Prussians, to result in Mecklenburg absorption onto the Prussian army, and she passed on memoranda from her nephew George to her son, the Regent, asking for his help in establishing their separate Mecklenburg identity52 . Both ruling Dukes 50

51 52

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Mecklenburg Strelitz Archives, Schwerin: Hausarchiv des Mecklenburg-Strelitzschen Fürstenhauses/Briefsammlung, 2. 26–1 No. 229, 1–3, Letter 17 February 1803 to Duchess Louisa n´ee Saxe-Gotha. Wilson (note 8), 338–342. Mecklenburg Strelitz Archives, Schwerin: Hausarchiv des Mecklenburg-.Strelitzschen Fürstenhauses/Briefsammlung, 4.3–2 No. 5/4, Letter 23 July 1813 from Queen Charlotte to her brother Charles, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; ibid., 4.3–2 No. 887, Letter 18 October 1813 from Crown Prince George of Mecklenburg-Strelitz to Queen Charlotte.

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assumed the status of Grand Dukes in June 1815, which the Congress of Vienna confirmed53 . Here Queen Charlotte’s loyalty to her paternal dynasty created no conflict of interest with either Britain or Hanover, all united in victory against Napoleonic France, and Mecklenburg-Strelitz benefited from its dynastic ties. But soon the closer dynastic ties formed between Britain, Hanover and Mecklenburg through the marriage of her son Ernest to his cousin Frederica – the same cousin who had jilted his brother Adolphus – created tragic discord between herself and her brother Charles, when the Queen decided to put the respectability of the British crown above family ties. The problems of this marriage also underlines the public character of British royal marriages, since they needed parliamentary consent to fund them, and were subject to gossip and misrepresentation in the country’s rumbustious free press. Ernest had not been a part of his father’s dynastic strategy, and his marriage to the twice-married Frederica is on the personal level a touching story of middle-aged love, not a convenient dynastic arrangement. After military service in the Netherlands and Hanover, where he had been badly wounded and lost the sight of an eye, Cumberland had spent the years from 1796 to 1813 longing for more active duties or service in the King’s German Legion, made up of refugees from the 1803 French invasion, but kept at home in charge of south west defence. As a Tory sympathiser, and subsequent supporter of Lord Liverpool after Pitt’s death in 1806, he had also become the target of Whig criticism flavoured with gossiping innuendo. In 1813 he left for the continent to volunteer in action against Napoleon, while hoping for a proper military command. Pending this he visited Strelitz. There he met Frederica for the first time and their love was instantaneous. She was living at her brother’s court and had just begun separating, formally and by mutual consent, from her second husband, Prince Frederick of SolmsBraunfels. She wrote to her confidante and Lady-in-Waiting, Frau von Berg, of the new prospects of happiness that now appeared: “...if God grants it to me, I hope to be happy in the autumn of my days as much as I have been unhappy in the spring and summer”54 . Cumberland was animated by Hanoverian patriotism as well as his new passion. He wrote to the Regent:“. . . I long to get into activity, and if by my feeble means I can in any way succeed in recovering Hanover for you it will be the proudest day of my life” and again “rather than show myself in England without having served, I will join some new corps as a volunteer (his emphasis) and at least prove myself worthy of being a descendant of the Gwelfs [sic], for to return without seeing a shot fired I should consider as a disgrace”55 . In August, still awaiting his opportunity to fight, he reiterated “Feeling as I do our evident desire to uphold our family name, to secure our national interests and the support of your Government, I feel I have availed myself of an opportunity that seemed to be presented to one of the House of

53 54 55

Ibid. Willis (note 41), 111. Ibid., 97, 105.

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Brunswick to manifest his zeal for the great cause of Europe . . . ”56 . Ernest got his wish to demonstrate his Hanoverian patriotic credentials, and was able to join the Hanoverian forces ahead of the contingent ear-marked to liberate Hanover led by Bernadotte, (the ex-Napoleonic Marshal who had become the heir-designate of the Swedish throne). Cumberland was part of the Hanoverian party which entered the city of Hanover on 4th November 1813 as liberators. Hereafter, regarded as a military and diplomatic liability by the ministers in Britain, he was obliged to concede the Governorship to his younger brother Adolphus, so he went on to Strelitz and Berlin to make his marriage arrangements. These were eased by the convenient death of Frederica’s husband, and the betrothal in 1813 was followed a year later by their marriage. Although this was an intensely personal and privately arranged union, the marriage had had the public approval of the Regent, of Queen Charlotte, and of the King of Prussia, Frederica’s brother-in-law, who still was providing her an allowance as his brother Louis’ widow. In spite of this public and formal approval from both dynastic families, Ernest still needed parliamentary permission for a financial settlement. Here he fell victim to Whig opponents, who enjoyed delaying matters. He also found that his estranged sister Charlotte of Württemberg had intervened, spreading gossip about Frederica to the Regent and Queen Charlotte – perhaps to win re-acceptance after the ostracism consequent on her Napoleonic co-operation. Queen Charlotte persuaded herself that to allow Frederica to attend court when she and Ernest came to England for their Anglican marriage would open the door for the disreputable Princess of Wales, now living abroad, to return and claim her place at court as well. The Queen’s refusal was soon leaked to the press, and opposition MPs had a field day questioning the political utility as well as the domestic virtue of the marriage, and further prolonging the financial settlement57 . When Frederica and her brother George, Hereditary Prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, arrived in England they found Queen Charlotte implacable. She broke with her nephew and instructed the rest of her children to have no more to do with him; news of these altercations nearly gave her brother Charles a heart attack and undoubtedly shortened his life. Ernest and Frederica were re-married according to Anglican and English law, but she was never received formally at court. By 1818, having established a social reputation for propriety and dignity, she left for the continent, where the future George V of Hanover was born the following year in their Berlin residence. The story is yet another episode in fractious and dysfunctional Hanoverian royal family, weakened by George III’s illness, the regent’s self-indulgent waywardness, and a variety of royal misdemeanours, all of which were colourfully reflected in the press. But Ernest and Frederica’s ostracism by Queen Charlotte, supported feebly by the Regent, also had the potential to jeopardise the territorial settlement of the new kingdom of Hanover. Frederica’s sympathetic Prussian brother-in-law, Frederick William 56 57

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Ibid., 117. Ibid., 128–162.

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III, was still in the throes of ceding Hildesheim and East Frisia with other bases to Hanover as part of the Congress of Vienna settlement, but in protest at the churlish treatment of his sister-in-law by both Queen Charlotte and the British press, ordered his minister in London to withdraw from court functions58 . The need for the British monarchy to demonstrate respectability, punishing Mecklenburg princess Frederica for the past and probable future indiscretions of the Brunswick Princess of Wales, Caroline, therefore had repercussions for the Hanoverian dimension to the Royal Family. A parliamentary monarchy had no scope to make dynastic settlements regardless of public opinion. And Cumberland as a younger son had to submit to his brother the Prince Regent’s deference to his mother’s reading of public opinion, even though it was his own behaviour to his estranged wife which had created such public disregard for the monarchy in the first place – and even though Ernest and Frederica had the backing of a Prussian monarchy that had enhanced its prestige and its territory within Germany after the defeat of Napoleon.

VI. Dutch, Saxon, Danish and Hesse kinship dimensions In parallel with the strains this episode put upon ties between Prussia, Mecklenburg, and Britain in union with the new Kingdom of Hanover, were the dynastic and diplomatic tensions created by the need to find a groom for the regent’s only daughter and heiress presumptive, Charlotte Princess of Wales. The match being favoured by her father and his ministers was one with William, Crown Prince of Orange. In 1815 the former United Provinces, together with the former Austrian Netherlands, had been turned into a new Kingdom of the Netherlands with the House of Orange as hereditary monarchs. A marriage between Princess Charlotte and Prince William would have reiterated old ties between the Dutch, Anglo-Hanoverian and Prussian royal families, together with the more recent Mecklenburg/Prussian kin. For Prince William’s parents were King William I of Orange and the Prussian princess Wilhelmina; another son, Frederick, married Frederica’s niece Louise, daughter of Fredrick William III and Louise of Prussia (i.e. Frederica’s niece), and this young bride’s brother Albert married his Dutch sister-in-law Marianne. However, Princess Charlotte of Wales was concerned about the difficulty of marrying a husband who had ruling responsibilities abroad, and had no particular liking for her suitor. Despite her Prussian aunt Frederica, Duchess of York, warning her about his amorous unreliability, she dallied with Prince August of Prussia, younger brother of the dashing Louis Ferdinand who had lost his life at Auerstedt, and a cousin of Frederick William III. Princess Charlotte’s rebellion against the wishes of her father and grandmother enabled the British press to stigmatise the Regent as an unsympathetic parent59 . 58 59

Ibid., 147. Thea Holme, Prinny’s daughter. A life of Charlotte Princess of Wales, London 1976.

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Charlotte’s final choice of Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld introduced a new style of consort to British monarchs, which chimed well with the new sexual politics of Regency and post-Regency Britain, and helped to restore the popular legitimacy of the monarchy. Instead of providing female consorts to Britain and Schwerin, the increasingly well-connected dynasty would now provide male consorts with conspicuously respectable domestic inclinations to two British heiresses, Charlotte and then Victoria, (as well as one to Portugal). The romance of Leopold and Charlotte created the fairy-tale image of a young bride and a dashing groom, settling happily to domestic contentment at Claremont, which contrasted with the irregular lives of the Prince Regent or his other brothers, and the frictions within the Royal Family over Ernest and Frederica. The marriage appealed enormously to the sentimentally and respectablyminded middling classes, so the death of Charlotte and a still-born son in 1817 created a correspondingly nation-wide sense of bereavement – as if every family, Leigh Hunt said, had lost a favourite daughter60 . The rush by Charlotte’s uncles to marry also benefited Saxon princesses twice over: first as we have seen in the marriage of the Duke of Kent to Leopold’s widowed sister, Victoire; and secondly in the marriage of William, Duke of Clarence. Another advance for the now re-styled duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha came in 1830, when the widowed Leopold benefited from the new phenomenon of nineteenth-century monarchy – the designation of princes from established royal houses (such as the Danish, Bavarian and Prussian royal families) to sit on the thrones of new nation states – Greece, Belgium, Bulgaria, Romania. In 1830 Leopold was being considered a possible candidate for the Greek throne, but this would simultaneously have represented another set-back for the advancement of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, since an alternative candidate was Charles of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, cousin of Ernest Duke of Cumberland, and his wife’s half-brother. His candidacy was supported by the King of Prussia, but as he suggested it through a private letter to Ernest of Cumberland and not through British ministerial channels, another opportunity to discredit Ernest in British political circles presented itself61. Leopold refused the offer of the Greek throne and was eventually designated King of the Belgians. His second wife Louisa, eldest daughter of LouisPhilippe, now King of the French after the 1830 revolution, introduced a new, if indirect, dynastic link for the British Royal Family to the Orl´eans branch of the French monarchy. Louis-Philippe had been another of the exiled royals who had enjoyed British hospitality before the restoration era of 1815, although at the time the British monarchy, especially the Francophile Prince Regent, recognised the older Bourbon branch as the legitimate kings of France62 . However if Mecklenburg-Strelitz kin were not to benefit from their British and Hanoverian links, it was now time for the Hesse family to benefit from theirs, with two of the late marriages of George III’s children being into this family. The first 60 61 62

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Stephen C. Behrendt, Royal Mourning and Regency Culture, London 1997. Willis (note 41), 198–200. Philip Mansel, Louis XVIII, London 1981; Parissien (note 6).

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of these Hesse links was the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to Frederick Joseph of Hesse-Homburg. Since Frederick Joseph’s sister Augusta was the third wife of the Hereditary Prince Frederick of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who predeceased the longlived Duke Frederick Francis, this created a link between George III’s Hesse-Cassel relatives and Queen Charlotte’s Mecklenburg kin. The second Hesse marriage was that of Adolphus Duke of Cambridge. Even before the death of Princess Charlotte in November 1817 made marriage an imperative, William Duke of Clarence had been looking for a suitable bride, with the help of Adolphus, who as Governor of Hanover was able to review suitable candidates. One of these was Augusta of Hesse-Cassel, daughter of Landgrave Frederick. Her sister Marie was already married to George of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen Charlotte’s nephew and Adolphus’ cousin. Adolphus’ recommendation of Augusta to William of Clarence was so enthusiastic that the latter recognised that Adolphus was already in love with her himself, and he recommended he propose to her. This was a love-match, although the formalities had to await parliamentary approval and a financial settlement a year later, in conjunction with the Kent and Clarence marriages. This example of romantic choice would inspire their son George of Cambridge to avoid the possibility of an arranged marriage with his cousin Victoria, born a day later than him, leaving the field clear for her Coburg cousin Albert. George would have a private and illegal marriage with an actress, Louisa Fairbrother, which resulted in three FitzGeorge sons. Together with some of their FitzClarence cousins they represented a racier masculine dimension to the Victorian monarchy than the central protagonist Albert63 . Adolphus of Cambridge’s father-in-law Frederick was the youngest of the three sons of Frederick II of Hesse-Cassel, and George III’s aunt, Princess Mary. Frederick’s older brothers William (who became the first Elector of Hesse), and Charles had married their Danish cousins, children of their mother’s sister Louisa, who had been the first wife of Frederick V of Denmark. Frederick of Hesse-Cassel would leave his country retreat of Rumpenheim to his descendants on the condition they make a yearly family reunion there: as John Röhl observes in his chapter, the Rumpenheim connection was to be extremely important for the Victorian royal family. Adolphus and Augusta of Cambridge’s grand-daughter, Victoria Mary, would remember these holidays and the sense of dynastic continuity they gave her; this would help instil into her a sense of service to the dynasty as a great-granddaughter of George III. When she became Queen Mary, as wife of George V of Great Britain, she also benefited from her aunt Augusta’s advice, and from the holidays she spent with her and her uncle, Grand-Duke Frederick of Mecklenburg-Srelitz64 . Finally a British-MecklenburgStrelitz connection had prospered. The Danish connection was the last to be directly operative, waiting until Albert Edward Prince of Wales was found a suitable bride in Alexandra of Denmark. Alexandra was from the Schleswig-Holstein-Glucksberg line of the Danish royal family; 63 64

Campbell Orr (note 6). James Pope-Hennessey, Queen Mary, London 1959.

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her sister Dagmar was the wife of Tsar Alexander III, and another, Thyra, married Ernest of Hanover, the disinherited claimant to the Hanoverian kingdom whose determination to claim his Hanoverian patrimony is explored by Torsten Riotte. But it was the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenberg line of the family which had closer Mecklenburg connections. Sophie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, sister of Fredrick Francis I, had married Frederick, the half-brother of Christian VII, (whose mother Louisa and wife Caroline Matilda were the aunt and sister respectively of George III). Fredrick and Sophia’s son became Christian VIII of Denmark. After divorcing his cousin and first wife, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, he married Caroline of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg. Caroline was officially the grand-daughter of Christian VII and his English wife Caroline Matilda, but in reality was the product of her grandmother’s liaison with J. F. Struensee, royal physician and favourite. Caroline Matilda’s great-grandson Christian then married Victoria and Albert’s daughter Helena, but the conflict between the claims of his line to Schleswig-Holstein and those of Princess Alexandra’s family would introduce conflict between his sister-in-law Alexandra, who supported her father’s claims to the disputed duchies, and the other children of Queen Victoria, who took various sides over the Schleswig-Holstein question.

VII. Masculinity, monarchy, and the role of the consort in 1832 These Danish connections were a generation into the future in 1835, when Albert visited his great-grandfather, and his uncles William and Ernest were respectively on the thrones of Britain and Hanover. The biological continuation of the dynasty was secure; but the political adaptability of the two kingdoms was a more open question in an era of liberal demand for constitutional change, which could not be ignored after the toppling of the Bourbon monarchy in 1830 and other revolutions against the 1815 settlement. The power of both kings and patriarchs was being questioned by the “revolution in female manners” called for by Mary Wollstonecraft; in reaction to this, different styles of masculine and feminine behaviour were being seen as desirable, as ideals of Evangelical respectability initiated by the upper middle classes began to influence groups above them and below them. In fact both kings succeeded in adapting to their roles, and each was helped by their consorts. It was fortunate that William IV had been in the navy rather than the army, as the British were wary of military kings and standing armies. Although Queen Adelaide was targeted in the press as an opponent of parliamentary reform, supposedly at the instigation of her treasurer, Lord Howe, she was able to live this down by becoming one of the most significant royal philanthropists up to that point in the century65 . At a more personal level Adelaide was a calming influence on the possibly 65

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F. K. Prochaska, Royal Bounty. The Making of A Welfare Monarchy, London 1995; A.W. Purdue, Queen Adelaide. Malign influence or consort maligned?: Queenship in Britain. Royal Patronage,

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porphyric William, and her unaffected domesticity gave him the respectability that was now de rigueur for a British monarch. This set the scene for Albert to adapt the role of male consort in such a way that the family morality of the monarch could be advertised, even if behind the scenes he was far more a co-monarch than a deferential consort than was apparent. His interests in science and technology as well as art also represent continuity with that of Victoria’s grandparents, while his lack of a military profile was an asset when mid-century Englishmen were less identified with soldierly activity66 . With Ernest and Frederica in Hanover there was a different requirement which each fulfilled well. Ernest’s character as a soldier was welcome on the continent, where military monarchy was still an accepted ideal. The anniversary of his fiftieth year as a Hanoverian officer was celebrated with great popular enthusiasm. His kindly paternalism combined with his conservatism toward Hanoverian constitutional developments was also consistent with German absolutist tradition prior to 1806, when monarchs were seen as guardians of the law without necessarily encouraging representative institutions67. As Abigail Green has argued, dynasties were also important to a Mittelstaat like Hanover in developing their identity within the new German Confederation. Ernest and Frederica were able to bring off the right combination of ‘grandeur and domesticity’, particularly as Frederica knew how to project a dignified royal image from her experience of the Berlin court68 . Ernest’s popularity in Hanover was the complete opposite of his denigration in Britain and reflected the different political cultures of the two kingdoms. More by luck than judgement, the kingdoms of Britain and of Hanover in 1832 had the rulers suited to their politics and social tastes, while the advancement of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’s family was poised to go a stage further under Leopold’s guidance once Albert came of age and married his cousin Victoria69 .

66 67

68 69

Dynastic Politics and Court Culture 1660–1837, ed. Clarissa Campbell Orr, Manchester 2002, 267–287. Clarissa Campbell Orr, The Late Hanoverian Monarchy and the Christian Enlightenment: Monarchy & Religion, ed. M. Schaich, Oxford 2007, 317–344. Wilson, Reich to Revolution (note 8); Abigail Green, Fatherlands.State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany, Cambridge 2001, 71–2, 80–83, 285–7. Her excellent study unfortunately describes Ernest as George III’s third, not fifth, son. Ibid., 85, 87, 275. Although the Mecklenburg-Strelitz cousinage had not fared as well in its link to Britain as had the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha kin during the Personal Union, the bride of Frederica and Ernest’s son George of Hanover was a descendant of the House of Mecklenburg, for Marie of Saxe-Altenburg was a great-grand-daughter of Charlotte’s brother Charles of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, through his daughter Charlotte who married her Saxe-Hildburghausen cousin. In the rearrangement of the Saxon duchies in 1826, Saxe-Hildburghausen was assigned to Saxe-Altenburg.

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The House of Hanover. Queen Victoria and the Guelph dynasty

Dynastic relations between the royal families of Great Britain and Hanover have been discussed in two competing interpretations. One school of historians assumes a special relationship between the dynasties of Great Britain and the former Electorate, later Kingdom of Hanover. Going back to the Personal Union between the two states from 1714 to 1837 the assumption is made that the close relationship between Queen Victoria and her German relatives on the Hanoverian throne must have been of some importance to the Queen and her interest in the German Confederation, from 1871 the German Empire1 . On the other hand, historians of the later Georgian and early Victorian period stress the difficulties the young Queen Victoria (and the British public) had with her uncle Ernest Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland and, from 1837, king of Hanover. The Queen’s personal dislike for her uncle and their oppositional political affiliations have been used to stress the end of the Personal Union as a clear separation not only between the two states but also as a distinctive divide between the branches of the reigning families2 . The crux of both interpretations is that they do not lead very far. Those who identify a Hanoverian dimension in British history for the Victorian period claim that the loss of the Crown’s political authority made it impossible for Queen Victoria to interfere in foreign policy, more particularly in British No intervention policy during Bismarck’s wars of German unification3 . Whether German history would have turned out differently if Hanover’s rule of succession had allowed Queen Victoria to 1

2

3

Alan Palmer, Gekrönte Vettern. Deutscher Adel auf EnglandsThron, Düsseldorf 1989, 224; Klaus Hildebrand, No intervention – die Pax Britannica und Preußen 1865/66–1869/70. Eine Untersuchung zur englischen Weltpolitik im 19. Jahrhundert, Munich 1997, 167; Hildegard Binder, Queen Victoria und Preußen-Deutschland bis zum Anschluss Österreichs 1866, Berlin 1933, 11. Mijndert Bertram, The end of the dynastic union, 1815–1837: The Hanoverian dimension in British History, 1714–1837, eds. Brendan Simms and Torsten Riotte, Cambridge 2007, 111–123, here: 126, for a different interpretation see Geoffrey Malden Willis, Ernst August, König von Hannover, Hanover 1961, 69. Hildebrand (note 1), 152, for a different interpretation see Werner E. Mosse, The Crown and Foreign Policy. Queen Victoria and the Austro-Prussian Conflict, March-May 1866: The Historical Journal 10 (1951), 205–223, here: 222. For the idea of a decline in political participation see David Cannadine, The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual. The British Monarchy and

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accede to the throne in Hanover is a popular counter-factual theory but this exercise in virtual history seems of little benefit to the discussion of royal cousinhood4 . The school of historians who see Victoria’s dislike for the arch-toryism of her uncle and for his personality as an important argument in support of a divide between the British and Hanoverian dynasties after 1837 overlook the close links not only of the Cambridge family with the continent but also between the successive generations of the Hanoverian dynasty and Queen Victoria that continued right until her death in 19015 . The present chapter intends to look beyond governmental ignorance of Hanoverian affairs and British popular dislike of the Hanoverian monarchs. Instead, it deals with dynastic history as an examination of family networks that cannot be reduced to the relationship between the heads of dynasties. As Clarissa Campbell Orr has emphasised, historians need to look at the spouse, the children and further relatives just as much as at the head of the family to understand fully the importance of dynastic relations6 . Hence, Queen Victoria’s relationship with the three children of George V of Hanover, Ernest Augustus (II7 ), Duke of Cumberland, Frederica of Hanover and (though to a much lesser extent) Mary of Hanover are discussed for the late 1870s. The main aim of the article is to demonstrate that the Anglo-Hanoverian family network continued beyond the year 1866, the end of Hanover’s independence and its incorporation as a Prussian province. At the same time the question will be raised as to whether a family network between Great Britain and Hanover really existed. As the clash between Queen Victoria and Ernest Augustus (II) over Frederica’s marriage illustrates, dynastic relations could divide families due to personal sympathies. In a similar sense it seems of little use to assume that Victoria must have cared for her Hanoverian cousins and the latter’s children simply because of kinship relations. Historians always run a certain danger when looking at dynastic relations bilaterally. In the Hanoverian case we need to consider particularly the fact that Victoria’s favourite daughter Vicky was married to the Prussian crown prince8 . Vicky and Frederic, later

4 5

6 7 8

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the “Invention of Tradition”, c.1820–1977: The Invention of Tradition, eds. Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger, Cambridge 1983 (quoted from pb 2000), 101–164, here: 108–109 and 118–120. Bertram (note 2), 123. Bertram’s interest, of course, is not in dynastic history. His article deals with the political dimension of the personal union. The following article is based on German source material and on the correspondence between Queen Victoria and the Hanoverians which can be found at the Royal Archives, Windsor Castle. I am most grateful to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for permission to quote from the material. I would also like to thank the Registrar, Pamela Clark, for helpful suggestions. Clarissa Campbell Orr, Dynastic Perspectives, eds. Simms/Riotte (note 2), 213–251, here: 215. See also her chapter in the present volume. Ernest Augustus did not hold the title of second Duke of Cumberland. The numeral (II) is only used to distinguish him from his grandfather, the king of Hanover. As John Röhl deals with the topic in the present volume the issue is not discussed in any broader sense. For Vicky’s role in Prussian/German history see John Röhl’s biography of the Kaiser: John C.G. Röhl, Wilhelm II. Die Jugend des Kaisers 1859–1888, Munich 1993 (quoted from the 2nd ed. 2003), chapter 4: Eine englische Prinzessin am preußischen Hof, 101–114; and the edited volume: Victoria Kaiserin Friedrich (1840–1901). Mission und Schicksal einer englischen Prinzessin in Deutschland, ed. Rainer von Hessen, Frankfurt/M 2002.

House of Hanover

emperor Frederic III, the father of the Kaiser, corresponded with the British queen more often and frequently than Victoria would write to her Hanoverian cousins. Despite these reservations, Victoria’s concerns after the death of George V of Hanover, her possible role as the executor of his will and her interference in Anglo-Prussian negotiations show that contemporaries (and the Queen amongst them) thought along family lines9 . Queen Victoria wrote in the context of the Brunswick succession as late as 1884 that she was proud to belong to the Hanoverian family and that she cared very much for its survival10 .

I. The legacy of the Personal Union Anglo-Hanoverian relations were influenced by the legacy of the Personal Union between Great Britain and Hanover11 . In 1714 George Louis, the Elector of Hanover, acceded to the British throne. The act of settlement of 1701 guaranteed a Protestant succession in Great Britain and despite better dynastic claims by almost 50 pretenders it was George I who was crowned King of Great Britain and Ireland in 171412. The accession of the Hanoverians after the death of Queen Anne meant that the Elector of Hanover would be absent from the Electoral capital. Although George I and his successor George II regularly visited their German dominions, the royal move to London led to a decline in court life at Hanover13 . Particularly during the period between the Seven Years War and the Congress of Vienna when neither George III nor the Prince of Wales (the future Prince Regent/George IV) visited the Electorate, the Hanoverian/British royal family was hardly represented in Hanover14 . It is difficult

9

10

11

12

13

14

Victoria declined the role due to political reservations: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland to Queen Victoria, Paris, 29 June 1878 (copy), RA VIC/Add A31/29; Princess Frederica to Queen Marie, 24 June 1879 (draft), RA VIC/S 20/29. Queen Victoria to Crown Prince Frederickof Prussia, Balmoral, 3 November 1884: Hans Philippi, Bismarck und die Braunschweigische Thronfolgefrage: Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte, 32 (1960), 261–371, here: 352–3 (No 16). There has been a renewed interest in the dynastic union between Great Britain and Hanover. For an overview of the latest publications see: Torsten Riotte, Das Haus Hannover in der angelsächsischen Forschung: Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 79 (2007), 325–334. The two best accounts of the succession are Ragnhild Hatton’s biography, George I. Elector and King, London 1978, and the five volume publication by Georg Schnath, Geschichte Hannovers im Zeitalter der neunten Kur und der englischen Sukzession, 1674–1714, 5 vols., Hildesheiem 1976–1982, here: particularly vol. 5. Heide Bahrmeyer, Hof und Hofgesellschaft in Niedersachsen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert:.), Hof und Hofgesellschaft in den deutschen Staaten im 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Karl Möckl, Boppard 1990, 239–273; Cornelia Roolfs, Der hannoversche Hof von 1814 bis 1866, Hanover 2005, 56–57, 266–267; Uta Richter-Uhlig, Hof und Politik unter den Bedingungen der Personalunion zwischen Hannover und England. Die Aufenthalte Georgs II. in Hannover zwischen 1729 und 1741, Hannover 1992. George II visited Hanover in 1755 for the last time. The next monarch to set foot on Hanoverian soil was George IV in 1821.

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to speak of Anglo-Hanoverian relations in dynastic terms before 183715. There were some members of the British royal family present in Hanover. George I and George II spent the earlier parts of their lives in the Electorate16 . The latter’s natural son, Ludwig von Wallmoden Gimborn, held a high position in the Hanoverian army during the Seven Years War and during the Napoleonic Wars17 . More importantly, George III’s favourite son, the Duke of York, was made bishop of Osnabrück in 1763 and moved to Germany from 1781 to 178718. In addition, George III also had three of his sons educated at the University of Göttingen19 . One of them, Adolphus Frederic succeeded, in the Hanoverian army20 . The later correspondence of George III lists a number of letters by British princes who lived or travelled in the Electorate of Hanover21 . However, the idea of a separate Hanoverian dynasty did not exist. The British Hanoverians were a dynasty not absent from the continent but absent from Hanover. As the other contributions to this volume demonstrate, there were close links between the British royal family and the Hesse or Mecklenburg families. There were also marriage ties to the Hohenzollern and Württemberg dynasties but it was only with the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 that two separate family branches emerged and that Ernest Augustus, after a longer period in Berlin, permanently resided in Hanover22 . With one exception, there was no member of the British/Hanoverian royal family permanently resident in Hanover before 1837. The Duke of Cambridge, Adolphus Frederick, George III’s youngest surviving son, served in the Hanoverian army 15

16 17

18

19 20 21

22

78

The author of the present article has argued for a continuing British interest in the Electorate of Hanover for the period 1760–1815, see Torsten Riotte, Hannover in der britischen Politik (1792– 1815). Dynastisches Interesse als Element politischer Entscheidungsfindung, Münster 2006; and id., George III and Hanover: eds. Simms/Riotte (note 2), 58–85. The present article argues that dynastic relations, i.e. the social network between the reigning families of two states cannot be used as a paradigm to explain the Hanoverian dimension in British history before 1837 because the reigning family of Great Britain was identical with the Hanoverian dynasty. For George I Hatton (note 12); for George II see Mijndert Bertram, Georg II, Göttingen 2003. Son of George II and Amalie Sophie Marianne von Wallmoden, Countess Yarmouth. See Bernhard von Poten, Ludwig Graf von Wallmoden Gimborn,: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. 40, Berlin 1896 (quoted from the 2nd ed. 1971), 756–761. H. M. Stephens, Frederick, Prince, Duke of York and Albany (1763–1827): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, rev. John Van der Kiste, Oxford 2004; online edn, Oct 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10139, accessed 19 Nov 2007]. See also Christine van den Heuvel, Justus Möser und die englisch-hannoversche Reichspolitik zwischen Siebenjährigem Krieg und Fürstenbund: Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 29,3 (2002), 383–423. Ferdinand Frensdorff, Die englischen Prinzen in Göttingen: Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Niedersachsen (1905), 421–481. Grace E. Moremen, Adolphus Frederick, Duke of Cambridge–Steadfast Son of King George III, 1774–1850 (Studies in British History, Vol. 71.) Lewiston N. Y, 2002. The index of the five volumes of Arthur Aspinall (ed.), The later correspondence of George III, 5 vols., Cambridge 1962–1970, produces 180 entries on Hanover the majority of which are letters by his sons. Next to the other contribution in this volume see Clarissa Campbell Orr, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, queen of Great Britain and electress of Hanover. Northern dynasties and the northern republic of letters: Queenship in Europe, 1660–1815, ed. Clarissa Campbell Orr, Cambridge 2004, 368–401.

House of Hanover

during the 1790s and became military commander of the King’s German Legion, a foreign corps that fought in British services during the Napoleonic Wars23 . After the restoration of Hanover in 1814 the Prince Regent, the future George IV, declared Adolphus Frederick governor general of Hanover and the latter permanently moved to the capital of Hanover after the congress of Vienna24 . He was given the title of viceroy after the accession of William IV. Married into the Hesse-family he resided in Schloß Rumpenheim near Frankfurt during parts of the year while at his Hanoverian residence at others. It was during this period that the ‘Cambridges’ developed a strong affection for Britain’s German dominions25. After the accession of Queen Victoria to the British throne and Ernest Augustus’s move to Hanover in 1837 the Cambridge family returned to Britain. However, it was not only fond memories that kept the interest of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge alive. There also existed a very strong dynastic element with regard to Hanover and also to Brunswick, the possession of the younger family branch. George, second Duke of Cambridge, inherited legitimate rights to Britain’s former German dominions from his father. Aware of his role, the royal George would claim Hanoverian and Brunswick titles when Prussia disbarred George V of Hanover and his son from succeeding in 1866 and1884 respectively26 . George, Duke of Cambridge, did not succeed in either of his attempts to claim a German title but caused some discussion in British 23

24

25

26

Accounts of the King’s German Legion deal very little with the Duke because he was only nominal commander of the Legion. See: North Ludlow Beamish, History of the King’s German Legion, 2 vols., London 1832–1837; Bernhard Schwertfeger, Geschichte der Königlich Deutschen Legion, 2 vols., Hanover and Leipzig 1907, and the unpublished PhD dissertation by Daniel S. Gray, The Service of the King’s German Legion in the Army of the Duke of Wellington, 1809–1815, unpubl. Dphil thesis, Tallahasse 1979. For the perception of the Legion in Great Britain see Nicolas Harding, Hanover and the British Empire, 1700–1837, (Woodbridge 2007), 237, 246–7 and 253–5. For biographical information on the Duke see Moremen (note 20); Alan Palmer, Adolphus Frederick, Prince, first Duke of Cambridge (1774–1850): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford Sept 2004; online edn, May 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/169, accessed 19 Nov 2007]. Mijndert Bertram, Der ,,Mondminister“ und ,,General Killjoy“. Ein Machtkampf im Hintergrund der Ernennung des Herzogs Adolph Friedrich von Cambridge zum Generalgouverneur von Hannover (1813–1816). Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 65 (1993), 213–262. Roolfs, (note 13), 266–275. As one example of many of the Duke’s attachment to Hanover see: George, Duke of Cambridge to George V of Hanover, 11 July 1866, printed in Geoffrey Malden Willis (ed.), Hannovers Schicksalsjahr 1866 im Briefwechsel König Georgs V. mit der Königin Marie, Hildesheim 1966, Appendix II, 219–220. George Duke of Cambridge to Queen Victoria, Gloucester House, 7 July 1866, RA VIC/S 21/2; George, Duke of Cambridge to Queen Victoria, telegram from London to Balmoral, 18 October 1884 (copy), RA VIC/S 23/201: “Have just heard by telegraph [of] death of Duke of Brunswick last night, Hope you will support my interest should Duke of Cumberland be unable to succeed, no time should be lost.” For the later claims see Hans Philippi, Preußen und die braunschweigische Thronfolgefrage (Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Niedersachsen 25, Niedersachsen und Preußen, Heft 6), Hildesheim 1966. For Britain’s perception of the Duke’s claims: The Spectator, 22 June 1878: “When the kingdom was extinguished, they were, on the whole, pleased, It must have been a very bitter pill for the Duke of Cambridge, who never forgot that he stood second in succession to the State.” In a similar sense: The Times, 22 October 1885.

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and Prussian circles about the possibility of a foreigner succeeding as a prince in the German Empire27 .

II. Queen Victoria and the Hanoverians until 1871 The Personal Union between Great Britain and Hanover ended after the death of William IV in 1837. Victoria acceded to the British throne. According to the Salic law of succession Ernest Augustus preceded over his niece in the dynasty’s German dominions and was crowned king of Hanover the same year. Although highly controversial in liberal circles, he succeeded in winning a majority of Hanoverians to support his policies. Historians have traditionally stressed the reactionary element in Ernest Augustus’s policies. The abrogation of the constitution of 1833 and the dispute about the Göttingen Seven, a group of German academics who protested against the abrogation and were consequently discharged of their duties, made the King of Hanover notorious amongst the liberals in Germany28 . However, Abigail Green has shown that he also found support in large parts of the Hanoverian population and that he succeeded in popularising the monarchy to a degree that his son would fail to do29 . To a certain extent, the Hanoverians were pleased to have their monarch back after 123 years without a sovereign resident30 . In Britain, Ernest Augustus was very unpopular amongst large parts of the population31 . The death of his valet Sellis had caused some uproar and negative propaganda in the British public in 1810. After Sellis was found dead in the Duke’s chambers the opposition accused the Duke of murder32 . He was also on difficult terms with his own family. His marriage to Friederike of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was not welcomed by his mother and siblings. Queen Charlotte refused to receive her new daughter-in-law33 . The relationship be27

28

29 30 31

32

33

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For the discussion amongst Prussian/ German circles see: Bismarck to Emperor William, Berlin 28 June 1884, King Albert of Saxony to Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia, Strehlen, 8 December 1884, King Albert of Saxony to Bismarck, Dresden 8 December 1884, Bismarck to King Albert of Saxony, 28 December 1884 and the promemoria by Herbert Bismarck, London 18 June 1884, all printed in: Philippi (note 26), 343–352 (10–15). For British comments on the issue: Maurice Holzmann to Lord Ampthill, Malborough House, 28 March 1883 (copy), RA VIC/S 23/180. It is enlightening to read the textbook account by Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1800– 1866. Bürgerwelt und starker Staat, Munich 1983 (quoted as pb 1998), 376–77, against the account in Willis (note 2), 170–195. Abigail Green, Fatherlands. State-building and Nationhood in 19th Century Germany, Cambridge 2001, 62–97. Roolfs (note 13), 282–293. Alan Palmer, Ernest Augustus (1771–1851): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford Sept 2004; online edn, May 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8840,accessed19 Nov 2007] lists the most recent literature. See also Willis, (note 2), passim. In this context the political print ‘The Princeley meeting at Starlsund [!]’ from 1813. See a detailed description in: M.D. George, Catalogue of political and personal satires preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, vol. IX, London 1949, No. 12063. Willis (note 2), 46–62; Palmer (note 1), 128–9 and Roolfs (note 13), 275–282.

House of Hanover

tween the Duke of Cumberland and his niece Victoria was equally bad. The allegation of a Cumberland plot circulated amongst the British public as early as 183034 . Rumour had it that the Duke intended to use any means to enable his son’s succession to the British throne. The alleged plot was part of a discussion about a possible regency for Victoria. It was also the result of popular criticism of the race for royal succession. The death of Charlotte, Princess Royal, the only child of George IV in 1817 had caused four royal marriages in 181835 . The Dukes of Cumberland, Cambridge and Kent all produced offspring within a year36 . It was only due to the Duke of Kent’s precedence in succession that Victoria succeeded in Great Britain. The Duchess of Cambridge had given birth to healthy children before their direct rival but her husband was younger than the Duke of Kent37 . The negative tension between Victoria and Ernest Augustus continued after the Queen’s accession. While Victoria tried to refuse Cumberland his former rooms in St James’s Palace, the latter claimed the Hanoverian Crown jewels as his own property38 . Some of the tension between the two family branches disappeared when Ernest Augustus died in 1851. However, it would be misleading to describe the relationship between George V of Hanover and Queen Victoria as friendly. After her Hanoverian cousin lost his throne in 1866 Victoria would not receive him in Britain. As General C. Grey wrote to Foreign Secretary Lord Stanley it was the Queen’s wish that “King George must not be allowed to come to England”39. The Queen’s decision seems in contrast to the efforts of George, Duke of Cambridge, who wrote to Victoria in 1866 about possible means to assist the “poor Hanoverians”40 . Victoria, however, saw no way of assisting Cambridge in his efforts to save Hanover from Prussian occupation. Although she claimed that she would do anything in her power to support her old Stamm-Haus (dynasty) she would not encourage the Hanoverians to settle in Britain41 . Several years later, in 1876, Victoria was equally unhappy about the Duchess

34

35 36 37 38

39 40

41

Palmer (note 31) and ‘The alleged plot of the Duke of Cumberland against the life of Princess Victoria’, original in RA VIC/Z 485 printed in: Cecil Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria. Her Life and Times, vol. 1: 1819–1861, London 1972, 434–5. Palmer (note 1), 127–135. Ibid., The Dukes of Kent, Clarence and Cambridge married in 1818. The fourth wedding was that of Elizabeth who married the landgrave of Hesse-Homburg. See the cartoon of the dukes in Palmer (note 1), between pages 215 and 216. For the duke’s rooms in St James’s see Ernst August to Lord Duncannon, Hanover, 11 December 1839 (copy), RA VIC/Add A 31/721. For the issue of the Hanoverian Crown jewels WoodhamSmith (note 34), 386–388. General C. Grey to Lord Stanley, Windsor Castle, 4 March 1868 (copy), RA VIC/S 21/142. For Grey’s role see Mosse (note 3), 206. George, Duke of Cambridge to Queen Victoria, Gloucester House, 7 July 1866, RA VIC/S 21/2, also printed in George Earle Buckle, The letters of Queen Victoria. Second Series: A Selectionfrom Her Majesty’s Correspondence and Journal between the Years 1862 and 1878, 2 vols., London 1926, I,356–7. Queen Victoria to George, Duke of Cambridge, Osborne, 2 August 1866, RA VIC/S 21/11 (Victoria’s spelling).

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of Cambridge inviting George V of Hanover to come to Britain and she insisted that the Duchess should have asked her before inviting the Hanoverian royal family42. Two aspects are striking in Victoria’s correspondence with regard to the Hanoverians and the events of 1866 to 1871. Firstly, the Queen was highly critical of Prussian foreign policy up to 187143. Bismarck’s Realpolitik and the Prussian chancellor’s newly formed confederation and empire lacked any legitimate right44. The incorporation of, amongst others, the Hanoverian crown lands under Prussian sovereignty was in clear violation of the monarchical principle. In this sense, Bismarck’s policy was revolutionary and Victoria disapproved because it violently changed the existing order. In this respect, Victoria was on Hanover’s side. However, Victoria understood the international situation well enough to accept the North German Confederation in 1866 and the German Empire after 1871 as a result of the changes within the balance of power. Victoria’s correspondence shows a certain element of anger. As she wrote to the Duke of Cambridge in July 1866: “All what has now happened might have been averted, if the Sovereigns of Germany had, after 48, come forward generously and patriotically, and given up certain useless Rights for the benefit of Germany at large, and united in bringing about a great united Germany. This was my beloved Albert’s great wish, But alas! Short-sighted and selfish views prevailed and the result has been this deplorable war and exhibition of weakness”45 . The second aspect of Victoria’s attitude towards the Hanoverians concerns the potential for further crisis. Despite her anger at Prussia’s destruction of the German Confederation and the consequences flowing from it for many of the princely houses of Germany (and Denmark), Victoria came to accept the Prusso-German empire as a fait accompli after 1871. Victoria disapproved of George V’s political efforts to restore the kingdom of Hanover by insurrectionary means and called his measures intrigues against the Prussian state46 . From a Hanoverian point of view, the period 1866 to 1871 was characterised by three developments. Firstly, the new province of Hanover would be successfully integrated into the Prussian state. The majority of Hanoverians would adapt to the new

42 43 44

45 46

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Queen Victoria to Lord Derby, Windsor Castle, 30 April 1876 (copy), RA VIC/S 21/224, and seven enclosures. Mosse (note 1), passim, Palmer (note 1), 200–225. Thomas Würtenberger, Legitimität, Legalität: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, eds. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck, vol. 3, Stuttgart 1982 (quoted as pb 2004), 677–740, here: 732. The use of the term chancellor refers to Bismarck’s role in the German empire. He held the title of minister president (Ministerpräsident) and foreign secretary in Prussia. Queen Victoria to George, Duke of Cambridge, Osborne, 2 August 1866, RA VIC/S 21/11. Sir T. Biddulph to Lord Derby, Balmoral, 2 September 1866 (Copy), RA VIC/S 21/43; General C. Grey to Lord Stanley, Windsor Castle, 4 March 1868 (copy), RA VIC/S 21/142.

House of Hanover

political situation within less than five years47 . The urge for national unity had always been particularly strong in Hanover and many of the founding members of the Nationalverein (Club for National Unity) came from Hanover48 . The Prussian-led unification of Germany found strong support amongst the national liberals in Hanover and they continued to be some of Bismarck’s most reliable supporters during the following two decades49 . Secondly, despite the enthusiasm with which some Hanoverians embraced the Bismarck Reich, the majority of the Hanoverians would always retain a certain degree of patriotism or particularism towards the former kingdom of Hanover. This clearly showed in the transformation of the monarch’s image in the Hanoverian public. Historians stress that the positive public image of George V identifiable for the time after 1866 had little to do with the popular attitudes towards the monarch during the active reign in his kingdom50 . It was due to the loss of political power that George’s reign became romanticised51 . The large number of loyalist publications that date to the late 1860s is evidence of the transformation of the monarchical image52 . Hanoverian particularism also showed in the formation of a new political party that supported the independence and restoration of the Kingdom53. The German Hanoverian Party (Deutschhannoversche Partei – DHP) can be described as an opposition party whose ultimate aim was to achieve Hanover’s independence and restoration. It existed from the late 1860s right until the Weimar Republic though with declining influence after the 1890s. Although the DHP caused some concern to Bismarck and his successors (particularly after it had agreed to cooperate with the Catholic centre party) it is important to stress that the party never stepped outside the framework of the execution. It was a legal party that aimed at reform, not at revolution54 . Thirdly, and most importantly with regard to royal cousinhood, George V of Hanover also supported what can be termed insurrectionary efforts to restore his sovereignty. The monarch had moved some of his financial assets from Hanover to Britain in time before the war against Prussia. He also secured further sources of income and now used the money in various ways to destabilize the new Prussian rule in Hanover. Via his agent Oscar Meding he established informal contacts with French foreign policy

47 48

49 50

51 52 53 54

Heide Barmeyer, Hannovers Eingliederung in den preußischen Staat. Annexion und administrative Integration 1866–1868, Hildesheim 1983, 182–186. Hans-Georg Aschoff, Welfische Bewegung und politischer Katholizismus, 1866–1918. Die Deutschhannoversche Partei und das Zentrum in der Provinz Hannover während des Kaiserreichs (Beiträge zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der Politischen Parteien Band 83), Düsseldorf 1987, 23. Ibid., 98. Ibid. 49, see also Dieter Brosius, Georg V. von Hannover – der König des ,,monarchischen Prinzips“: Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 51 (1979), 253–291, here: 253; and Barmeyer (note 47), 184–185. Brosius (note 50), 254. See the large number of printed sources in the bibliography in Barmeyer (note 50), 643–653. Aschoff (note 48). Ibid., 87.

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during the late 1860s55. He also funded a number of opposition newspapers, amongst them the French La situation56. Finally, the royal income was used to support a number of officers and privates to form the so-called Welfenlegion (Guelph Legion)57 . Although inconsiderable in numbers, this free corps stationed in the Netherlands and in France represented a threat to Prussian rule, at least on an ideological level. The legion bore strong resemblance to the King’s German Legion that fought against the Napoleonic Armies. It seems that in George V’s view Prussian rule was only to last until Bismarck’s own Waterloo58 . It is not difficult to see why neither of these measures was much appreciated in Berlin, but what is more interesting with regard to royal cousinhood is that it was George V’s support for insurrection that found Victoria’s disapproval59 . She certainly disliked George V’s efforts to restore the kingdom of Hanover after 1866 because this would lead to further disruption and unrest within Germany. What she seemed to have hoped for in this period (not least due to her own personal crisis) was the consistency and continuity that was so much lacking in times of rising radical and republican opposition to the institution of monarchy60 . Hence, to understand fully the dynastic network between the British royal family and the Hanoverians it is important to consider the general disapproval of insurrection. The years 1866 to 1871 represent a watershed not only with regard to the history of German unification. The period also saw an important progression in the transformation of monarchical power. David Cannadine writes about the period lasting to the 1870s that it “saw the British monarchy at its most significant in terms of the real, effective political power”61 . Not all historians agree. Klaus Hildebrand emphasises in his study on British interventionism on the continent that the Queen had little say in foreign policy during the 1860s62. It appears necessary to examine the Queen’s role in more detail. The death of the Prince Consort Albert in 1861 had caused Victoria to withdraw from politics. Her absence from the British scene had caused some concern in governmental circles but the Queen seems not to have intended to get involved in domestic politics again63 . However, Mosse writes about “the active part taken by the Queen in the conduct of diplomatic affairs” in 186664 . The paradox between a politi55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64

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Evan B. Bukey, The Exile Government of King George V of Hanover 1866–71: Canadian Journal of History 5 (1970), 71–92, here: 78. Stewart A. Stehlin, Bismarck and the Guelph Problem (1866–1890). A Study in Particularist Opposition to National Unity, Den Haag 1973; Aschoff (note 48), 51–52. Bukey (note 55), 85; Stehlin (note 56), 76–78, Renate Duckstein, Die Welfenlegion, Göttingen 1922. The latest account of Hanoverian opposition to the Bismarck empire is by a young Cambridge graduate. Jasper Heinzen, The Guelph “Conspiracy”: Hanover as Would-Be Intermediary in the European System, 1866–1870: IHR 29,2 (2007), 258–281. See also his unpublished Mphil Dissertation, Cambridge University 2006. Sir T. Biddulph to Lord Derby, Balmoral, 2 September 1866 (Copy), RA VIC/S 21/43. Cannadine (note 3), 109. Ibid., 108. Hildebrand (note 1), 152. Cannadine (note 3), 109. Mosse (note 3), 222.

House of Hanover

cally influential and active monarch and Mrs Brown who resided in Scotland can be resolved if we consider the different interest in politics. Mosse states that Victoria’s views were “to a large extent coloured by dynastic interests’ just as were her ‘methods of diplomacy”’ 65. Discussing dynastic family networks is a difficult task particularly because the dynastic and the political level tend to blend. The clear divide between a dynastic and a political sphere is a purely analytical tool. The influence of dynastic aspects on British foreign policy in the later part of the nineteenth century was fairly limited if we look at the major strategic decision of coalitions and warfare (Hildebrand). However, dynastic aspects could still have an impact on the nomination of courtiers and politicians (Cannadine) but more importantly, on the quality of political relations, particularly those of a fragile character (Mosse). Recently, historians have become more sensitive towards the soft elements in diplomatic history and international relations. As Johannes Paulmann has shown, monarchs used dynastic networks to make political statements, and the governments of the day had to respond accordingly66. In the Hanoverian case, Victoria corresponded with her daughter, son-in-law and mother-in-law at the Prussian Court in order to assist the Hanoverians during the crisis of 1866 to 187167. She seems to have supported her Hanoverian cousin dynastically. At the same time the Queen came to realize that she could not act in Hanover’s favour politically. Although she addressed her foreign secretary or ambassador to Germany with regard to financial compensation and political exile of the Hanoverians, the Queen and her government (even more so) always emphasised that this was not to influence British foreign political decision-making. As she wrote to the Duchess of Cambridge it was the clear wish of the government and the English people that intervention was out of the question. “This is what I have to consider as my duty as an Englishwoman [Engländerin], what I am first of all. I can only express my German sentiments by privately asking for possible indulgence and consideration for the Hanoverian royal family and their crown lands”68 The debate about Victoria’s attitude towards the Hanoverians can (partly) be resolved by distinguishing between the dynastic survival of the Hanoverians (which lay very close to Victoria’s heart) and the political restitution of Hanover (which Victoria did not support). Hence, the

65 66 67

68

Ibid. Johanns Paulmann, Pomp und Politik. Monarchenbegegnungen in Europa zwischen Ancien R´egime und Erstem Weltkrieg, Paderborn 2000. For example: Queen Victoria to Crown Prince Frederic of Prussia, Balmoral, 24 September 1866, RA VIC/S 21/61; Queen of Prussia to Queen Victoria, Berlin, 15 February 1868, RA VIC/S 21/125; Victoria, Crown Princess of Prussia to Queen Victoria, Heringsdorf, 10 August 1866, in: Sir Frederick Ponsonby (ed.), Briefe der Kaiserin Friedrich, Berlin 1929, 70. Queen Victoria to Augusta, Duchess of Cambridge, Osborne, 17 August 1866, RA VIC/S 21/30 (translated from the German original: “[N]ach dem entschiedenen Willen des Gouvernements sowohl, wie des englischen Volks von einer Intervention keine Rede sein könne. Daran muss ich mich als Engländerin, was ich vor allem bin, gebunden erachten. Meinem deutschen Gefühl kann ich nur dadurch Ausdruck geben, dass ich mich privatim verwende für mögliche Schonung und Rücksichtnahme auf die Königsfamilie sowohl wie auf das Land Hannover.”

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Queen’s reaction to Bismarck’s wars of German unification showed elements of both active interference and of acceptance.

III. Dynastic survival after the death of George V After Hanover’s military defeat in 1866, George V and his son, Ernest Augustus (II) went into exile. Father and son stayed at the Court of the Duke of Altenburg, George’s father-in-law, for a short time before they continued their journey towards Austria69 . They established themselves in the Austrian town of Hietzing near Vienna. Queen Marie of Hanover, George V’s wife, remained in Hanover for a while but after the Prussians suspected her of organising political opposition to the new authorities she had to leave her residence, the Marienburg castle near Hanover. She joined her husband and son along with her two daughters Frederica and Mary in 186770. Although the Hanoverian royal family had to live in exile from 1867 onwards, the Hanoverians did not disappear from the dynastic scene. The diary of George, Duke of Cambridge, lists two visits of the Hanoverians to Britain in 1876 and after the death of George V in 187871. We also know that the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, saw Frederica a number of times72 . The dynastic network continued to work and it included the Hanoverians despite their loss of sovereignty73 . The Anglo-Hanoverian family network became of particular importance to the Hanoverians after 1866. British and Prussian representatives negotiated (behind closed doors) about the future residence of George V in the months after the military defeat. It was clearly the Queen’s interference that saved her Hanoverian cousin from being extradited from Austria in 1866/774. Victoria wanted her kin to live according to their royal status and she addressed her government a number of times to ensure that the Hanoverian family members were spared the public humiliation of being extradited from their host country. From her correspondence it appears that her fear that the Hanoverians might come to Britain if they were to leave Austria was an important aspect of the Queen’s support75 .

69 70 71

72

73 74

86

Geoffrey Malden Willis, Hannovers Schicksalsjahr 1866 im Briefwechsel König Georgs V. mit der Königin Marie, Hildesheim 1966, VII-XII; Stehlin (note 56), 32. Stehlin (note 56), 87; Bukey (note 55), passim. Edgar Sheppard (ed.), George, Duke of Cambridge. A memoir of his private live. Based on the journals and Correspondence of His Royal Highness, 2 vols., London 1906, II, 41, 43, 56, see also II, 167, 181, 265. Albert Edward Prince of Wales to Victoria, Crown Princess of Germany, Sandringham, Norfolk, 23 April 1879 (copy), RA VIC/S 20/5; Maurice Holzmann to Princess Frederica, 18 March 1885, RA VIC/S 20/244. See also the references to the Crown Prince’s efforts on behalf of Cumberland in: John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II. Der Aufbau der Persönlichen Monarchie, Munich 2001, 55–56. See also the large attendance at the funeral of George V of Hanover in 1878, Stehlin (note 56), 139. Lord Stanley to General C. Grey, F.O., 11 March 1868, Private, RA VIC/S 21/145.

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Victoria proved less successful in negotiating financial matters. The peace treaty between Prussia and Hanover had laid down financial arrangements for the former Hanoverian royal family. Parts of the royal income would be invested in state papers and the interest paid to the former monarch. George V would receive the interest on condition that he left the administration of the funds and the total of his remaining property to the Prussian state. The Prussian offer seemed fairly generous against the background of the Hanoverian defeat and it has been interpreted by historians as Bismarck’s effort to avoid opposition from the European dynasties. The Prussian chancellor seems to have intended to make peace with the Hanoverian family, at least financially. George accepted the offer but used some of it to finance separatist opposition to Bismarck’s confederation. This offered the Prussian chancellor the chance to utilize the Hanoverian royal family’s wealth for his own ends. After a short period of consideration Bismarck decided to freeze the financial assets. In future, the money would not be paid to the rebellious Hanoverians but go into the notorious Welfenfond, a fund that was not under parliamentary control. As Bismarck claimed, all income flowing from this source would be used exclusively against Hanoverian insurrection until the Hanoverian royal family denounced all rights to the former kingdom. It soon became clear that Bismarck’s interpretation of Hanoverian insurrection was very broad. Basically, he used Hanoverian money as an independent and uncontrolled source of income for his own political agenda76 . Historians have argued whether the sums flowing from the fund were substantial enough to affect Prussian domestic policy to a larger degree but in the context of the present chapter the Welfenfond is less interesting in its meaning to Prussian policy. The question that grew out of the conflict about the financial arrangements between the House of Hanover and the Prussian government and Bismarck’s decision to confiscate the sums was whether the Hanoverians could still live amongst European dynasties if deprived of their financial income. Queen Victoria’s concerns for George V, but equally for his wife Marie and their three children, grew considerably after news of the confiscation reached London. In letters to her daughter Vicky and her son-in-law Frederick she articulated the wish that the family should be enabled to live according to its status77 . The answers to her letters did not offer much hope. The Crown Prince of Prussia declared that only a renunciation of the royal Hanoverian title would enable him to act in support of the Queen’s request78 .

75 76

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General C. Grey to Lord Stanley, Windsor Castle, 4 March 1868 (copy), RA VIC/ S21/142. Stehlin (note 56), 52, see also Robert Nöll von der Nahmer, Bismarcks Reptilienfonds: aus den Geheimakten Preußens und des Deutschen Reiches, Mainz 1968; Hans Philippi, Zur Geschichte des Welfenfonds: Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 31 (1959), 190–254. Lt. Gen. H. Ponsonby to Lord Salisbury, draft, 2 August 1878, RA VIC/Add A 31/123; Queen Victoria to Friedrich Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Prussia/ Germany, Osborne, 4 January 1879 (copy), RA VIC/S 23/40. Friedrich Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Prussia/ Germany to Queen Victoria, Potsdam, 20 August 1878 (translation of extract) RA VIC Add/A 31/148.

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Queen Victoria’s hands were tied. Only when the Guelph legion ceased to exist and most of Hanover’s organised resistance disappeared at the beginning of the 1870s did Victoria arrange for Queen Marie and her two daughters to receive an annual income from the Prussian authorities. It was paid annually as from 187379. However, throughout the entire period the Hanoverian royal family was sufficiently well off to survive dynastically. George V had found a number of ways to move finances into channels the Prussians did not control80 . Still, the problem of the financial income of the individual family members continued to cause tension between the Hanoverians and the Prussians. The issue came up again after the death of George V in 1878. It had long been unclear whether the Prussian-Hanoverian antagonism would be resolved after the death of the last Hanoverian monarch. Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, had hopes of a conciliatory solution to the problem and acted accordingly. The Queen’s private secretary wrote in June 1878 that the Queen thought it “wiser” if the Duke of Cumberland would enter into friendly relations with the German Government. If Cumberland was to abandon his claims to the Crown of Hanover and assumed the position of Hereditary Successor to the Dukedom of Brunswick “the Queen will gladly through Lord Beaconsfield act as intermediary” 81 . However, before the Queen and Beaconsfield could act, Ernest Augustus (II) sent a declaration to the German emperor stating that he would not give up his father’s claims to Hanoverian sovereignty. The letter to the German emperor was addressed to the King of Prussia, an affront to the emperor’s authority. Further copies were sent as circular notes to the princes of the empire82 . Under such conditions, Bismarck was not prepared to move in the question of the Guelph fund. Ernest Augustus (II) was aware that the Queen had informally tried to support his position but instead of accepting his aunt’s informal mediation he pushed the negotiations into the dynastic and political public. He tried to capitalize on the Queen’s support hoping that public support would force Prussia to give in. Victoria’s role became more delicate when Ernest Augustus (II) informed her in late summer 1866 that George V had intended Victoria as the executrix of his father’s will83. By accepting the legal position of executor the Queen could not have avoided becoming officially part of the struggle over the Hanoverian fortune. After some consideration Victoria preferred to decline the position and continued to act informally by writing to her daughter and son-in-law and by sending the former British envoy to Hanover, Sir Charles Lennox Wyke, now resident in Copenhagen, to the Duke in Gmunden to negotiate a letter to the German government84 . However, as the amount of corre79 80 81 82 83 84

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Memorandum drawn up by desire of Princess Frederica, RA VIC/S 20/63. J. Kniepe to Princess Frederica, Penzing, 30 November 1878, RA VIC/ S20/45. General Ponsonby to Queen Victoria, Windsor Castle, 23 June 1878, RA VIC Add A 31/15. Stehlin (note 56), 142. Ernest August, Duke of Cumberland to Queen Victoria, Paris, 29 June 1878 (copy), RA VIC Add A 31/29. Memorandum drawn up by desire of Princess Frederica, RA VIC/S 20/63; for Wyke see Willis (note 69), VI-XII and the following correspondence: Sir Charles Lennox Wyke to Ernst August,

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spondence in the Royal Archives indicates, there was greater concern in 1878 than in the years between 1871 and the death of George V. It is obvious that Ernest Augustus (II) hoped that his kinship relations with Victoria would support his claims in 1878. He also showed a good deal of activism in the struggle between the Guelph dynasty and Prussia. Soon after his circular note to the German courts he informed the Queen that he was to marry princess Thyra of Denmark, the youngest daughter of the King of Denmark. The Danish-Hanoverian wedding was perceived as a political statement by the Prussians. Both dynasties had been on the losing side during the wars of unification. Denmark had lost the war over Schleswig and Holstein in 1864 and there was a strong element of antipathy amongst the Danish Royal family towards the Hohenzollern and Bismarck in particular. Hanover’s fate in 1866 had caused an almost complete breakdown of correspondence between the Guelph family and the Prussian dynasty. Ernest Augustus (II)’s marriage to Thyra formed a bond between two strongly anti-Prussian and particularly anti-Bismarck dynasties. At the same time, the Danish royal family was related to the British dynasty (Thyra’s sister Alexandra had married the future British King Edward VII) and also to the Russian Romanovs (her sister Dagmar had married the Russian Tsar Alexander III)85 . How was Prussia to respond to the Hanoverian-Danish marriage that in essence represented an international dynastic alliance of anti-Prussian families? The German Crown Prince sent a note of congratulation to the King of Denmark on the occasion of the engagement of Ernest Augustus (II) and Thyra but the Prussian government made it clear what they thought of the liaison86 . The Prussian delegation to Copenhagen stayed away from the wedding and remained absent as long as Ernest Augustus (II) would remain in Denmark. Such a situation was highly embarrassing to the royal house of Denmark but also to the Hanoverians and to the Queen of Great Britain. The Royal Marriage Act of 1772 had laid down that members of the royal family could only contract valid marriages with the monarch’s consent. The Queen considered whether the engagement of the Duke of Cumberland as a member of the royal family and Princess Thyra should be announced in Council. Such an announcement would make it clear to the British and to the international public that Victoria approved of the match87 . Hence, she felt the need to comment on the Prussian delegation’s refusal to attend the wedding. To her son-in-law, the German Crown Prince, the Queen wrote at the beginning of 1879 that the behaviour of the Prussian delegation was most embarrassing to the whole family and damaged the position of the Hanoverian family amongst European aristocracy. She pointed out that the Duke of

85

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Duke of Cumberland, London, 1 July 1878, RA VIC/Add A 31/37; and his letters from Gmünden in VIC/Add A 31/158–161, 165–166, 170–1, 174, 177–180, 184, 186, 187, 195–196. Stehlin (note 56), 145, Röhl (note 72), II, 63. See also Catrine Clay, King – Kaiser – Tsar. Three Royal Cousins who led the World to War, London 2006, passim, for the tension that led from the Danish marriages. Sir Charles Lennox Wyke to Marquis of Salisbury, Confidential (copy), No 82, Copenhagen, 27 October 1878, RA VIC/Add A 31/191. See also the interesting article in The Times, 9 November 1878.

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Cumberland was fully accepted in Austrian society and that she would appreciate it if Wilhelm I would do something to resolve the situation. “Is there nothing you can do about this?”, she asked Friedrich88 . Based on her correspondence during the events of 1878/9 it becomes evident that Queen Victoria was very much concerned about the international standing of the Hanoverians. She did not want to become officially involved in the feud over the Welfenfond and declined the role of executor of George V’s will. However, with regard to Cumberland’s wedding she was concerned about the dynastic reputation of her extended family. Hence, she acted in a similar pattern to her response to the incorporation of Hanover in Prussia twelve years before. Victoria avoided any public or political statement that could offend the Prussian government but she proved quite insistent in her informal correspondence, mainly with her dynastic correspondents but also in instructing her government, that – dynastically – the Hanoverians were to be supported in their claims.

IV. Frederica of Hanover and the normative aspects of dynastic networks Until now the Hanoverian royal family has been interpreted as a single analytical unit. Victoria has been understood to be acting on behalf of the Hanoverians. However, the death of George V and the subsequent row over financial arrangements and the marriage of Frederica of Hanover illustrate that it can be misleading to discuss dynastic relations without considering the members individually. Historians tend to focus on the head of a dynasty or his/ her spouse to discuss the importance of dynastic connections. The Anglo-Hanoverian relationship after 1878 is a good case to illustrate that a family could cease to be the most important reference point for an individual member although it never completely ceased to be of importance. Of the three children of George V the eldest was Ernest Augustus (II), Duke of Cumberland89 . After the death of George V he would be responsible not only for the policies of the Hanoverians but also for the position of his mother and his two sisters. Both the mother and the younger sister Mary seem to have been content to live under Ernest Augustus (II)’s guardianship. They supported him as the head of the family in his political and financial decisions concerning the dynasty and the household. However, the elder sister Frederica proved unhappy with her situation at the exile court in Austria. A visit to London after the death of her father offered her an opportunity to escape. On the invitation of her aunt, the Duchess of Cambridge, Frederica travelled across the Channel and informed the Duchess and Victoria that she

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Queen Victoria to Friedrich Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Prussia/ Germany, Osborne, 4 January 1879 (copy), RA VIC/S 23/40. There exists only a short biographical sketch: Paul Zimmermann, Ernst August, Herzog zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg, Hanover 1929.

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wanted to stay90 . Frederica’s decision to be permanently resident in Britain meant that she intended to live independently. This represented a major decision for an unmarried princess and Frederica was quite aware of the outrage this would cause. Frederica’s mother, Queen Marie of Hanover, wrote that she was extremely disappointed with her daughter. As Queen Marie put it in a letter to her eldest daughter, Frederica would abandon the family: “You are at a dangerous point. You are about to separate yourself from those who are closest to you in order to follow an independent course”91 . Queen Marie continued that, instead, it was Frederica’s duty and responsibility to support the family in every respect and particularly the head of the family. Ernest Augustus (II) wrote in a similar tone making it clear that he disapproved of his sister’s decision. He also threatened not to support her financially92 . It is impressive to see Frederica’s determination to stay in Britain despite the threatening language of her relatives. In letters to both her brother and mother she made it clear that she would not change her mind93. The dispute continued for several weeks. Despite the pressure from her mother and brother Frederica finally succeeded and the family had to accept her decision. However, this was only possible because Frederica’s aunt, Queen Victoria, decided to interfere. The Queen wrote to Ernest Augustus (II) stating that she was on Frederica’s side and that she offered to act as a guardian for the Hanoverian princess during her stay in Britain94. Victoria would be responsible for Frederica. The close kinship relations between the Queen and the Hanoverians might have helped to make this arrangement possible. However, it is interesting to see that Victoria was prepared to overrule the head of the Hanoverian royal family. The Queen must have felt very sympathetic towards Frederica’s situation to decide against the family’s wish. The motivation for the Hanoverian princess to distance herself from her family is not clear. It seems that Frederica was unhappy with the financial arrangements made for her95 . Her father George V had established a fund (Prinzessinnenfond) to provide an income for her and her sister. The money had been sequestrated by Prussia together with the Hanoverian finances after 1866 but Victoria had negotiated for the Prussian government to pay an annual sum to the two princesses and their mother from 1873. Most of the income received had been used by her mother who claimed household 90

91

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95

The following is mainly based on source material from RA VIC/S 20. For Frederica’s decision to stay in Great Britain: Princess Frederica to Queen Marie of Hanover (draft), St James’s Palace, 16 July 1879, RA VIC/ S20/34. Marie, Queen of Hanover to Princess Frederica, Gmunden, 9 July 1879 (copy), RA VIC/S 20/33, translated from the German: “Du stehst auf dem gefährlichen Punkte, Dich von denen, die dir im Leben am nächsten stehen, losreißen und deine eigenen Wege wandeln zu wollen.” Ernst August, Duke of Cumberland to Princess Frederica, Gmunden, 1 August 1879 (copy), RA VIC/S 20/37. Princess Frederica to Ernst Augustus (copy), not dated (1879), RA VIC/S 20/48. Queen Victoria to Ernst Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, Osborne, 30 August 1879 (copy); RA VIC/S 20/46; see also the letter by Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland to Princess Frederica, Gmunden, 14 September 1879, RA VIC/S 20/53. Queen Victoria to Ernst Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, Osborne, 30 August 1879 (copy); RA VIC/S 20/46.

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expenses for the lodging of the two princesses at Gmunden. As a thirty year old woman Frederica seems to have felt deprived of her fortune and living. The impression that remains from the correspondence is that the Hanoverian princess intended to emancipate herself from her brother’s and mother’s control, not least financially. The issue became more problematic when Prussia entered into negotiation with the Hanoverian royal family about the widowhood for Queen Marie of Hanover and the funds paid to princesses Frederica and Mary after the death of George V in 187896 . The Prussian government offered the annual sum to be paid to the Queen of Hanover and her two daughters. On recommendation of the Hanoverian politician Ludwig Windthorst, Ernest Augustus (II) and the Gmunden family accepted the Prussian offer. Frederica in London decided not to97 . Indeed, she proved furious that the Prussian government was to interfere in the payment of the funds. As she put it, it would not be in her father’s interests to accept the Hanoverian fortune as a donation granted by Prussian condescension. She insisted that the family had a legitimate right to the money and, in her view, the Prussians were dressing the offer up like a gift or a present which as a Hanoverian princess she could not accept. This, Frederica wrote in a letter to her mother implying that accepting the money could be interpreted as agreeing to Prussian arrangements regarding the political situation of Hanover98 . Frederica’s letter shows a passionate and stubborn princess. Her mother was appalled by her language and shocked by her behaviour and asked her daughter to reconsider99 . Ernest Augustus (II) also wrote several times, at one point beginning “to lose his patience”100 . The Queen of Hanover pointed out that Frederica still had responsibilities towards her family. If she were to decline the money, the Prussian authorities would not pay any allowance to either of them. This would seriously affect the position of Frederica’s sister and Queen Marie. The Hanoverians would receive the money only if Frederica sent a letter of acceptance101 . The correspondence that passed between Gmunden and London was passionate in language and tone. In the end, at least as regards the financial arrangements, however, the princess crumbled beneath the pressure. She decided (only due to her weak physical constitution as she later claimed) not to battle on and accepted the Prussian offer. Queen Marie of Hanover, Frederica and Mary were to receive the annual allowance offered by Prussia102 . Although Frederica’s decision to agree to the Prussian offer can be understood as a defeat in the struggle between the princess and her family she had made her position clear that she was still not to return 96

See the memorandum by Maurice Holzmann, Sandringham, 23 April 1879, RA VIC/S 20/4. Princess Frederica to Maurice Holzmann, St James’s Palce, 13 June 1879, RA VIC/S 20/22. 98 Princess Frederica to Queen Marie, 24 June 1879 (draft), RA VIC/S 20/29. 99 Marie, Queen of Hanover to Princess Frederica, Gmunden, 9 July 1879, RA VIC/S 20/33. 100 Ernst August, Duke of Cumberland to Princess Frederica, Gmunden, 1 August 1879 (copy), RA VIC/S 20/37; Ernst Augustus, Duke of Cumberland to Princess Frederica, Gmunden, 14 September 1879, RA VIC/S 20/40. The quote refers to the German: “Du musst meine Langmut nicht zu sehr auf die Probe stellen. Es gibt ja doch eine Grenze, über welche auch ich nicht hinaus kann.“ 101 Marie, Queen of Hanover to Princess Frederica, Gmunden, 9 July 1879, RA VIC/S 20/33. 102 Memorandum drawn up by desire of Princess Frederica, RA VIC/S 20/63. 97

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to Austria. “After all that has occurred”, she wrote, “it seemed better to prolong my stay here indefinitely”103 . After the financial arrangements had been agreed with Prussia it was up to Frederica to ask for her share. Victoria again took Frederica’s side. She wrote to Ernest Augustus (II) that the princess was old enough to live independently. She made it clear to the Duke of Cumberland that after she had invested so much effort to help the Hanoverians it was vitally important to her that the entire dispute over Frederica be resolved104 . Influenced by the Queen’s letter, Ernest Augustus (II) and his mother accepted the arrangement. Frederica would live in London under the guardianship of Queen Victoria and a member of the Hanoverian household would come to London to negotiate the financial arrangements105 . Frederica’s move to London had put the Hanoverian family to a test106 . To keep the family fortune together was an important aspect of a dynastic family. Victoria, whose support had been so important for the Hanoverians in their struggle with the Prussian government, had taken Frederica’s side in the internal dispute. The following years showed that Frederica had serious trouble in finding sufficient financial funds for an expensive life in Great Britain. The Queen acted on her behalf a few times and took care of her debts in some instances107 . As her guardian Victoria was responsible for Frederica and it was not long before the passionate young lady was causing trouble again. Only a few months after the row over her income she wrote to her relatives in Austria announcing her intention to marry Alphonse of Pawel Rammingen, a Coburg aristocrat and former member of her father’s household108 . Dynastically the marriage was a catastrophe. As the Queen herself pointed out, Rammingen was poor and not of equivalent rank109 . Ernest Augustus saw no possibility of allowing his sister to realise her wish. He clearly disapproved of the marriage110 . Despite Frederica’s plea he would not change his mind. In the correspondence that followed we find the same pattern as before. Frederica insisted on her decision. The Queen of Hanover and Ernest Augustus (II) were outraged and refused to discuss the issue. However, it was Queen Victoria who intervened once more. She wrote to Ernest Augustus (II) 103

Princess Frederica to Queen Marie of Hanover, St James’s Palace, 16 July 1879, RA VIC/S 20/34. Queen Victoria to Ernst Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, Osborne, 30 August 1879, RA VIC/S 20/46. 105 Ernst Augustus, Duke of Cumberland to Princess Frederica, Gmunden, 12 November 1879, RA VIC/S 20/71. See also: Maurice Holzmann to Sir Henry Ponsonby, Sandringham, 3 December 1879, RA VIC/S 20/79. 106 In this context the discussion about a new family statute: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland to Princess Frederica, Gmunden, 12 December 1879, RA VIC/S 20/85. 107 See for example: Sir Henry Ponsonby to Queen Victoria, St James’ Palace, 13 June 1887, RA VIC/S 20/250; Sir Henry Ponsonby to Queen Victoria, Windsor Castle, 18 June 1887, RA VIC/S 20/253. 108 Princess Frederica to Marie, Queen of Hanover, 22 February 1880 (copy), RA VIC/S 20/173; Princess Frederica to Duke of Cumberland, 23 February 1880, RA VIC/S 20/175. 109 Sir Henry Ponsonby to Lord Beaconsfield, Windsor Castle, 21 February 1880, RA VIC/ S20/171. 110 Ernst Augustus, Duke of Cumberland to Queen Victoria, Penzing, 2 March 1880 (translation), RA VIC/S 20/186. 104

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asking him to reconsider. She also decided to make use of her position as guardian and pointed out that she was responsible for Frederica’s welfare. She even had the marriage announced in the Privy Council111 . Why would Victoria ignore the family’s concerns? Victoria had proved more sensitive towards etiquette and rank with regard to the marriage of Ernest Augustus (II) and Thyra. In the light of her letter to Crown Prince Frederic regarding the couple’s position in society it seemed odd that the Queen should encourage such a dynastic mismatch as Frederica and Pawel Rammingen. Dynastic relations are to be understood as a network between members of a community that agree on certain rights and principles. The normative aspects in dynastic relations were particularly strong. This showed most in marriage ties between reigning families. For centuries romantic love was not part of marriage treaties between two dynasties. The survival of a dynasty and the possible increase in social and political capital were at the heart of most marriage alliances. Hence only an adequate partner could be accepted for a prince or a princess. During the second half of the nineteenth century a more bourgeois attitude became prevalent in society and affected dynastic thinking as well. Romanticism and particularly romantic love became an element in the discourse on dynastic marriages. While dynastic concerns had almost exclusively determined the arrangement of marriages in former times, things seemed to have changed by the time of Queen Victoria’s accession112 . Was Victoria a romanticist who thought Frederica’s love for Rammingen to be beyond dynastic considerations? Annual telegrams to Aunt Victoria to thank her on their wedding anniversaries support such an impression113 . However, it seems more plausible to follow the recent school of court historians who have shown that the love discourse in dynastic marriages mostly occurred in morganatic marriages that were not to influence the family’s dynastic survival. Victoria’s attitudes towards the marriage of Ernest Augustus (II) and Thyra illustrate that she was quite sensitive towards the social status of a marriage. Frederica was the second born of the Hanoverian family. The Queen, so the argument runs, was prepared to overstep the normative aspects mainly because the Hanoverian succession was not in danger. As she wrote to Ernest Augustus (II): “I must leave you to decide whether you will not be doing more injury to the dignity of your house, if you declare null and void an arrangement which I (after you have placed Lily under my protection) have allowed to be made”114 . In Victoria’s view it was Ernest Augustus (II) who was causing the damage to the reputation of the dynasty. 111 Queen

Victoria to Ernst August, Duke of Cumberland, Windsor Castle, 16 March 1880 (copy), RA VIC/S 20/196. For how decided the Queen proved to be see: Sir Henry Ponsonby to Lord Beaconsfield, Windsor Castle, 6 March 1880, RA VIC/S 20/189. 112 Silke Lesemann, Liebe und Strategie. Adlige Ehen im 18. Jahrhundert: Historische Anthropologie 8,2 (2000), 189–207. The following discussion is based on my discussion with Daniel Schönpflug whose forthcoming publication on Hohenzollern marriages will be a major contribution to our understanding of royal marriages. For further details see his chapter in the present volume. 113 One example of many: Telegram from Princess Frederica to Queen Victoria, Hampton Court, 24 April 1881 RA VIC/S 20/226. 114 Queen Victoria to Ernst August, Duke of Cumberland, Windsor Castle, 16 March 1880 (copy), RA VIC/S 20/196.

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Victoria had little to fear from Frederica’s marriage from the dynastic point of view of the Hanoverian royal family. As long as Ernest Augustus (II) and Thyra were accepted in society the younger sisters could enter into marriages that were less beneficial dynastically. Frederica, as the second born, could be a romantic exception. From the Queen’s correspondence it appears that she liked Frederica and preferred her to the other Hanoverians. Frederica’s sister Mary seems to have been much closer to her mother Marie. She was never to emancipate herself from the family bonds and stayed within the Gmunden circles for the rest of her life. She died unmarried in 1904. The relationship between the British and the Hanoverian dynasties was characterised by two aspects. Firstly, Victoria supported the Hanoverian royal family in its struggle for dynastic survival. She contacted her Hohenzollern relations and used the British government to press for financial compensation of the Hanoverians. She always avoided public or political involvement in Prusso-Hanoverian relations but clearly acted on behalf of her exiled relatives in dynastic terms. The second aspect regards Victoria’s relationship with the Hanoverian family as such. The Queen overruled Ernest Augustus (II) and Queen Marie in two important instances. She allowed Princess Frederica to stay in Britain and acted as her guardian. She also allowed Frederica to marry Pawel Rammingen. The Queen could do so because of Britain’s exceptional political status and her outstanding dynastic weight. She could also act against custom, or to use a more technical term, the normative elements in dynastic relations, because of the important changes that had occurred in the discourse on marriages. And finally, she could act the way she did due to her close relationship with the Hanoverians. By her behaviour she was questioning family bonds and hierarchies. At the same time, her kinship relations with the Hanoverians were a prerequisite for her role as mediator and guardian and hence reinforced the importance of the family network. The element of dynastic love played a further role in the history of the house of Hanover. Victoria died in 1901 and was not to see how the feud between Hanover and Prussia was resolved in 1913115. After Ernest Augustus (II)’s and Thyra’s two eldest sons had died, the third born Ernest Augustus (III) married the daughter of the emperor Wilhelm II. As The Times termed it, the dispute between the Hanoverians and Prussia would be resolved like Shakespeare’s drama of Romeo and Juliet but with a happy ending116 . The Guelphs and the Hohenzollern found a modus vivendi when Wilhelm II allowed Ernest Augustus (III) to succeed in Brunswick. Victoria Luise of Prussia described her marriage to the latter as a love match, an instance of accidental love that solved a long political feud117 . It remains open to discussion whether there was any strategic political motivation behind the match. The Brunswick succession had been a burning issue for some time. Prussia had decided that Prince Albrecht should succeed in 1884 and Johann Albrecht, Duke of Mecklenburg, in 1906. 115

The following is based on Philippi (note 26); and the account in the autobiography: Duchess Victoria Luise, Ein Leben als Tochter des Kaisers, Göttingen 1965. 116 Philippi (note 26); 183. 117 Philippi (note 26); S.262, Anlage 42, see also: Victoria Luise (note 115), 73–80.

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In 1913 it was time to settle the issue permanently. Hence the marriage between Ernest Augustus (III) and Victoria Luise served a political purpose as well. This is further undermined by a previous marriage project. In 1901 Wilhelm II already suggested that the Crown prince was to meet Alexandra, the second daughter of Ernest Augustus (II)118. At two different dates, the Hanoverian family had to decide whether it would insist on its legitimate rights for the restoration of Hanover or whether it wanted to be fully re-integrated in the network of European dynasts and hence to find peace with the Hohenzollern family. While they decided to insist on opposition in 1901 they voted for dynastic rehabilitation in 1913. Additionally, as a gathering of Europe’s dynasts (the last before the outbreak of the Great War) the wedding between Ernest Augustus (III) and Victoria Luise offered the opportunity for political statements119 . The correspondence between Wilhelm II, George V and Tsar Nicolas illustrate that all three were aware of the danger (or potential) to influence policies120. With regard to the dynastic network between Great Britain and Hanover and in the light of what has been said about Frederica, the events surrounding the wedding seem a further indication that romantic enthusiasm came to play some part in the presentation of dynastic relations at the turn of the nineteenth century. The failed marriage project of 1901 and the successful bond in 1913 should also remind us that the discourse on love only gained prevalence where it could not do any political or dynastic damage to a family and offered political potential.

118 ,Korrespondenz über die Anfrage des

Kaiser Wilhelms II. wegen einer Begegnung des deutschen Kronprinzen mit Prinzessin Alexandra, 1901’, Niederächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Dep.103, Bestand III (Domestica) Nr. 112 (Findbuch). 119 Paulmann (note 56), 147 and Clay (note 85), 300–302. 120 See the 37 letters in RA PS/GV/M 481: Papers re visit of Their Majesties to Berlin, 1913, particularly the memorandum by Lord Stamfordham, 19 March 1913 (copy), RA PS/GV/M 481/2.

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The Coburg Connection. Dynastic Relations and the House of Coburg in Britain

The Coburg connections of the British royal family represent a significant element in the history of Anglo-German relations. They also, however, amount to a daunting challenge for the historian, given that the House of Coburg occupies such a prominent place in, and had such an impact on, the European dynastic landscape. The Coburgers were astoundingly good at reproducing themselves. They were also even more notable for managing to negotiate successfully places upon thrones, next to thrones, or behind thrones, round Europe. In the last 200 years there have been Coburgers on the thrones, or at the courts, of Britain, Imperial Germany, France, Belgium, Russia, Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Greece, Norway and Rumania. Coburgers have married into less prominent royal positions in France, Austria, Hungary, Württemberg, Hessen-Darmstadt, Baden, and various other smaller German states. One, Simeon II, of course, was flexible enough to serve both as Tsar of Bulgaria and, some 50 years later, as its Prime Minister for four years (as Simeon Borisov Sakskoburggotski). Perhaps this was a rather surprising late flowering of the commitment to constitutional monarchy evidenced at times by members of the Coburg dynasty and to be discussed below. Thankfully, my task here is not to look at the Coburg House as a whole, but rather to focus on specific aspects: the themes of dynasty, Anglo-German relations, the significance of the Coburg connection to Britain, and the findings of the Common Heritage Project. Yet one has to have a general idea of the extent of the House of Coburg prior to Victoria’s marriage with Albert in order to begin to understand its significance to Britain. Even here, however, there is a danger of getting lost in what is not so much a family tree as a family thicket. As a means of finding our way, however, it is perhaps important first of all to appreciate the structure and dimensions of the family. The best way to explain this, rather than listing names, is structurally. The enormous success of the Coburg family might essentially be understood as the result of two major steps in the genealogy of the family. The first of these steps was made when Prince Albert’s grandfather, Duke Francis of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and his wife Augusta of Reuss zu Ebersdorf, had nine children (Ill. 4), seven of whom managed to survive into adulthood and were married into royal houses. Thus, Albert’s father, Ernst of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, married Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (Ill. 5), 97

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THE HOUSE OF SAXE-COBURG-GOTHA

Duke Francis of SaxeCoburg-Saalfeld (17501 8 0 6 ) m . A u g us t a Reuss zu Ebersdorf (1757-1831)

Sophie b. 1778

Ernest (Duke Ernest I) b.1784

Antoinette b.1779

Ferdinand b.1785

Juliana (Jülchen) b.1781

Victoire b.1786

Leopold b.1790

Ill. 4: Family Tree (3): Francis of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld The following charts (Ill. 4–9) show first of all the issue of Duke Francis of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (1750–1806), and then the issue of each of his children, excepting Sophie and Juliana. Together the charts reveal the significant dynastic position achieved by the Coburg family in just one generation.

THE HOUSE OF SAXE-COBURG-GOTHA

Duke Francis of SaxeCoburg-Saalfeld (17501 8 0 6 ) m . A u g us t a Reuss zu Ebersdorf (1757-1831)

Sophie b. 1778

Ernest (Duke Ernest I) b.1784

Antoinette b.1779

Ferdinand b.1785

Juliana (Jülchen) b.1781

Victoire b.1786

Leopold b.1790

Ill. 5: Family Tree (4): Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

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THE HOUSE OF SAXE-COBURG-GOTHA

Duke Francis of SaxeCoburg-Saalfeld (17501 8 0 6 ) m . A u g us t a Reuss zu Ebersdorf (1757-1831)

Duke Ernest of SaxeCoburg-Gotha (1784-1844)

Duke Ernest II of SaxeCoburg-Gotha (1818-93)

Louise of Saxe-GothaAltenburg (1800-31)

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1819-61)

Ill. 6: Family Tree (5): Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Kohary

and, after accession, became Ernst I of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Albert’s elder brother, Ernst, succeeded his father in 1844 as Ernst II. However, the large number of his father’s siblings ensured that Albert even before marriage was connected with a variety of important royal families. His uncle Ferdinand had married Antoinette of Kohary (Ill. 6), founding a Catholic branch of the family with connections to Portugal and Orleanist France. Albert’s aunt Victoire married Prince Charles of Leiningen (Ill. 7), by whom she had two children, and, after his death, remarried Edward, the Hanoverian Duke of Kent, by whom she had the future Queen Victoria. Aunt Sophie married into the influential Mensdorff-Pouilly family of Austria, and their son Alexander would be an important correspondent of Albert’s, especially in dynastic matters. Aunt Antoinette, meanwhile, married Alexander of Württemberg (Ill. 8). Their eldest daughter, Marie of Württemberg, Albert’s cousin, was chosen by Albert’s father as his second wife after the annulment of his first marriage to Albert’s mother, thus creating the confusing situation that the woman Albert referred to most of his life as “dear mama” was in fact his cousin. Just to make things more helpful to the historian, Marie’s two younger brothers in the Württemberg house married into the French and Austrian royal families, but chose wives named Marie and Maria Theresa respectively, making nick-names a necessity rather than a habit. Albert’s aunt Juliana – Jülchen as she was affectionately known by all – married Constantin, the Grand Duke of Russia, though this marriage was not successful, and she ended up residing in Switzerland, maintaining close con99

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THE HOUSE OF SAXE-COBURG-GOTHA

Duke Francis of SaxeCoburg-Saalfeld (17501 8 0 6 ) m . A u g us t a Reuss zu Ebersdorf (1757-1831)

Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Kohary (1785-1851) m. Antoinette of Kohary (1797-1862)

Ferdinand II (1816-85) King Consort of Portugal m. Queen Maria of Portugal (181953)

August u s ( 182 0 - ? ) m. Clementine of Orleans (18171907)

Victoire (182257) m. Leopold of Orleans Duke de Nemours

L eo p o l d ( 1 82 4- 8 4 )

Ill. 7: Family Tree (6): Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld

THE HOUSE OF SAXE-COBURG-GOTHA

Duke Francis of SaxeCoburg-Saalfeld (17501806) m. Augusta Reuss zu Ebersdorf (1757-1831)

Victoire (1786-1861)

1. Prince Charles Leiningen (1763-1814) 2. Edward, Duke of Kent (1767-1820)

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) Charles of Leiningen (1803-57)

Feodora of Leiningen (1805-60)

Ill. 8: Family Tree (7): Antoinette of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld

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THE HOUSE OF SAXE-COBURG-GOTHA

Duke Francis of SaxeCoburg-Saalfeld (17501806) m. Augusta Reuss zu Ebersdorf (1757-1831)

Antoinette (1779-1824) m. Alexander of W ürttemberg (1771-1838)

Marie of W ürttemberg m. Ernst I (1799-1860)

Alexander (1804-81) m. Marie of Valois, Princess of France

Philipp (1838-1917) m. Maria Theresa of Aus tria

Ernest (1807-68)

Ill. 9: Family Tree (8): Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld

tact with the Russian Tsars. Finally, of course, and of great significance in a variety of ways, there was Albert’s uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians. (Ill. 9) Leopold’s tragically short marriage to Charlotte, the daughter of George IV, is of course well known, as is his spectacular come-back as the newly-installed King of Belgium after 1830. Less well-researched or appreciated, however, is his second marriage to Marie-Louise of Orl´eans, the daughter of Louis-Philippe the King of France after 1830. This, then, gives some general outline of the substantial, indeed cross-European character of the Coburg house even prior to Albert’s marriage with Victoria in 1840, and mainly created by the brothers and sisters of Albert’s father. Several relevant points already arise out of this with regards to the significance of the Coburg connection to Britain. For one thing, while it is well-known that Albert and Victoria were first cousins, quick-witted readers will have also already noted that this fact meant that, even had Albert not married Victoria, the familial connections of the British crown to the Coburg family would have remained to some extent the same. Albert’s relations were Victoria’s relations; her cousins were his cousins. At the same time, however, it might be asserted that such overlapping of familial bonds ensured their double attention and shared sympathies respecting dynastic matters. Given, for example, the complexity of names, Victoria was probably one of the few who would be able to follow Albert’s family tree. A second point is of significance for our appreciation of the Coburg dynasty, and that is: that though there was an insistence on the heads of houses retaining the religion of their homeland, it was not uncommon, indeed it was common, for other 101

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members of the family to change religions upon marriage. Hence Aunt Jülchen had become Orthodox. The Kohary family founded by Uncle Ferdinand, meanwhile, as well as that of Uncle Leopold in Belgium, opened the way for Catholic dimensions of the family. It is a clich´e of royal histories in post-Stuart Britain that marriage partners had to be sought at Protestant European courts. However, this line of thinking, perhaps, or maybe the necessity of stressing the Anglican face of the British monarchy domestically, has meant the strong links of Queen Victoria by her Coburg marriage to the houses of Orl´eans, Breganza, Habsburg and Wittelsbach, have been downplayed and omitted by historians. This, as I hope to show later on, is to underestimate and misunderstand the House of Coburg. It overlooks the theological tolerance which expressed itself in the network of correspondence between its members. It also means Victoria and Albert’s position as deeply involved in the fate of Europe, as well as their freedom of manoeuvre and political spheres of influence have been overlooked by historians. The dispute with Lord Palmerston, for example, was famously that much worse because Victoria and Albert’s truly pan-European family connections provided a communications network rivalling, and very often interfering with that, of the Foreign Office. This was the case, for example, during the Spanish succession question in 1846 and the matter of monarchical misrule in Portugal in 1851–3. On the other hand, it should also be mentioned, however, that these family connections could also often be an asset and, at a time when much of Europe was still governed by monarchs more than was the case in Britain, Victoria and Albert’s letters could receive more attention, and in higher circles, than those of the British Foreign Secretary. The Coburg connection, as is well known, had begun already with Leopold’s marriage to Charlotte and that of Victoire with Edward of Kent. Leopold and Charlotte’s union, it might be said, represented one product of Britain’s alliance with the German states against Napoleon, Leopold having apparently encountered Charlotte during his presence on military affairs in London in 1816. Yet by the time Albert married Victoria in 1840, the Coburg family was already established as a European dynasty, and quickly became even more so. There were inherent significances in the transferral of Britain’s ruling House from Hanover to Coburg. As is well known, the Hanoverians, possibly unjustly in retrospect, had become disliked among the public, sections of the aristocracy, and the political classes. Though Albert faced anti-German sentiments in the press upon his arrival in Britain partly, though not completely, in consequence of the Hanoverian record, and though Victoria, by her maiden name, was still a Hanoverian, the transition to a Coburg dynasty offered a break of sorts, and one which was probably necessary given the rising force of the industrial middle classes, with their insistence on moral probity and Christian principles. Albert’s German seriousness could be lampooned in the press, but his, and his family’s commitment to moral rectitude, good economic management of household affairs, education and progress would serve Victorian Britain well. Of course, the House of Coburg had its exceptions to this rule, and both Albert’s father and his brother had elements of the wildcard about them, prone to womanising, economic and personal risk, and poor political judgment. But 102

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under Leopold and Stockmar’s guidance, there developed an ethos of Coburg reliability which they knew how to sell, which in Albert’s case would truly turn out to be the case, and which helped endear the Coburgers in Britain. Another inherent significance of the passing of the British throne to the House of Coburg lies in the fact that it increased its connections and sympathies with those courts similarly joined within the family. In the international political milieu of the 1840s, this point was of some significance. Britain’s strengthened ties to Belgium and Portugal were one component of this. But Victoria and Albert’s links through Leopold to Orleanist France are a more hidden, but nevertheless powerful element. It is not really appreciated within histories of British foreign policy during this time that, while there was still much friction and rivalry in the Anglo-French relationship, and well-grounded worries in Britain about any revival of French power or revolutionary tendencies, there was a concerted effort to seek agreement with France, and to cooperate with the French government against the force of Russia and the Holy Alliance of the East, and that Victoria and Albert, just as much as Lord Palmerston, worked to support this. The dynastic connection with Coburg was an important element of a western European unity. Despite its connections to the Russian court, the Coburg House had far deeper roots in the constitutional monarchies of western Europe, and this was a political dimension of the dynasty which was given a far greater emphasis by Leopold, who became its most powerful member after 1830, and by Stockmar, his close adviser. But what is overlooked, at least as far as the 1840s are concerned, is that the dynasty invested heavily in supporting Orleanist France with its Citizen King Louis-Philippe, and that Victoria’s especially close relations with Leopold often centred upon a desire to see Britain, France, and Belgium remain united. The commitment of the Coburgers to the West would be best demonstrated by their transferral of sympathies, despite the huge distress it caused them at the time, to Napoleon III of France. During the 1850s, and up to and beyond the Crimean War, Albert worked particularly hard at cultivating good personal relations with Napoleon, and again it might be said that his efforts were just as important as those of Lord Palmerston, who was working in the same vein. It was ironic, indeed, that Albert and Victoria engineered Palmerston’s downfall over the latter’s precipitous recognition of Napoleon III as Emperor in December 1851, because in fact Albert fully supported Palmerston’s policy on this. Nevertheless, the main point here is that the Coburg dynasty, despite Aunt Jülchen and the other Russian relations, was a dynasty facing West. This western tendency was one expressed by the family tree, but going beyond mere familial loyalty. Buried within it was a commitment to progress and a more liberal form of monarchical government. This was the Coburg creed developed by Stockmar and Leopold, and upheld strongly by Albert. These elements worked well for Britain. A third, inherent, consequence of the Coburg connection for Britain was the impact it had on political perspectives, on assumptions about British policy, both in Britain and abroad, and perhaps therefore also on political behaviour. This sounds, at first, like a rather ethereal, intangible point, one which has more to do with myth and assumption rather than with fact. But I would argue that the assumptions of 103

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contemporaries about the significance of the Coburg connection could often lead to important political decisions. They had a concrete impact upon domestic and foreign policy. In the German states, for example, and without any hard evidence, it was often assumed that the British government was sympathetic towards a German alliance or even towards German national unity because Victoria was married to a Coburger. In some instances, such ways of thinking also rested upon subsidiary assumptions that the British monarchy enjoyed a far more powerful influence upon politics than was actually the case – a judgment of British constitutional practice from a German view point, perhaps. Disappointment in Germany, for example, when Britain backed Russia and France in the Schleswig-Holstein dispute in the early 1850s, was that much greater because of an assumption in nationalist but also Prussian court circles, that Britain would support the German cause. Though Victoria and Albert did, to an extent, work against support for Denmark, they could not, in the end, influence the decision of an elected, Liberal government under Lord John Russell, and, to their great irritation, had to allow Lord Palmerston to settle the question as he saw fit through the Treaty of London of 1852. To what extent nationalist bitterness regarding such perceived u-turns by Britain contributed to Anglo-German antagonism later in the century is a subject worth pursuing. Another example of perceptions of the Coburg connection intersecting and interfering with the real conduct of politics was during the Crimean War, when widespread suspicions in Britain arose that Albert’s and Victoria’s foreign connections were impeding the war effort and preventing a full and widely-desired onslaught against the Russians. In fact, this was ironic, and untrue, as Albert rather used his German connections to procure information useful to the British effort. This included asking his brother to send an example of the Prussian needlegun, 14 years before it would prove its effectiveness in 18661. Nevertheless it contributed to the end of the Aberdeen administration, and probably also to the return of Lord Palmerston as Prime Minister (whose dispute with the Crown was well-known), and thus to a series of events that Victoria and Albert found horrifying. These are some of the inherent consequences of the dynastic connection with the House of Coburg, but of course other consequences arose out of the realities of the people involved – especially Albert and Victoria – and the way they interpreted the function of dynasty2 . It is not perhaps a foregone conclusion that royals will write regularly to each other, or engage regularly and substantially in official duties. Albert and Victoria, however, did both. Both maintained a regular and copious correspondence with members of their family, as well as, it has to be noted, with others. At least within the family, there seemed to be a slight division of labour, with Victoria focus1 2

1.11.1852, Albert to Ernst, LA A 6975, Staatsarchiv Coburg. The literature on Albert and Victoria is vast. See particularly Edgar Feuchtwanger, Albert and Victoria, London 2005; Hermione Hobhouse, Prince Albert: His Life and Work, London 1983; Theodore Martin, The Life of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, London 1875–80; HansJoachim Netzer, Albert von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha: ein deutscher Prinz in England, Munich 1988; Robert Rhodes James, Albert, Prince Consort: A Biography, London 1983; Stanley Weintraub, Albert: Uncrowned King, London 1997.

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ing on ruling monarchs and the female members of the family, and Albert spending more time on letters to his immediate family, particularly the male members. But the spheres overlapped. Albert’s family included ruling monarchs. Moreover, as Victoria and the British political establishment invested greater confidence in him, Albert increasingly conducted direct correspondence with ruling monarchs, while they in turn saw him as an important conduit to the Queen and to the government. The constitutional delineation of the power of the monarch was not particularly clear. (One might well ask: has it ever been?). It was also subject to change, according to circumstances, personalities, and chance factors such as pregnancy, illness and which party or leader was in office. Within this dubious framework, the position of a Prince Consort was even less clear. However, once Albert and Victoria had married, and she, perhaps under his influence, began to show more prudence in her official affairs, their joint mode of proceeding encouraged greater deference to them. There was less concern in governing circles that things might go the way of the Hanoverians. Albert’s qualities, especially, possibly the legacy of a particular tradition of dynastic education on the Continent, but also in part the result of the force of his own personality, made him increasingly in demand as an adviser to Government. In addition to this, it might be emphasised that Albert and Victoria chose to take a particularly active part in politics. Their letters are full of references to a desire to withdraw, to be alone as a family, and to be out of the public eye. One wonders whether such desires partly stemmed from a background on Albert’s part of rural landscape, smaller palaces, and close-knit family. Perhaps, what became a tradition of royal withdrawal, in Albert and Victoria’s case to the Celtic fringe or to the island hideaway of Osborne, was a legacy of the Coburg background. No doubt such expressions of a desire to withdraw were truly felt. Yet on the other hand this should not distract from the fact that their letters are infused with a sense of duty to the country and to their official responsibilities. They had particular areas of interest, where they expressed themselves more, and often intervened more. There was a constitutional tradition that the King or Queen should see diplomatic dispatches, and be closely involved in foreign policy, but this appears to have become for the royal pair an area of especial concern, and one of the many squabbles with Lord Palmerston, but one which caused much friction, was the royal pair’s insistence on viewing and often editing all dispatches sent out. Within this, German affairs in particular absorbed Albert and Victoria’s attention. And even after Albert’s death, Victoria swore to continue his high level of involvement in German matters. To an extent these preoccupations were a logical extension of Albert’s and Victoria’s dynastic connections. The public was fused with the private for them in foreign affairs, and particularly as it related to Germany, and foreign relations were to them also frequently a matter of family relations. Such an intense and consistent desire to be involved in foreign affairs was not a foregone conclusion in monarchs. George IV and William IV had not shown as much fascination for the subject. Yet Albert and Victoria appeared to feel what Church authorities often term a “calling.” Indeed, their conscious decision to involve themselves in foreign affairs – as well as affairs of the state generally – did appear to have 105

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something of the religious about it. In part, there was a sense of mission to promote progress and liberal government, a mission which at least on Albert’s side seemed to be (and possibly was) fuelled by a Hegelian sense of history. That this support for progress went generally hand in hand with Britain’s interest at home and abroad was convenient and welcome. Yet their sense of calling also simultaneously involved a belief in the monarchical principle and the contribution monarchs could make to good government, and a firm sense of loyalty to the House of Coburg and the particular principles they believed it promoted. Generally, then, they were supporters of constitutional monarchy, though possibly a conservative version of it. But it should also be noted that dynasty, and a commitment to it, was part of Albert and Victoria’s “calling” and fuelled much of their copious correspondence with their relatives. Some of these aspects relating to Albert and Victoria’s dynastic connections are obvious already in the published diaries, memoires and correspondence of those concerned. However, the actual detail, the day-to-day workings and practical realities of the dynastic relationship is less well known, and in fact only really become visible when one looks at the material held at the archives. Several factors have filtered out the detail of the dynastic relationship, leaving us with only a generalised and superficial knowledge of what dynasty actually means in this context. For one thing, contemporary loyalty and respect for the monarchy protected the details of the royal family’s private life. Those published primary sources which were produced, were done so partly with an eye to loyalty, treading a fine line between that and public curiosity. But the climate of historical research has also not been friendly towards professional historical investigation of dynastic relations, which has been regarded more as the preserve of patriots and publicists, and somewhat irrelevant in the face of the rising interest in social and economic histories and histories of the masses. These factors have meant that the practical and financial dimensions of dynasty have been rather left aside, that the role of royalty in decision-making and in the course of politics has been downplayed, that dynastic connections as a factor of cultural and even economic transfer have been underestimated. The findings of the Common Heritage project should constitute a significant contribution to our understanding of dynasty and the role of dynastic connections within Anglo-German relations. Certainly, in addition to a multitude of other subjects, and especially with regards to the Coburg connection, the material it has recorded promises a wealth of information on the kinds of aspects of dynasty just mentioned. I have, for the purpose of this chapter, focused particularly on the correspondence of Prince Albert and his brother Ernst, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha after 1844, held at the Staatsarchiv in Coburg3 . Even at this limited level, a great deal of detail has been found.

3

LA A 6969 to LA A 6978, Staatsarchiv Coburg.

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Henry Hector Bolitho (1897–1978), of course, brought out a volume of the brothers’ letters in 1933, entitled The Prince Consort and His Brother 4 . Rather oddly, he introduced this volume by stating that “The Prince Consort was not a great letter writer. He was not spontaneous and he was wary of self expression. He lacked the emphatic power of the Queen.” Bolitho’s introduction hardly invited the reader to pay much attention to the book’s content. His opinion may have been caused by the fact that he did not appear to speak German, and instead used translations done for him by his brother, a scholar living in Germany. Bolitho’s book in fact is a heavily excerpted collection of the letters, in English, rather than Albert’s native German. The text has been used as a standard work by writers on Albert. Yet anyone who can speak German and takes a look at Albert’s original letters stored in Coburg, must beg to differ from Bolitho’s judgment. The letters do not carry Victoria’s trade-mark exclamation marks and dramatic emphases, it is true. But Albert writes freely, with remarkable frankness, at times in considerable details, and at others with passion. The letters, read in full, are a fascinating insight into the daily life of the Prince Consort. Bolitho’s volume in fact only renders a fraction of Albert’s words into print. In particular, it downplays the extent and the tone of Albert’s diatribes against his brother, perhaps out of deference to the Coburg family. It also fails to transmit to the English reader anything of the depth and detail of Albert’s involvement in German politics, possibly in view of the political situation in the 1930s, but more probably because the theme was no longer felt to be accessible to the wider English-speaking public (if indeed it was ever accessible). Similarly, the edited collection of Albert’s letters does not convey his sustained engagement in Coburg domestic politics and in the pecuniary and domestic arrangements of dynasty. Albert’s original letters, by contrast, reveal much of relevance to our understanding of the Coburg dynasty5 . The letters reveal a great deal which is of interest about the brothers and their relationship. For one thing, they dismiss any notion of Ernst as the indolent or maladroit counterpart to Albert. Albert does, it is true, chastise Ernst frequently for not writing for so long. He also, at least in the early years, maintained a register of correspondence, by which he was able to monitor when Ernst had written, not only to him but also to other members of the Coburg family. It is tempting, admittedly, not to discern a somewhat priggish tendency on Albert’s part to hector his brother. Yet when the course of the correspondence is considered over the long-term, there appear just as many, if not more, times when Albert is forced to apologise for not writing himself, and particularly once his official business grows. Ernst, meanwhile, particularly once 4 5

Henry Hector Bolitho, The Prince Consort and His Brother: Two Hundred New Letters, London 1933. Some related published primary sources are included in the following: A.C. Benson and Viscount Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, London 1908; Roger Fulford, The Prince Consort, London, 1949; Kurt Jagow, Letters of the Prince Consort, London 1938; Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-CoburgGotha, Aus meinem Leben und aus meiner Zeit, Berlin 1892; Theodore Martin, 1875–80. See also Baron Stockmar, Memoirs of Baron Stockmar, London 1872.

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his involvement in German politics expands, often bombards his brother with lengthy memoranda on the subject with a frequency preventing any response from Albert. Albert’s correspondence with Ernst begins when the two brothers parted after their studies at Bonn, with Ernst going to Dresden into military service, and Albert travelling south to Italy with Baron Stockmar, already aware, though not certain of, the possibility of a marriage with Victoria. Apart from the wrench of being parted, as the two embarked upon their official careers, Albert depicted in detail his life in Italy, which combined an artistic education through observation with daily lessons with Stockmar, a form of preparation which can only be described as like one-to-one doctoral supervision through catechism. Albert wrote: “Wir sitzen dann des Abends zu Hause und disputieren, meist über staatsrechtliche oder philosophische Gegenstände. Du weisst, das Discussionen immer eine Lieblingssache von mir waren und ich gern recht habe, was mir hier nicht immer geschieht, da H.v.St. seine Meinungen sehr scharf vertheidigt, und nur schwer anzugreifen ist”‘6. Italy also served as a useful point for introducing Albert to minor members of other European dynasties. Some of these would be useful later on. For example it was here in 1839 that he encountered members of the Bonaparte family, including notably Louis Napoleon, who would later become Emperor Napoleon III. Stockmar’s presence or non-presence is registered clearly in Albert’s letters until late in Albert’s life. His important role, as confidant and as legal and political adviser to Leopold, Albert and Ernst, is obvious. Relations between the Coburg family members, however, were underpinned and cemented by the large number of family members and courtiers at London, Coburg, Gotha, Brussels, Paris, Lisbon and Vienna constantly circulating between the capitals, giving oral reports and providing a means of delivering letters and presents securely. In addition to the diplomatic bag, these visits, and the transfer of information and artefacts they supported, were an essential means of maintaining a sense of personal cohesion and the verification of loyalty. The transfer of artefacts by visits or, somewhat less reliably, by post, is an important feature of the letters. It would be too big a task to list the objects mentioned in the Albert-Ernst correspondence, but one notes the constant flow of trinkets, jewellery, paintings, clothing, furniture, books, coaches, and even horses and dogs transported on the conveyor-belt of the Coburg connection, and the Common Heritage project testifies elsewhere to the gigantic proportions of this transfer of inanimate and animate objects. Ownership, of course, was an important facet of royalty and power. However, jewellery and valuables were also significant as sources of private wealth, possibly convertible into hard currency in times of need. Albert appears to have been 6

13.1.1839, Albert to Ernst, LA A 6969, Staatsarchiv Coburg. “We sit at home in the evening and carry out disputations, mostly regarding constitutionalor philosophicalissues. You know how much I always loved such discussions, and how much I like to be right on a subject, something that does not happen often here, as Herr v. Stockmar knows how to defend his views and is hard to attack.”

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quite conscious of this, and while he reprimanded his brother constantly for his bad financial management, he nevertheless ensured that his brother and his wife had good jewellery from England, and decided to send Ernst separate parts of a complete silver dining set each year for his birthday. This will be familiar practice to many of us who find it hard to think of birthday presents for others, but it was also a substantial contribution to Ernst’s household, enabling him to demonstrate wealth, even if he did not have it. Albert referred to this specifically when sending Ernst his first instalment – a set of silver candlesticks – telling Ernst that he knew this was an expensive item for any household7 . Presents such as this, however, increased Ernst’s capital value, represented a transfer of capital from the much richer British branch of the family, but at the same time, it might be noted, did not encourage Ernst’s irresponsible habits. The presents also, as mentioned, supported family cohesion. There were many occasions when Albert’s lectures to his brother on personal or political issues were accompanied by pieces of silver, hunting ware or mementos of his family. Even more significant were the personal items, portraits, poems and pieces of music8 composed by the brothers themselves – of which there were many things which kept alive the personal bond in an age when distances seemed far greater. Visits by family members, however, could also be tricky affairs – a cause of dispute and embarrassment, a situation again familiar to some of us. For Albert and Victoria, the personal was again often fused with the political in this regard, with political importance being attached to private visits. Albert’s correspondence with Ernst contained many pleas on Albert’s part for his brother not to visit. While Albert and Victoria’s official duties, however, made it practically difficult for them to find occasions for lengthy stays abroad, Ernst seemed filled with a desire to travel. This was, on the one hand, obviously irritating for Albert because Ernst, in a constant state of personal financial insecurity, sought money from Albert to support his visits, and then sometimes left without paying his bills, causing embarrassment to Albert, who was particularly careful about finances, and probably wished to avoid anything which might remind the public of previous Hanoverian practices. But Ernst’s visits could also be politically sensitive, and Albert was forced to inform him that his constant presences might be seen as part of an intrigue9 , and also told him that they would be used by Lord Palmerston to prove a “Coburg conspiracy” and thereby escape the control of his sovereign10 . Albert was also, however, obviously concerned about Ernst’s perambulations that they were symptomatic of reluctance, on his brother’s part, to pay enough attention to domestic affairs, or to fail to settle down. Albert’s letters, in fact, particularly in the 7 8

9 10

[undated, probably December 1840], Albert to Ernst, LA A 6970, Staatsarchiv Coburg. Many of Albert and Ernst’s compositions were published and are accessible at the British Library. See for example Prince Albert, Fourteen Songs and Ballads, Written and Composed by Prince Ernst. . . and. . . Prince Albert, London 1862. 21.6.1841, Albert to Ernst, LA A 6971, Staatsarchiv Coburg. See also 2.6.1846. Albert to Ernst, LA A 6973, Staatsarchiv Coburg. 12.12.1859, Albert to Ernst, in Bolitho (note no. 4), 198.

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early years before Ernst married, but even in the years after his marriage, showed an almost obsessive concern that his brother should emulate his own, obviously happy model of marital bliss. Perhaps in contrast to many other royals, Albert genuinely believed in the importance of matrimonial happiness and private happiness, though he also obviously saw it as the basis of public stability too11 . One can suspect that Albert’s announcements of the almost annual birth of his own children to his brother may have been irritating, particularly as the years went by and no children arrived in Coburg. Albert was not unaware of this, and referred to his own admonitions to Ernst as “Predige”12 – or sermons, though such self-irony was probably intended to disarm his brother and make his message more persuasive. Until Ernst’s marriage, Albert sent him a constant stream of advice on the subject, and intervened directly in the matter when he saw fit. Albert took on the central role – the role of the mother, one might suggest – in trying to calm their father down when it became known in 1840 that Ernst had had a dalliance with his chamber-maid, and that she had become pregnant. He sent Ernst a “version of events”, along with strict instructions to stick to this agreed story word-for-word13 . Albert advised Ernst not to marry into the Catholic Bavarian Wittelsbach family: here Albert seemed concerned that, even though she would have to convert to Protestantism, the Bavarian princess’s religious difference would be an obstacle to private and public harmony. Again, Albert believed that religious unity was an important component of marital unity, obviously rejecting the notion that royals might publicly convert, but privately adhere to their original faith. Albert strongly opposed any thought of a link with the Russian royal family. His words to Ernst are particularly interesting for the light they shed on his dynastic viewpoint: “Wie ich schon öfters sagte, wiederhole ich auch jetzt, das eheliche Leben ist das Einzige, was dem Fliehen und Zerfallen der Jugendverbindungen, Freundschaften, ich möchte es Jugendwelt nennen, die Spitze halten kann. Papa spricht wieder von der Grossfürstin Olga. Mama schreibt mir, sie sei beauftragt im Stillen zu sondieren, hat dieses aber abgelehnt, weil sie meint, du seiest doch die Hauptperson im Drama und sie kann noch nicht davon überzeugt sein, ob Du die Sache wünschtest. Für Papa hat sie Alles was er wünscht: grosses Ansehen, sehr viel Geld, ausgezeichnete Schönheit, für Mama noch nächstdem angenehme Rückerinnerungen an Russland. Auch für Dich sind die ersten 3 Qualitäten schätzenswerth und nicht zu verwerfen, obgleich nicht Hauptsachen. Dir gehört eine Frau, die liebend und gut ist, nicht wenn Du mit ihr in der Meinung differierst, eigensinnig ihren Kopf durchsetzen will, sondern, durch Grund des Verstandes auf Dich wirkt. Russisch ist das nicht; dann ist ein grosser Übelstand, dass Du und das kleine Land, solltest Du Deinen häuslichen Frieden bewahren 11 12 13

See for example in 20.6.1840, Albert to Ernst and 4.9.1840, Albert to Ernst in LA A 6970, Staatsarchiv Coburg. 13.9.1840, Albert to Ernst, LA A 6970, Staatsarchiv Coburg. 26.6.1840, Albert to Ernst, LA A 6970, Staatsarchiv Coburg.

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wollen, ganz der Willkür des Zaars sich unterwerfen müssen, er wird Dir jeden Schritt vorzeichnen wollen und sich in Alles mischen. Politisch reisst es Dich von uns und bringt Dich in eine ganz falsche Lage. So viel ich nun in dieser Zeit mich in der hiesigen Politik unterrichtet habe, Depeschen gelesen und die geheimen Reports studiert habe, so ist mir sonnenklar, dass vor 5 oder 6 Jahren ein Krieg zwischen England und Russland nicht ausbleiben kann (Ich sagte diess noch gestern zu Palmerston, der mir recht gab) und zwar in der Tartarei. Zu Welch weiteren Verwicklungen das führen kann, kann Niemand wissen. Nun ist mein Prinzip bei einem grossen Bersten der jetzigen Zustände, sich nur an ein Stück hängen, geht dieses bedeutende Unter so liegt am kleinen Nichts, ist es umgekehrt, so ist man sicher. – Da wir mit England, Frankreich, Belgien, Portugal auf einer Karte stehen, so müssen wir dieses Spiel auch ehrlich treiben”14 . This passage reveals that different family members had different points of view with regards to the priorities of dynastic marriage. It also clearly demonstrates that Albert firmly linked matrimonial, national and international harmony. At one point, after Ernst had been turned down for the fourth time in marriage, Albert warned him that he was in danger of making refusal a fashion – a statement which in other contexts might have been offensive, and which even Albert felt he must accompany with a set of silver vases for Ernst’s table-set, an early example of the principle that a spoon-full of sugar makes the medicine go down. In the end, of course, Ernst would end up with Alexandrine – I use the term purposely, because, as Albert again rather candidly reminded Ernst “Heirathen indess, wie schon gesagt, halte ich für Dich für nothwendig, und die Wahl sehr beschränkt, was noch mehr für Papas Drängen spricht, da die Grossfürstin nicht lange mehr zu haben sein wird. Die einzig annehmliche Partie 14

4.9.1840. Albert to Ernst, LA A 6970, Staatsarchiv Coburg. “As I have said many times, and now repeat here, married life is the only thing which can compensate for the disappearance and decay of youthful ties and friendships, for the loss of the world of youth. Papa talks again of the Grandduchess Olga. Mama writes, that she has been given the task of sounding out secretly, but that she has refused to do this, as she thinks you are the main player in the drama, and she can’t be convinced that you really wish the thing. For Papa she has everything which he wants: great reputation, a good deal of money, and for Mama in addition pleasant memories of Russia. For you the first three qualities will also be of value and not to be overlooked, even if not central. You should take a wife who is living and kind, who does not wish obstinately to get her way when she is of a different opinion from you, but rather who works on you through her sense and reason. That would not be Russian, and it would be a great evil for you, that whenever you wished to have peace at home you would have to subordinate yourself to the will of the Tsar, who will want to dictate to you your every step and mix himself up in everything. Politically such a connection tears you from us and puts you in a very bad position. As far as I have educated myself about politics by reading depesches and secret reports, it has become as clear as daylight that in 5 or 6 years there will be war between England and Russia (I told the same to Palmerston yesterday, who agreed with me) and this will be in the Tartar region. To what further developments this will lead, no-one can know. Now my principle is that, if crisis should come, one should not remain hanging to one element, as if it goes under, there will be nothing left. As we stand on the same place as England, France, Belgium, and Portugal, we must play the game honestly with them.”

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ausser ihr ist die Tochter des Grossherzogs von Baden. Für diese stimme ich nach allem was ich habe in Erfahrung ziehen können ganz, Victoria desgleichen, und Onkel Leopold willigt nun mehr wohl auch gern darein”15 . The link to Baden turned out to be fortuitous, as Baden became one of the leading centres of liberal nationalism in the 1850s, and an ally in what became known as the Gotha Nationalverein (Gotha National Society) movement in the 1850s. This was, of course, just as Albert intended things. Ernst, as Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, was officially head of the house. Nevertheless, there were formal respects in which Albert had influence, for example he was one of the family Agnaten, or agnates, whose permission had to be given regarding house affairs, and Albert was adept at organising the other agnates on subjects when he saw fit. In addition to this, however, Albert’s plaintive tone of appeal to Ernst, reminiscent of a surrogate mother it might again be suggested, is soon transformed in Albert’s letters into the more forceful, informed and authoritative voice of a statesman. Albert’s position as Prince-Consort of the most powerful country in the world, and his increasing private and public success, obviously lent his word great authority in the family. Ernst could manage affairs in the Duchy and in Germany as he saw fit. He could not, however, overhear Albert’s voice on those matters, and often had to defer to him on ones relating to the House as a whole and on questions of European importance. Albert was not only concerned for his brother’s personal well-being, but was also intensely committed to the standing of the Coburg dynasty, and to the particular mission which had been given it by Leopold and Stockmar. This had several consequences. One was a constant and intensive concern with the domestic political affairs of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. As mentioned, he could, and did, recount to Ernst the latter’s personal income and expenditure, and lectured him on the economic principles of running a royal household (lectures which went on at some length, but which basically boiled down to not spending more than was earned, and also involved a sermon on the slippery slope their father had gone down in this respect). Albert also concerned himself with matters concerning the family’s estates – the Fideicommiss – carefully monitoring developments, attempting to manage their executive personnel and generally trying to secure their independence from the state. Albert’s concern in this regard became particularly acute during the revolutionary years of 1848–9, when the parliaments of Gotha and Coburg – the Stände – attempted to assert control over the Duke and the possessions of the House16 . When Ernst appeared to give way, allowing the state full control over royal estates, Albert reminded him “Ich halte das Arrangement [. . .] für ein Grundschlechtes und Dich für auf keine Weise befähigt

15

16

Bolitho, 26. “Marriage, therefore, as I already said, I believe to be necessary for you, and the choice very limited, which speaks for Papa’s urgency, as the Grandduchess will not have to wait long. The only other possible party apart from her is the daughter of the Grand Duke of Baden. I would go for her, after all I have been able to learn, Victoria too, and Uncle Leopold is also in agreement.” 15.11.1848, Albert to Ernst, LA A 6974 Staatsarchiv Coburg.

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ein solches Arrangement abzuschliessen. Wir Agnaten werden feierlich protestieren müssen”17 . It is possibly at this point, meanwhile, that Albert began also to focus more keenly on the German question, and what this might offer the Coburg dynasty. Ernst’s obviously difficult position, it seemed to him, might be improved if there could be greater unity between the German monarchs as a whole, and those of the smaller states in particular. One expression of this was his encouragement of greater coordination between the smaller Thuringian states. This, Albert believed, might allow the possibility there of more representative government, something which he felt was impossible in territories as small as Coburg and Gotha. It might also be a defence against the revolutionary authority in Frankfurt, as well as the larger neighbouring Kingdom of Saxony, both of which were pushing for the mediatisation, or absorption, of the Thuringian states18 . Albert’s support for Ernst’s initiative towards a Thuringian Federation of states in 1849 blossomed in later years into a full-scale desire to see German unity, based upon constitutional monarchy, with the rights of the smaller dynastic houses preserved, and their voices enshrined in an equivalent to the British House of Lords. In the face of rising Austro-Prussian rivalry, Albert saw the petty princes as playing a particularly crucial part in the maintenance of German unity. He could also see the threats to them on the horizon from liberalisation and modernisation, and wished to protect them within a reformed, but monarchical German constitution. The critical, fractious and often bad-tempered parts of the Albert-Ernst correspondence camouflage somewhat the fact that Albert and Ernst became firmly united in the 1850s on German questions. The Coburg network became an important one with regards to German national politics. In the late 1850s and into the 1860s, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha became the hub of the liberal nationalist movement around the Nationalverein. Albert supported Ernst’s liberal nationalist line in German politics by supplying him information, often from Foreign Office dispatches, through his many memoranda and letters sent to British and foreign politicians, and by ensuring the appointment and promotion of Germanfriendly British representatives abroad. The full scale and legacy of Albert’s preoccupation with and involvement in German affairs in the 1850s has not been appreciated. In the Albert-Ernst correspondence it comes to the fore. It is in this context that the engagement of his daughter Vicky to the Prussian Prince Friedrich Wilhelm in 1856 can be seen. Like Leopold and Stockmar before him, Albert intended to use dynastic connections to encourage a long-term change of course in European affairs, and particularly to encourage the gradual coming together of Britain and a future German state. Where Leopold and Stockmar had aimed for a liberal, western unity of monarchs, Albert now hoped to extend that 17 18

4.2.1849, Albert to Ernst, LA A 6974 Staatsarchiv Coburg. “I view such arrangements as quite wrong, and you as in no way authorised to agree to it. We Agnates will officially protest . . . ” See for example 12. and 19.12.1848, Albert to Ernst, LA A 6974 Staatsarchiv Coburg. See also “Memorandum”, Prince Albert, 9.1.1849, enclosed in 10.1.1849. Albert to Ernst, LA A 6974 Staatsarchiv Coburg.

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union to Germany as a whole, and thereby work against conservative, absolutist and Russian influences. Famously, Vicky was like her father in many ways. Albert’s gift to Prussia, and, with any luck, Germany was intended as a guiding hand, a female counterpart to his own position as Consort. It was a gift that was famously to be so problematic for the later German Chancellor Bismarck, who found Empress Vicky’s Albertine politics and her Coburg connections as irritating as Palmerston had found Albert’s a generation earlier19 . Upon Albert’s death, Victoria wrote to her Prime Minister: “The Queen’s sole future object will be to follow in everything all His wishes, great and small, for then she feels she will be doing her duty. One of his most anxious wishes was to see the two great kindred nations England and Germany – to which we both belonged – understand each other and act together – and it will be one of the Queen’s most sacred duties to watch over these interests – and she feels sure Lord Russell will readily do what he can to bring about this desirable state of things. May self-sacrifice and devotion to her duties fit her to be his partner in an Eternal Life hereafter”20 . Victoria had watched Albert work himself to an early grave, amongst other things for the purpose of supporting a liberal German unity. She now perpetuated Albert’s influence as far as she could. An intensification of dynastic connections to Germany is observable in the second great outgrowth of the Coburg family tree. The Coburg dynasty extended in the second half of the nineteenth century, on the back of British power, and its position in western Europe, to far flung parts of the world, including Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Mexico, while members of the family now toured the Empire, acting as delegates of the monarchy and aides to the universal presence of the Empress Victoria. But it was notably Germany with which the family’s connections were multiplied substantially. The connection through Vicky has already been mentioned. Victoria and Albert’s eldest son Bertie’s marriage with Alexandra was also interesting in so far as it connected the crown prince to a country directly opposed to German nationalist demands, as well as, later, to the family of Beatrice’s husband, the Schleswig-Holsteins. Perhaps Albert allowed it in the hopes of bringing peace. Otherwise, however, children married off to (Helena) Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, (Arthur) Louise of Prussia, (Alice) Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt, (Leopold) Helen of Waldeck-Pyrmont, (Beatrice) Henry of Battenburg. Meanwhile, Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, became Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha upon the death without heir of his uncle, Ernst. Taken as a whole, this was a deep, dynastic commitment to strong Anglo-German relations. 19

20

On which note, see the five edited volumes of Queen Victoria’s correspondencewith her daughter by Roger Fulford, (1964–1990). See also Agatha Ramm, Darling and Beloved Child. Last Letters between Queen Victoria and Her Eldest Daughter, 1886–1901, Stroud 1990. 25.12.1861, Queen Victoria to Lord John Russell, PRO30/22, National Archives.

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It created a spider’s web of connections, a web which transmitted even more vibrations as a result of the movements in Anglo-German relations. It would prove to be problematic, of course, in the twentieth century. To summarise, it is important to recognise the strong family ethos of the Coburg family emerging at least two generations before Prince Albert, and lasting well into the twentieth century. The sense of family identity is apparent in the Albert-Ernst correspondence at many levels, not least in discussions about their mother, the family possessions, and the issues of marriage and childbirths. To an extent, perhaps, the ambitions of the family had been encouraged into being by the fact of the number of siblings of Albert’s father and the international network this enabled. But chance, Protestantism, the rise of British power and influence, and the force of liberalism proffered opportunities to the family. Against this backdrop, Leopold and Stockmar appear to have formulated a politicised version of the family ethos, a sort of Coburg mission, which gave the family greater purpose and influence. With regards to the Coburg connection, links with German courts were not viewed as unimportant. For one thing, Albert retained a strong sense of personal loyalty and commitment to his homeland. He viewed himself as a Coburg Prince, and continued to uphold his right to determine policy there, with lesser or greater insistency and success depending on his attitude towards his brother, the brothers’ assertiveness, and the fluctuating workloads of each as the years passed. However, the Coburg links also had a much wider significance for family members, particularly from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. One reason these links were seen as important related to the German question. A commitment to the sovereigns of the German states inherently carried with it a particular position on the issue of German unification and a participation in the highly dynamic German politics of the period. The commitment of the Coburgers to the lesser German courts did not dictate British policy towards Germany, but it certainly created dimension of it that at times could be influential. Another significance of the links related to Anglo-German and European politics. Stockmar, Leopold, Albert, Queen Victoria and Empress Vicky all shared the idea that the Coburg family might serve towards bringing Britain and Germany closer, possibly with a view to some sort of alliance based on moderate liberalism and constitutional monarchy. It is in this light that the marriage of Vicky to Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia must also be viewed, for this in many ways might have represented the most significant achievement of this family ambition. But the late nineteenth-century connections formed with other, lesser German courts were also expressions of this way of thinking. As other chapters in this volume will demonstrate, it was a direction that was to prove untenable, however, in the face of national consolidation in Germany and national rivalry in Europe.

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Marriage, Family and Nationality. Letters from Queen Victoria and Crown Princess Victoria 1858–1885

The question as to the political significance of royal marriages is a classical theme of the historiography of the Middle Ages and Early modern period. Twentieth-century historiography, however, provides a striking contrast to this. No serious political or constitutional history of European monarchies has anything to say about the practice of royal marriages. If at all the keyword monarch’s marriage might be mentioned in media or cultural history, or perhaps exclusively in the yellow press. This article is interested in the period in between, the nineteenth century, which is so frequently characterised as bourgeois in German historiography. Significantly, the only British equivalent is Victorian! In the last few decades, the nineteenth century has virtually reemerged as a monarchical century. The history of monarchies has, at least in German historiography, been recognised as diplomatic history and the history of political culture, and the question as to the role and responsibility of the European princes, specifically Kaiser Wilhelm II, for the path towards the First World War has been discussed from many different angles1 . This article concentrates on the relationship between nationality and national identity on the one hand, and family and dynasty on the other. The relationship between dynasty and nationality was revealed particularly clearly in the question of royal marriage, which was traditionally bound up with (foreign) political ambitions and was therefore very often trans-national or, in Germany at least, interstate. In the idealtypical scenario, captured in the marriage of the British Princess Royal to the heir to the Prussian throne, Friedrich, the daughter of a ruler married the heir to another 1

See Johannes Paulmann, Pomp und Politik. Monarchenbegegnungen in Europa zwischen Ancien R´egime und Erstem Weltkrieg, Paderborn 2000; Monika Wienfort, Monarchie in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Deutschland und England von 1640 bis 1848, Göttingen 1993; John G. Röhl, Wilhelm II. – Die Jugend des Kaisers 1859–1888, München 1993; Martin Kohlrausch, Der Monarch im Skandal. Die Logik der Massenmedien und die Transformation der wilhelminischen Monarchie, Berlin 2005. In Britain, monarchy has never really been historiographically outdated: David Cannadine, The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual. The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition’, c. 1820–1977: The Invention of Tradition, eds. Eric Hobsbawm / Terence Ranger, Cambridge 1981, 101–64. A classical constitutional history is Vernon Bogdanor, The Monarchy and the Constitution, Oxford 1995. Concerning the connection between the British Monarchy and the media see John Plunkett, Victoria – First Media Monarch, Oxford 2003.

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country’s throne, so that she would eventually sit on that throne as Queen Consort. During the “transitional phase” of the nineteenth century, with different constitutions in European countries, the political significance of marriage practice amongst the royal houses cannot be clearly discerned. Apart from differences in individual cases, with or without foreign political connotations, there were also legal and cultural differences. In her reports from Germany, for example, the Crown Princess refrained from pointing out to her mother in detail the legal implications of a morganatic marriage that did not exist in Britain; conversely the Queen made clear a fact quite obvious to her, namely that if children of the British sovereign married subjects the rights of succession of the children of such a marriage were in no way affected. This had little in common with the importance attached to marrying someone of equal rank by the Prussian court, and indeed by the lesser German princes and the mediatised ones. In Germany, Ebenbürtigkeit – which is equality in the rank of nobility in a legal sense – separated the high nobility from the rest of the nobility, not only the nobility from the middle classes. It should be stated, however, that in practice, the Queen regarded only her ducal subjects as suitable partners for her children2 . In the historiography of the nineteenth century royal marriages are no longer generally considered to be politically significant. The only interest often shown in the numerous German ruling families is from the point of view of regional history. There is, however, one exception. The Saxe-Coburg family, with King Leopold of Belgium at its head, is always mentioned in discussions about the possibilities and limitations of dynastic policy. Apart from the marriages (Leopold to the British heiress presumptive Charlotte, Albert to Victoria), however, it was, above all, a question here of founding new monarchies and occupying vacant thrones. This factor played a role that should not be underestimated in the Balkan policy of the European powers during the 1880s. But in the case of the Coburgs we cannot really talk of dynastic policy in the classical sense, because the very thing it was not about was gathering together or securing territorial possessions; for here the step from a dynastic to a monarchical family policy in the context of the constitutional state had already been taken3 .

I. Concepts: Marriage, Family, and Nationality In the European tradition, the family was founded by marriage as a religious as well as a legal institution. During the eighteenth century, the religious significance of marriage as a sacrament or, in Protestant thinking as a binding form of moral order, came under attack. Nevertheless, civil marriage was introduced in Germany only in 1875 as part 2 3

See Heinz Gollwitzer, Die Standesherren. Die politische und gesellschaftliche Stellung der Mediatisierten 1815–1918, 2. Aufl., Göttingen 1964. For critical reactions towards Albert see Plunkett (note 1), 30–33. See Niall Ferguson, Das Haus Sachsen-Coburg und die europäische Politik des 19. Jahrhunderts: Victoria Kaiserin Friedrich. Mission und Schicksal einer englischen Prinzessin in Deutschland, Frankfurt/M. 2002, 27–48; Thomas Nicklas, Das Haus Sachsen-Coburg. Europas späte Dynastie, Stuttgart 2003.

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of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf against the Catholic church. By restraining the religious dimensions, the legal meaning of marriage as a contract between husband and wife and the cultural meaning of regularising the relationship between the sexes became more important. In England, the Common Law shaped the economic relationship between husband and wife in a very obvious manner. Husband and wife merged into one legal personality, which in society was represented by the husband alone. But this rule was not absolute. The English legal system had a traditional expedient to soften some of the impacts of the Common Law. In Equity, the wife’s possessions were secured by a marriage settlement. Of course, the opportunities to make use of this legal concept were determined by the economic situation of the family. Because of the high costs of legal advice, only upper class women could profit from such means. In Prussia, where until the introduction of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch in 1900, the Prussian legal code (Allgemeines Landrecht) was in existence, many legal provisions determined the subordination of wives, not only in property law regulations. In Germany, marriage property law happened to be a very confusing theme with hundreds of different propositions and a strong foundation in local law. In general, women’s property was at the disposal of the husband. As sovereign, Queen Victoria was the only woman in England who was not subject to the limitations of the marriage laws. However, she shared many of the cultural ideas based on the limited possibilities of wives. She was eager to emphasise that it was Prince Albert who had the last word in family matters, and the Queen almost always referred to Albert’s genuine intelligence and sound judgement. Concerning the questions followed here, it is not of special interest whether the Queen’s utterances were appropriate or not. It seems significant, however, that the Queen willingly and expressly adapted her moral position as a wife to the conditions of her middle-class women subjects4 . As regards Crown Princess Victoria, things were altogether more difficult. From the perspective of her youth in England, she remembered many self-confident English women of the aristocracy and the middle classes who presented themselves in public. In her view, this picture differed from Germany, where middle class wives tended to stay at home, caring for husband and children. Not least because the German Bildungsbürgertum was provided with much less wealth than the entrepreneurial classes in Britain, the ideal of a wife and mother overwhelmingly concerned with children and household affairs prevailed in social practice. The intelligent and active Crown Princess was very much hurt by the structural disinterest which characterised the approach of the German public towards queens and princesses during the nineteenth century. Moreover, noble family laws authorized the senior member of a family to decide on the main disposal of household means and the education of children and grandchildren. This meant that the Kaiser, Wilhelm I, always had the last say about 4

See W.R. Cornish/G. de N. Clark, Law and Society in England 1750–1950, London 1989, 360–74; Ute Gerhard, Legal Particularism and the Complexity of Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Private Law and Social Inequality in the Industrial Age, ed. Willibald Steinmetz, Oxford 2000, 137–54.

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the education of Victoria’s children. Her stubbornness and self-assertion, which were useful in attaining her goals in the relationship with her husband, did not help in these cases5 . At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the romantic ideal of marriage as a love affair spread into the English and German middle classes. Due to the ascent of the constitutional state and the waning political significance of European dynasties, these ideas were increasingly embraced by members of ruling families. The nationalization of European dynasties corresponded to a privatization of princely marriages. But this did not necessarily mean that the political significance of dynastic marriages came to an abrupt end. As sovereign, Queen Victoria had the privilege unknown to most other women of deciding about her marriage completely on her own. The Queen chose Prince Albert because she loved him, and the framing of her own marriage as a love affair made it impossible to force the royal children into conventional marriages. The Princess Royal followed the example of the parents she so admired. Her marriage to the Prussian crown prince was a mixture of voluntary decision, dearest wish and dynastic convention. Both Victorias tried to establish themselves as middle class wives, and both women were interested in entering into marriage according to these values. Love, or at least liking, and dynastic convention and suitability, for example religious denomination, but no longer politics in the territorial sense of the word, governed the marriage-planning of the European dynastic families during the nineteenth century6 . The modern vision of the family emerged in the course of the eighteenth century. Heide Wunder has described the tentative disappearance of the early modern working couple and a concept of the household, which as an economic and social institution not only consisted of the nuclear family of parents and children, but also of male and female servants. During the nineteenth century, middle class ideals tended to emotionalize the relationship between husband and wife, parents and children, by creating a new private sphere. Personal and affirmative love, and no longer a corporative sense of appropriateness, should from now on signify the family. This description of the family as the nuclear cell of society was based on a dichotomy whereby male and female were characterized as opposite identities. Whereas men and husbands took the part of the active partner working in public, women and wives were supposed to be passive and concentrate on the cultural exposition of middle class values within the family. After the middle of the century, this mode of dealing with marriage and family became more and more attractive within other social groups, the working classes as well as the nobility7. 5 6

7

Röhl (note 1), 418–22. See Karin Hausen, „ . . . eine Ulme für das schwankende Efeu“. Ehepaare im Bildungsbürgertum. Ideale und Wirklichkeiten im späten 18. und 19. Jahrhundert: Bürgerinnen und Bürger, ed. Ute Frevert, Göttingen 1988, 85–117. Heide Wunder, “Er ist die Sonn, sie ist der Mond”. Frauen in der Frühen Neuzeit, München 1992. Concerning the early modern Querelles des femmes, see Gisela Bock, Women in European History, Oxford 2002, 2–31.

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Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, dynastic families had shown a special interest in the representation of princesses as important figures at court. Styled as a representative figure for court and country, women of the high nobility were less inclined to attend personally to their children. On the other hand, the working class family, where wives most often took over work outside the house for economic reasons, could not be seen as a sphere of familial intimacy. In Britain, Victorianism, which modelled a set of middle class values built around concepts like the family and personal achievement, was no longer opposed – at least after Albert’s early death in 1861 – to the alternative of a traditional court society. In contrast to Britain, Crown Princess Victoria embodied middle class family ideals within Prussia’s traditional court society. The Queen did not relish her frequent pregnancies, and securing the future of the royal children became an increasing problem to her. The Prussian crown princess dearly wished for many children, planning to create the first family as a middle class role model. But the Prussian King and later Kaiser Wilhelm I had been brought up in a traditional court society, in which there was virtually no place for the intimacy and personal education Victoria wished for her children. Many conflicts within the Hohenzollern family arose from these contrary interpretations8 . During the nineteenth century, nationality tended to be an ambiguous concept. The meaning in the legal sense of citizenship developed only gradually. In Britain and Germany however, certain fundamental differences existed. In Germany, nationality referred to the states, i.e. Prussia or Bavaria, or any of the numerous smaller German states. Within the legal system, nationality was primarily understood as a concept of defence, which should help to limit access to public poor relief. The second meaning of nationality in Germany concerned the affiliation to the German language and culture. After unification in 1871, these identities tended to merge, although nationality of the Kaiserreich came into being only in 1913. In Britain, citizenship did not rank among the most important characterizations of British subjects. The law of 1870 stated for the first time that women who married a foreigner were to lose British nationality. This was mainly intended to adjust the mass emigration to the United States. In Germany and Britain, citizenship and nationality referred to different perceptions of foreigners. Whereas the British public was confronted mainly by wealthy merchants, who were able to promote economic life, the German states, for example Prussia with the law of 1842, dealt within the tradition of the early modern Policey, and tried to protect themselves against vagrants, beggars and criminals. After 1871, the perspective of an imperial identity concerning the Reich developed an ethnic concept of nationality referring to the German people. It was not only among the Protestant middle classes in Prussia that descent and ethnicity were accepted more and more as the leading principle of national inclusion. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, 8

See Andreas Gestrich, Geschichte der Familie im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, München 1999; Gunilla Budde, Auf dem Weg ins Bürgerleben. Kindheit und Erziehung in deutschen und englischen Bürgerfamilien, Göttingen 1994; Jane Rendall, Women in an Industrializing Society: England 1750–1880, Oxford 1990; Women’s History: Britain, 1850–1945, ed. June Purvis, London 1995.

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the image of the nation changed in many of the European countries, and the public became more nationalistic. Nationalism was no longer limited to the construction of an identity of the self, but sought to enhance the meaning of one’s own state by deprecating other countries9 . What did these conditions result in for Queen Victoria and her eldest daughter? The difference concerning nationality in a legal sense is especially worth mentioning. The Queen as sovereign had nothing to do with changing nationalities. Despite her German husband and her many German relatives her identity as a Briton was never disputed. Her daughter Victoria, however, changed her nationality by marriage to the Prussian crown prince. From 1858 onwards, she legally became a Prussian subject. Because of the Prussian-German identity discussions during the years after the revolution of 1848, and the great influence of ideas of ethnic descent before and after German unification, the British princess had to confront many difficulties. Mother and daughter were not interested in legal, but in cultural definitions of nationality. In the correspondence it becomes clear that they both took national identity for granted. They both saw themselves initially as English or British. However, mother and daughter saw the German question in quite different ways. The Queen explained her being German as an extension of the family identity she had acquired through heredity and marriage, which was generally quite reconcilable with her role as British monarch and Englishwoman. In cultural terms she described herself as an Englishwoman with a private inclination towards Germany; in political terms her perception of British imperial interests was decisive. The Queen was interested in the problem of German unity, and she was willing to support it. But it was always clear that Britain came first. Her eldest daughter’s position, however, was immeasurably more difficult. Through her marriage the Princess Royal had changed her nationality; as Crown Princess she became the “third woman in Prussia” (after the queen and the queen dowager Elisabeth). But nevertheless, as the former Princess Royal, she still ranked as the third woman in Great Britain (after her mother and the Princess of Wales). Since neither her intelligent, lively, politically active personality, nor the conditions of monarchical life in the nineteenth century precluded a ‘publicrepresentative life’, the Crown Princess’s dual identity, Prussian-English, BritishGerman, became a political issue. And of course, as her sister Alice was married to the Hessian grand-duke, the Prussian-German relationship posed some additional questions, too10 . Bismarck was inclined to reject the English marriage of the Prussian heir as a liberal affair right from the start. Some newer interpretations, however, suggest that the Crown Princess’s husband, the future Friedrich III, has never been as liberal as 9

10

See Andreas Fahrmeir, Citizens and Aliens. Foreigners and the Law in Britain and the German States 1789–1870, New York/Oxford 2000; Dieter Gosewinkel, Einbürgern und Ausschließen. Die Nationalisierung der Staatsangehörigkeit vom Deutschen Bund bis zur Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Göttingen 2001. For the German question through British eyes see the summary by Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Die Deutsche Frage und das europäische Staatensystem 1815–1871, München 2001, 103–05.

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the conservatives always feared. But within this framework of the 1880s, the Crown Princess became a useful tool in denouncing liberalism and Britain altogether. With the wars of unification, the German public defined the position of Crown Princess Victoria no longer simply in terms of being foreign, but mainly by her Britishness. Because of the admiration as well as rejection of Britain, the princess came to be identified with the difficulties of a hybrid existence in a nationalistic age11 .

II. The Basic Situation When Queen Victoria made her choice of husband she basically implemented an old formula of the European dynasties. Suitable marriage partners must come from ruling families and be of the same confession. Thus the Protestant German ruling houses married into Europe’s Protestant dynasties and into the Tsar’s family. Initially for personal reasons, later for reasons of marriage policy and eugenics, the Queen was not a fan of great hordes of royal children. So she rejected that basic tenet of monarchical principles, according to which royal children were regarded as bargaining counters in the theatre of European power politics, only to cite these principles again when it seemed opportune. The Queen’s ideas about family marriage policy, given her numerous progeny – she often groaned when she counted all her grandchildren – became increasingly flexible. The marriages of the Queen’s children span the whole spectrum – from marriage to the Prussian Crown Prince and to the Russian Grand Princess, to marriage to deposed German princes and even German nobles of nonruling houses, right down to marriage to a ‘subject’12 . However, in the question of their eldest daughter’s marriage Victoria and Albert still adhered to traditional principles. Both wanted the Princess Royal, her father’s favourite child, to sit on a throne. Although the Queen was by no means a supporter of the women’s movement and of the demand that women should do jobs for which qualifications were needed, the Princess Royal, as her oldest child, seemed perfectly suited for the role as Queen of Prussia. Influenced by the Prince Consort’s political notions – he favoured a united Germany under liberal auspices – the 18-year-old

11

12

See Siegfried Weichlein, Nationalbewegungen und Nationalismus in Europa, Darmstadt 2006, 121–23. For Bismarck’s constant efforts in his memoirs to link the liberal inclinations of the Crown Prince to Victoria see Otto Fürst von Bismarck, Gedanken und Erinnerungen, Bd. 1, Stuttgart 1922, 366–68. Dealing with reasonable doubts about the liberalism of Friedrich III is Hans-Christof Kraus, Friedrich III. Preußens Herrscher, ed. Frank-Lothar Kroll, München 2000, 265–89. The anxiety and trouble of a large family (and especially a Royal one) is very great, 8 January 1870: Your Dear Letter. Private Correspondence of Queen Victoria and the Crown Princess of Prussia 1865 – 1871, ed. Roger Fulford, London 1971, 253 (from now on YDL). Complaint on numerous grandchildren, especially boys, 23 April 1873: Darling Child. Private Correspondence of Queen Victoria and the Crown Princess of Prussia 1871–1878, ed. Roger Fulford, London 1976, (from now on DC) 88.

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Victoria was sent to Berlin in 185813. That the Princess Royal should have changed her nationality was no big deal for princesses in the nineteenth century. A stream of German princesses had flooded into Russia – nothing was heard of these women, or else there was evidence of their total russification. The opposite case, princes who would not inherit marrying Princesses in line to a throne, or were, as members of ruling houses, at least rich, became the family strategy of the Coburgs14 . For the Princess Royal the prospect of marrying the Prussian Crown Prince initially appeared like a stroke of luck she could barely have hoped for. The requirements of status and emotion combined in a way that could by no means be taken for granted. Victoria set about her task as the wife of the heir to the throne strong in the knowledge that hers was a love match. The difficulties that emerged for the Crown Princess at the Prussian court and in public were the result of individual characteristics, but also more generally of the position of a foreign consort with strong loyalties to her native country, as the example of her father had already shown15 . In the literature it is often pointed out that the Queen was well aware of her daughter’s liberal, Gladstonian principles. We should therefore be wary of taking the Queen’s remarks on British domestic policy at face value. We should also bear in mind that by its very nature such a correspondence involves such characteristics as politeness and good manners, concealment and toning down. Nonetheless the Queen’s remarks do reveal certain indications of a new national and bourgeois perception of the royal family, which were also encouraged by the fact that the monarch was a woman. However, of course this did not mean that the Queen was in any way inclined to support the emancipation of women in a political sense16 .

III. Marriage and Family in the Queen’s Eyes As her own marriage to Albert was initially happy, the Queen took the private desirability of marriage for granted. Only later in life did she become more sceptical, seeing marriage as a “lottery”. As a grandmother, she warned her grandchild Victoria of Hesse, not “to be married for marrying’s sake and to have a position”. “Marrying for a position” the Queen described as a “German view”, an interpretation which was strongly connected with the Ebenbürtigkeits-ideals of the German nobility. However, she always thought about the political dimensions of royal marriages, and increasingly

13

14 15 16

See Egon Caesar Conte Corti, The English Empress. A Study in the Relations between Queen Victoria and her eldest Daughter, Empress Frederick of Germany, London 1957; Our own dear firstborn, 25 October 1867: YDL, 155. To the Crown Princess 23 May 1865: YDL, 27. See Robert Rhodes James, Albert. Prince Consort, 1983. See The Queen and Mr Gladstone, ed. Philip Guedalla, New York 1934, 271; Edgar Feuchtwanger, Viktoria 1837–1901:Englische Könige und Königinnen. Von Heinrich VIII. bis Elisabeth II., ed. Peter Wende, München 1998, 268–86.

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about the impression such marriages would make on the British public. Although the heir to the British throne and the Princess Royal married into the ruling European houses, according to classical dynastic principles, the Queen applied other standards when it came to her other children. A personal inclination between the partners was an absolute necessity. The marriages of her younger children were presented as the private decisions of a bourgeois family seeking happiness. In Berlin, this was not well accepted. The Queen had to explain her decisions on these marriages to the Crown Princess because she knew that the Prussian court, so proud of its royal status, would have difficulty understanding them: “She [her daughter Louise, M.W.] is engaged to Lord Lorne. I know well that abroad such a marriage, until it is thoroughly understood, may startle people but it is what I have long thought it must come to. Great alliances like yours are right and well for some of the family – though I fear they have little political weight inasmuch as they do not and cannot influence any more the actions of governments and nations, and thereby often cause incalculable sufferings to the Royal Families themselves – as we both know – being suspected of undue leanings and undue influence.“ The Queen balanced “little political weight”, that is active influence in politics, against the suspicions of a nationalistic public, and transformed this political statement into the sphere of the family. Like every other family in the country, the Royal family would suffer if the criticism grew louder. So protection of the Royal family could be seen as one important aim in marriage questions17 . In Victorian Britain, the marriages of royal children acquired particular political significance during the German wars of unification. Hesse and Denmark were opponents of Prussia. The Queen was now concerned above all with the position of her two daughters married to Germans: “I wish I had you all safely established here.” The repercussions of politics on family life gave the Queen cause to view family relations with other ruling houses with a critical eye: “These divided interests in Royal Families are quite unbearable. Human nature is not made for such fearful trials – especially not mothers’ and wives’ hearts.“ The Queen cited her femininity to renounce the political confrontations in her own family and in Royal families in general. Legitimized by her own womanhood and the womanhood of her daughters, she announced that in future the priority was to maintain bourgeois family harmony, and that she would therefore prefer to forego marriages to members of European ruling houses. Politically this argument could be used to steer the meaning of a Royal marriage away from foreign to domestic policy. The marriages of royal children to Britons were popular 17

Letter to Princess Victoria of Hesse, 8 December 1880: Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals, ed. Christopher Hilbert, London 1984, 264; To the Crown Princess, 11 October 1870: YDL, 302. During the Franco-Prussian war, a British Princess had no chance to accept a suitor from the continent, because it would have been interpreted as an inclination towards the country concerned.

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at home. The closeness between monarch and subjects was demonstrated in a new way18 . When, in the 1870s, the Crown Princess started to talk about her sister Louise marrying a Prussian Prince the Queen cut her off pretty sharply: “I think it is not desirable to have two sisters married into the same Royal Family.” This argument went against particularly close relationships to just one European country. The Queen had decided to choose someone British this time. “A second Prussian marriage [. . .] would have been very unpopular here, and a poor, small, German Prince also.“ For the thrifty Queen the financial aspect of her children’s marriages became increasingly important. When the royal princes married, the Queen regularly had to face the embarrassing fact that many of the British aristocracy were far wealthier than her own children. Marrying her daughters to penniless princes from German dynasties became, given the caustic comments in the British press and the mumblings in parliament, a thing of the past. In consequence the Queen, like her grandson Wilhelm II, spent her time on the throne gathering together a great private fortune19 . In a way the Queen allowed the British public to speak for her, if this would support her argument. But rejection of foreign marriages did not become a principle. When her son Arthur wanted to marry a Prussian princess in 1878 she did not raise any objections, because at this time Britain and the Kaiserreich were getting along quite well together: “It is never likely that England and Germany should quarrel as England and Russia I fear always will.” There was, however, a gender-specific element to this decision. For her younger daughters the Queen preferred marriages to Britons or to poor German princes who would then become naturalised and live in England. If Arthur married a Prussian princess he would, of course, remain a British royal son and peer, and would bring his wife to England20 . When it came to the marriages of her other daughters the Queen emphasised this very aspect, but it had little in common with the classical dynastic objective of marrying daughters into Europe’s ruling families. In the case of Princess Helena’s marriage to Christian Schleswig-Holstein, who now had no territory, and likewise that of Princess Beatrice, the most important thing was that their husbands should be naturalised and live in Britain. If, contrary to the wishes of British public opinion, the choice still fell on a German prince, then the Queen resorted to a new argument. She demanded that consideration be given to her position as a widow. Whereas the marriages of her elder daughters to German princes were painful to the Queen, because it meant separation, the marriage of the Prince of Wales promised personal happiness for the whole family. Her younger daughters and their husbands should live in 18 19

20

See Bernd Weisbrod, Die theatralische Monarchie. Victoria als „family queen“: Der Körper der Königin, ed. Regina Schulte, Frankfurt/Main 2002, 236–53. 13 January 1877: DC, 237; 1 November 1870: YDL, 305. Concerning the critic of parts of the (radical) British public as to civil list pensions of the Royal children, see Anthony Taylor, Reynold’s Newspaper, opposition to Monarchy and the Radical Anti- Jubilee: Britain’s Anti-Monarchist tradition Reconsidered: Historical Research 68 (1995), 318–337, here 325. 12 March 1878: DC, 285. See 30 November 1870: YDL, 310.

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Britain, in order to support the Queen in place of the deceased Prince Consort. So here the Queen made good use of her own gender and the bourgeois family model, whereby the wife is seen as dependent on her husband and family21. On the other hand, however, she claimed to be the head of the family, both in the narrower sense in relation to the children, and also within the extended aristocratic family of the Coburgs. When Princess Helena got married the Queen informed the Crown Princess that she had, of course, played the role of the male head of the family at the ceremony: “How could dear Fritz believe or even think I would ask Bertie or Affie to give away Lenchen! If dear Papa and Uncle Ernest were not here I was the only one to do it, and even if Uncle Ernest had come I was determined to do it, as you know. I never would let one of my sons take their father’s place while I live!” So the arguments of the Queen about gender and the family by no means called her power as sovereign into question22 . Ultimately the Queen’s scepticism about dynastic marriages was further nourished in the contemporary discussions about race, eugenics and the consequences of inbreeding when relatives married. As a carrier of haemophilia, which she had passed on to her son Leopold and via her daughter Alice, the Queen was herself affected by a serious hereditary disease. On various occasions, and in drastic expressions, she demanded “fresh blood“, for: “If no fresh blood was infused occasionally the races would degenerate finally – physically and morally“. Thus it seemed important to her to avoid inbreeding for the moral development of the royal families: “I do wish one could find some more black eyed princes and princesses for our children! [. . .] All the Protestant Royal Families are related again and again.“ For this reason she expressly accepted the children of mediatised royal families as marriage partners. Like the other arguments to do with foreign policy and loyalty of subjects, and the problems of a bourgeois widow, the eugenic argument also served to weaken the traditional ideology of marrying someone of equal rank. Thus the family was placed against the dynasty, though it made no difference, of course, to the Queen’s claim to power23 . On the other hand, however, as far as the Queen was concerned the concept of the family had only weak national connotations. She described “dear old Coburg” as the ´‘cradle of our family”. Even the Queen’s closest relations included not only Guelphs and Coburgs, but also the Leiningen family and later the Battenbergs. Personal inclination played an important role. So the Queen was furious when, at the wedding of Princess Beatrice, the German Emperor made critical remarks about not marrying someone of equal rank, which even Friedrich, the son-in-law, joined in. In the Queen’s view the importance of individual family members was not measured by their proximity to the throne. As a grandmother she turned far more to her Hessian grandchildren than to the Prussian ones. In the letters to the Crown Princess at least 21 22 23

9 May 1866: YDL, 72; 11 September 1865: YDL, 42. See Journal of the Queen, 5 November 1862: Hilbert (note 17), 167. 28 July 1866: YDL, 82. Beloved Mama: Private Correspondence of Queen Victoria and the German Crown Princess 1878 – 1885, ed. Roger Fulford, London 1981, 180 (from now on BM); 21 April 1866: YDL, 69.

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there is no question of preferential treatment being given to the eldest son of the heir apparent Albert Victor, although she was quite fond of him. The Queen’s letters reveal a markedly non-hierarchical perception of family and relations. Much is made of good moral behaviour and filial love. There was no question of imposing marriages on her children, though conversely the children did not have freedom of choice either. These notions, too, had more in common with those of the Victorian bourgeoisie than with the classical models of monarchical or aristocratic families24. The Queen’s flexible approach arose not least from the fact that she was a woman and had, when she married, – at least according to bourgeois standards – changed her family: the name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha now applied to the dynasty as well. For the Queen, who did not owe her position to marriage, origins and marriage were equally important for constituting a family – again a very bourgeois approach. And German nationality was also embedded in the context of family. The Queen regarded her Guelphic-Coburg origins and the family she married into as German. Germany counted as her second home, as she wrote to Granville during the Franco-Prussian war. For the Queen personally an English-British identity and German family ties fitted together well25 .

IV. Family and Nationality as perceived by the Crown Princess Compared to her mother the Crown Princess was in a far less favourable position. She was not a sovereign, not even the wife of a sovereign, and she had not come to Berlin from Belgium, Denmark, or some other small European country, but from Britain, which to the Prussian and German elite – nobility and bourgeoisie – represented both an example they admired and a counter-image they envied. While the Queen was able to combine her position as British head of state with her German roots and sympathies, the Crown Princess was constantly home-sick, initially for cultural reasons: ”Our English way of living is by far the healthiest and most sensible I am sure . . .” or “You know what a John Bull I am and how enthusiastic about my home”. Even when she was warned by members of the German women’s movement, with which she was very well acquainted, that her constantly buying British goods did not impress the German public favourably, she did not change her behaviour. “Denken Sie, ich habe ihr offen gesagt, dass man ihr vorwirft, sie kaufe alles in England; ich habe ihr gesagt, dass sie viele Feinde hat”, wrote Henriette Schrader during the 1870s. Victoria tried to mediate between the two countries: “Of course in Germany I always take the part of the Englishman – and in England I try to stick up for the German.” It was well intentioned, but she could not have fallen between two stools any more spectacularly. So in particularly difficult situations like the Franco-Prussian war she abandoned this claim to the office of cultural mediator: “First of all to my 24 25

7 February 1872: DC, 27. Letter to Granville, 20 July 1870: Hilbert (note 17), 220.

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mind an English woman and your daughter is far greater than any foreign Crowns, though I do not say so here”26 . As a rule, however, she also described herself to her mother as a Prussian woman: the Crown Princess claimed to love and feel patriotism for Prussia and Germany. She managed this best in her view of third states and nations. In her arrogance towards Poland or her fierce desire for victory over France she completely shared the Prussian views. While Victoria was fairly reticent in her comments about British domestic policy – just as well considering that the Queen and Crown Princess had very different views – Prussia and the Reich became the Princess’s political homeland, and she was constantly agitated because she considered them to be taking the wrong path. “[. . .] not from want of love of this country [Prussia or Germany, M.W.] – for I love it very much indeed, and would never wish to leave it or belong to any other under the sun. It is a love mixed with anxiety and hope too“27 . In Germany, where the public revered Bismarck, the Crown Princess opted for the wrong – liberal – camp, while her letters reveal that in terms of world politics and colonial questions she sided quite clearly with Britain. On the one hand she rightly assumed that her mother would expect nothing less. Beyond that, however, the Crown Princess herself often came down on the side of Britain in questions where Britain and Germany were at odds. In matters of world politics, though not as regards European disputes, Victoria obviously thought it appropriate to hang on to her British identity. Her imperialism, as such, was British, whereas in the case of European politics towards Austria, France and Poland, she sided with her new home country28 . Her – situational – national identity as a Prussian and German could conflict with her family relationships. In the wars of unification the Crown Princess ostensibly defined herself as Prussian: “I cannot and will not forget that I am a Prussian.” The Crown Princess drew completely unrealistic conclusions, quite different from those of her mother, from the disputes with her sister Alice, married in Hesse, and with her brother, married to a Dane. In her view, politics and family had to be regarded separately. “At this sad time one must separate one’s feelings for one’s relations quite from one’s judgement of political necessities.“ In essence this was a vote in favour of continuing the distinction between dynasty and family, which was traditional rather than bourgeois and as such no longer practicable29 . Even if the Queen and the Crown Princess totally shared Victorian moral values and wanted to defend family honour, their visions of the royal family’s future varied 26

27 28 29

German Historiographyis still indifferentto Victoria, Kaiserin Friedrich. See Hannah Pakula, An Uncommon Woman. The Empress Frederick, 1995: John C.G. Röhl, Kritikerin der persönlichen Monarchie Wilhelms II.: Victoria, ed. Hessen. Home in England-Home in Prussia, 20 May 1869: YDL, 29, 237; 6 May 1865: YDL, 25, 80: John Bull again, 6 April 1873: DC, 84. Schrader’s letter is cited in Margit Göttert, Victoria und die deutsche Frauenbewegung: Victoria, ed. Hessen, 106. 4 July 1865: YDL, 33; 9 July 1866: YDL, 79; 20 October 1876: DC, 226. 16 March 1866:YDL, 61; 11 November 1874: DC, 161. There is a rather famous statement on the Baghdad Railway, 10 June 1882: BM, 121. 8 August 1866: YDL, 88.

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considerably. The Crown Princess personally preferred large families, even though she appreciated the difficulties encountered by the younger royal sons. But while the Queen would have liked these sons not to be born at all – by the previous generation not marrying – or to go to the colonies, the Crown Princess suggested that these sons “might enter honourable professions, earn their own bread and distinguish themselves – instead of being a burden to themselves and their families, and a disgrace to their relations.“ Given the conditions of the modern monarchies, neither of these suggestions was realistic. Apart from becoming officers, which they took with varying degrees of seriousness, the younger sons of the great European dynasties remained jobless – and more often than not a “disgrace to their relations.“ Here, at the latest, becoming bourgeois had reached its limits30. Queen Victoria had every chance and opportunity to transform traditional dynastic principles and to reconcile them with bourgeois notions of the family. Her flexible approach allowed her to make the royal family and not the dynasty the focal point and to select a suitable argument to support the marriage of each of her children. The Queen had spread the risks of royal marriages in an exemplary manner – thereby paving the way for the unions of royal family members with subjects popular in Europe at the beginning of the twenty-first century31 . The Prussian Crown Princess, on the other hand, had first hand experience of the fact that a dual or situational national identity was difficult to live in the second half of the nineteenth century. The more passionately the Crown Princess invoked her English identity in her letters to her mother, the more she alienated herself from the expectations of her German children and the Prussian-German public. It was not only her son Wilhelm whom she saw as a Hohenzollern, and therefore essentially foreign. Since the Emperor rejected her bourgeois notions of the family she had little opportunity to implement them. While Queen Victoria, by means of her children’s marriages, managed to look into the future of nationalised royal families, less tied to the principle of equal rank than many aristocratic families on the continent, the Crown Princess was torn apart by the demands of dynastic policy and the bourgeois family on the one hand, and her identity as a Briton and as a German Crown Princess on the other. It seems, as if by her very bi-national identity, she could not share the sacralisation of the nation that characterized the history of many European countries during the second half of the nineteenth century. So Bismarck was not the only name that could be given to her difficulties32 . 30 31

32

13 February 1878: YDL, 281; 8 May 1872: DC, 40; 12 March 1870: YDL, 265. It seems likely that the Queen thus ensured at least parts of the lively devotion of the people, stated by Otto Brunner, Vom Gottesgnadentum zum monarchischen Prinzip. Der Weg der europäischen Monarchie seit dem hohen Mittelalter: Das Königtum. Seine geistigen und rechtlichen Grundlagen, Sigmaringen 1954, 279–305. For the significance of a medieval sacred monarchy see the classical interpretations by Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Medieval Theology, Princeton 1957, and Marc Bloch, Les rois thaumaturges. Etude sur le caract`ere surnaturel attribu´e a` la puissance royale, particuli`erement en France et en Angleterre, Paris 1924.

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Anglo-German Family Networks before 1914. Kaiser Wilhelm II’s correspondence with the British Royal Family

Nearly half a century has gone by since I first started studying Kaiser Wilhelm II. and the complex Anglo-German family network which enmeshed him. During that time I have worked in more archives than I can clearly remember. But some experiences are unforgettable. I have stood at midnight in the loft of a deserted snow-bound Schloss in Württemberg, prising open crates and washing-baskets searching for the correspondence of the Kaiser’s closest friends, the Liebenberg Circle. I have been overwhelmed with hospitality by one of Germany’s foremost royal families; spent many months living in sordid hotels in the red light district while working in the old Bundesarchiv in Koblenz; and have survived a total of some six months in the Communist German Democratic Republic, exploring the remnants of the Prussian and Reich government archives at Merseburg and Potsdam respectively. With every letter, postcard, telegram, diary entry and marginal note, a drama of Shakespearean proportions full of state conflict, personal passion and incipient madness began to unfold before my eyes. It was not until I began work on my multi-volume biography of the Kaiser in 1980, however, that I applied for permission to peruse his correspondence in the Royal Archives in Windsor Castle. Nothing in my experience in the German archives had prepared me for the splendour of that place: the magnificent Round Tower, the great stone staircase to the archive, the charming individual attention and expert service, tea and biscuits at eleven . . . It took me some time to realise that all this splendour was also subtly designed to serve a purpose, namely to protect the good name of the British Royal Family. And this in turn raised the question – crucial for the biographer of Queen Victoria’s eldest grandchild – of where exactly the outer limits of the Royal Family were deemed to be, of who was inside and who was beyond the fold. I do not imagine that anyone at Windsor has ever actually drawn up a list of Royals deemed worthy of such protection, but if such a list existed, it would surely have to include Vicky, the Princess Royal, the great Queen’s eldest child who remained so stubbornly English to the very end of her life. By the same token, that list would certainly not have included the name of Vicky’s son The Kaiser, Queen Victoria’s eldest grandchild, whose narrowly militaristic and reactionary Prussian attitudes caused such pain to his liberal anglophile parents and whose vainglorious scheming to wrest from Britain the 131

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supremacy of the seas in order to dominate the European Continent (and beyond) then overshadowed the reign of his uncle Edward VII and his cousin George V. In considering Wilhelm II’s correspondence with the Royal Family, then, it is with his letters to his mother that I shall begin. These letters are not kept at Windsor, but in the Archive of the Hessische Hausstiftung in Schloss Fasanerie near Fulda, where I was allowed to work and live for four wonderful months. They show us more clearly than any other source the immense difficulty both the Crown Princess and her eldest son had in establishing their national identity within the Anglo-German family network. As with all her children, Vicky insisted that Willy write to her in English. Until he was fifteen the Crown Princess regularly returned young Wilhelm’s letters with the spelling mistakes corrected. “The handwriting distresses me, it is so babyish”, she told him to his face in 1875, when he was at the Gymnasium in Kassel, “the writing and the spelling, both are lamentable”1 . That was not all. “I think your french awful”, she complained. “I do not consider you a good english or french scholar; you neither speak nor write the languages as correctly as you might. [. . .] I am only too happy if you do anything well, it does not matter what it is; but when I think [. . .] of what your position will once involve, I cannot help thinking that you ought to turn your utmost attention and energy towards speaking and writing, 1st, & before all, your own german language and then french & english! Nothing will be a greater convenience [. . .] to you later, and then you will regret speaking hastily and indistinctly and writing such a horrid vulgar hand, & such bad style”2 . Her put-downs were severe and never-ending. “You fancy yourself wonderfully accomplished, you think that you write a good hand & a good style, that you are a good rider, that you have good manners, & draw well, – whereas in all these things we [your parents] think you far behind what you might be. [. . .] I still hope you will make me proud of you someday when you are older and wiser and have overcome all your little faults. Is it not so dear boy?”3 It is worth mentioning that the Crown Princess’s own letters were full of spelling mistakes and that her handwriting, while nothing like as indecipherable as her mother’s or her brother Bertie’s, was anything but attractive. The teenage Prince’s response to this constant carping and cajoling was unexpected, to say the least. Soon after his sixteenth birthday Wilhelm began to bombard his mother with descriptions of a dream he kept having in which she played the central role. “I have got a little secret which is for you alone”, he wrote in March 1875. 1 2 3

Cited in John C. G. Röhl, Young Wilhelm. The Kaiser’s Early Life 1859–1888, Cambridge 1998, 232. Ibid., 234. Ibid., 235.

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“I dreamt last night that I was walking with you & another lady; [. . .] you were discussing who had the finest hands, whereupon the lady produced a most ungraceful hand, declaring that it was the prettiest, and turned us her back. I in my rage broke her parasole; but you put your dear arm round my waist, led me aside, pulled your glove off your dear left hand [. . .] & showed me your dear beautiful hand which I instantly covered with kisses.” Wilhelm hoped that his “dream” would soon become reality. “I wish you would do the same when I am at Berlin, alone with you in the evening.” And he continued anxiously: “Pray write to me what you think about the dream; it is quite true as I have written it. You see I always think of you, my dear Mama, I sometimes dream of you; I am so glad that soon we shall sit together in you[r] dear library and cose [sic] together. But this dream is alone for you to know”4 . A few days later the dream recurred. “This time I was alone with you in your library”, he told his mother, “when you stretched forth your arms & pulled me down to your chair so that my head rested on your left arm. Then you took off your gloves [. . .] & laid your hands gently on my lips, for me to kiss it asking me at the same time if I remembered dreaming about you. I instantly seized your hand & kissed; then you gave me a warm embrace & putting your right arm round my [. . .] neck got up & walked about the rooms with me.” Once again Wilhelm expressed the desire that the dream be fulfilled: “In 8 days we will go to Berlin & then what I dreamt about we will do in reality when we are alone in your rooms without any witnesses. This is the second secret for you, pray write to me what you think about it, & promise to do so really as you did in my dream to me, for I do so love you [. . .] I can hardly wait for the moment to see you again.” Months later, Wilhelm still claimed to have had the same dream: “Again have I been dreaming about your dear, soft warm hands & I am awaiting with impatience the time when I can sit near you & kiss them”5 . This is not the place to offer an interpretation of the Prince’s dreams, but one does not have to be a Freudian psychoanalyst to see that Wilhelm’s “dream” was a call for help, an appeal for acceptance. The desire to send away the woman with the ugly 4

5

Ibid., p. 235f. Some of Wilhelm’s letters to his mother are printed in Hannah Pakula, An Uncommon Woman. The Empress Frederick, Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm, New York-London-Toronto-Tokyo-Singapore 1995, 363f. Cited in Röhl (note 1), 236.

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hands and kiss his mother’s beautiful hands is the desire to be loved by her despite his own “mutilated”, discoloured left arm and the many other shortcomings she never ceased to complain about. This interpretation becomes all the more compelling if we recall the heart-rending fact that when Wilhelm was still a small child, Vicky often teased him with the words “no lady will ever have you with your black finger”6 . How did Queen Victoria’s daughter react to her son’s attempt to reach out to her? Her replies to Wilhelm used to be in the archive in Merseburg and have now been transferred to the Geheimes Staatsarchiv in Berlin-Dahlem. They show that, while not hiding her surprise, she played along and indulged his fantasy. “Your little secret is indeed very droll, & I will keep it quite to myself of course”, she replied. After the second account of the dream the Crown Princess responded lovingly: “You cannot love me more than I do you, dearest boy, and I look forward with even more pleasure than you can to little evenings spent alone with you in my Library! What a dreamy boy you are!”, she exclaimed. “Again a dream! [. . .] But it shall be kept secret!” In May 1875 she wrote in response to her son’s insistence that he alone should be allowed to kiss the soft palm of her hand: “I shall not forget your wishes dear boy, that you may be sure of.” “You droll boy to dream such odd things!! I promise you, you shall kiss your old Mama’s old paw whenever you like!”7 The dream continued to feature in the letters, if fitfully, until Prince Wilhelm was nearly twenty. But of course the correspondence between mother and son could not go on in this fetishist and incestuous vein indefinitely. From 1878, Wilhelm virtually stopped writing to his mother altogether and ignored her increasingly desperate pleas for a reply to her letters. Their relationship came to be characterised by hatred and smouldering resentment. The gravity of the breakdown in the relationship between Wilhelm and his mother can hardly be overstated, for when he turned his back on her he rejected her liberal principles and her devotion to all things English as well. From the outset Vicky had, with astonishing insensitivity, urged upon her son the superiority of the country of her birth, which she referred to as “the first country in the world”, over Prussia and Germany. When Wilhelm was just eleven she told him that she often went about saying quietly to herself “Britannia rules the waves”. “However you being a little german boy are not supposed or expected to feel this, and some day when you grow up I am sure you will feel as proud and grateful to be a german, as I am to be an englishwoman.” As her son reached adolescence Vicky wrote to him of her pride upon seeing a British passenger ship in Venice; it was “a great delight [. . .] to a regular John Bull such as I am (thank God).” The Prussian and German Crown Princess described herself unabashedly “as an Englishwoman, a free born Briton”. She considered England’s position of power and its mission in the world as “a blessing to mankind, & of this and all else that concerns my country I am very proud.” England was more than just the greatest naval power, as Wilhelm had claimed, it was quite simply “the 6 7

Crown Princess to Crown Prince, 13 March 1880: ibid., 238f. Ibid., 240.

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largest & most powerful Empire in the world, in wh. the sun never sets! As England is the freest, the most progressive advanced, & liberal & the most developed race in the world, also the richest, she clearly is more suited than any other to civilize other countries!”8 In vain Wilhelm’s tutor Dr. Georg Ernst Hinzpeter warned the Crown Princess “against this urging of English superiority!”9 The effect was bound to be defiance. In July 1878, in a letter which has not survived, Wilhelm must have expressed his desire for the German Reich to become the foremost power in Europe, for the Crown Princess took up this point in her reply. “You say you wish to see your fatherland the 1st state in Europe, – no doubt the idea that this could be the case is pleasant to your feelings as it is to most Germans I fancy! You can say that you have the most daring statesman in Europe & also the largest & most powerful Army, furthermore that your population has a fair share of good qualities, of intelligence and many a good and useful institution to govern it. But alas I cannot admit that your form of Government is first rate, nor the development of your trade & agriculture nor your social condition, even in Art you cannot beat the rest – and you are behind hand in many many things which civilized modern nations have to be perfect in, if they think themselves the leaders of the rest! The wish [that] ones Country should be the 1st – is a right and proper one! [. . .] But the mere empty boast ‘we are the 1st’ is not only ridiculous, but hurtful – and only impedes progress! Do you understand me?”10 Quite suddenly, Wilhelm withdrew from this conflict by refusing to respond to his mother’s letters, and for the next decade their correspondence ceased altogether. When his father fell ill with cancer in early 1887, Wilhelm could barely contain his ambition to exclude him from the succession to become king and emperor himself, and his hatred for his mother, his grandmother and the English doctors now plumbed new depths. “That our family shield should be besmirched and the Reich brought to the brink of ruin by an English princess who is my mother – that is the most terrible thing of all”, he declaimed11 . He denounced his mother and sisters as the “English colony”, his father’s doctors as “Jewish louts” obsessed with “racial hatred [and] antiGermanism”, and Queen Victoria as the “empress of Hindustan” whose time had come to die. Not only were the English doctors trying to kill his father; they were, he convinced himself, also responsible for crippling his own left arm. “One cannot have enough hatred for England”, he cried12 . In 1898, when he had been on “the mightiest throne on earth” for ten years, the Kaiser left his mother in no doubt as to the grandiosity of his imperial ambitions. As 8 9 10 11 12

Cited ibid., 266f. Hinzpeter to Crown Princess, 8 February 1876: ibid., 267. Crown Princess to Prince Wilhelm, 15 May 1878: ibid., 268. Crown Prince Wilhelm to Eulenburg, April 1888: John C. G. Röhl (ed.), Philipp Eulenburgs Politische Korrespondenz, 3 vols., Boppard-am-Rhein 1976–83, I, No. 169. Eulenburgs Korrespondenz, I, p. 225 and Nos. 111 and 153. See also Brigitte Hamann, Rudolf, Kronprinz und Rebell, Vienna-Munich 1978, 328ff.

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if to pay her back for all her urging of British superiority when he was a boy, he wrote to her in triumph on Bismarck’s death in 1898: Now “the Crown sends its rays ‘by the Grace of God’ into Palace & hut, & [. . . ] Europe & the World listen to hear ‘what does the German Emperor say or think’, & not what is the will of his Chancellor! [. . . ] For ever & for ever, there is only one real Emperor in the world, & that is the German, [. . . ] by right of a thousand years tradition”13. ***** In a later part of this paper, we shall see how Wilhelm’s determination to establish his new Thousand Year Reich and Britain’s attempts to thwart that ambition overshadowed his relationship with his uncle King Edward VII, Vicky’s eldest brother. In this second part, I shall focus on the Kaiser’s correspondence with his grandmother Queen Victoria, and the theme I wish to highlight here is the difficulty the Royals had in separating the private from the public domain. When Wilhelm succeeded to the throne on 15 June 1888, the British ambassador warned of the immense power that he would now wield. “If we were dealing with a country in which the foreign policy was guided by the Government & not by the Sovereign”, Sir Edward Malet wrote, the personal feelings of the monarch would be “a matter of small moment, but that is not the case. [. . .] His sentiments will count as a strong factor in the policy which may be adopted towards us”14 . It soon became all too apparent that dark human emotions would henceforth overshadow Anglo-German relations. Within days of his accession, Wilhelm complained that the Queen was treating him “more as a grandson than as German Kaiser”15 . He called his uncle Albert Edward the Prince of Wales an “idiot” for suggesting that Friedrich III would have sought reconciliation with France by returning Alsace and Lorraine,16 and then added insult to injury by demanding that the heir to the British throne leave Vienna for the duration of his, Wilhelm’s, own visit to the Austrian capital. Queen Victoria was aghast at Wilhelm’s behaviour. She wrote of “the most outrageous behaviour of Willie the Gt. (& I fear ‘the bad hearted’) towards Bertie. [. . .] To treat the Pce of W. – the oldest son of one of the gtst Sovereigns in the World, & his own kind Uncle in such a manner is one of the greatest insults ever committed!”17 As Victoria told Lord Salisbury, Wilhelm’s complaint that his uncle had not treated “his nephew as Emperor” was “really too vulgar and too absurd as well as untrue almost to be believed. We have always been very intimate with our grandson and nephew, and to pretend that he is to be 13 14 15 16 17

Kaiser Wilhelm II to his mother, 25 September 1898, cited in John C.G. Röhl, Wilhelm II. The Kaiser’s Personal Monarchy 1888–1900, Cambridge 2004, 871–3. Malet to Salisbury, 14 July 1888: ibid., 22. Colonel Leopold Swaine to Ponsonby, 4 July 1888: Sir Frederick Ponsonby (ed.), Briefe der Kaiserin Friedrich, Berlin 1929, 344. Wilhelm’s speech of 16 August 1888 is printed in Johannes Penzler (ed.), Die Reden Kaiser Wilhelms II. in den Jahren 1888–1895, Leipzig 1896, 19–21. Queen Victoria to her son Arthur Duke of Connaught, 27 September 1888: Röhl (note 13), 79f.

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treated in private as well as in public as ‘His Imperial Majesty’ is perfect madness!”18 The thirst for revenge spread through the Royal Family and poisoned the minds of the next generation. As Alexandra Princess of Wales wrote to her son, the future George V, Wilhelm had been “personally most frightfully rude & impertinent towards Papa” and “actually refused to meet him at Vienna!! He is perfectly infuriated against England that beast. [. . .] Oh he is mad & a conceited ass – who also says that Papa & Grandmama don’t treat him with proper respect as the Emperor of all & mighty Germany! But my hope is that pride will have a fall some day!! – Won’t we rejoice then”19 . The family row over the Vienna Incident threatened to escalate into a major international crisis when the Kaiser announced his wish to visit England, and both the Queen and the Prince of Wales retorted that they would not dream of receiving him until he had apologised for his atrocious behaviour. After months of wrangling, the crisis was resolved when in June 1889, Queen Victoria conferred the rank of British Admiral of the Fleet on her German grandson20 . Beside himself with glee,21 the Kaiser wrote to the British ambassador: “Fancy wearing the same uniform as St. Vincent and Nelson; it is enough to make one quite giddy”22 . Count Herbert von Bismarck, the Foreign Secretary, listened in disbelief as Germany’s Supreme War Lord announced that as Admiral of the Fleet he now had “the right to be consulted on English naval matters and to give the Queen the benefit of his expert advice”23 . Arriving at the Isle of Wight in his new uniform, Wilhelm became, in the eyes of the younger Bismarck, “the complete anglomaniac”24. The Kaiser’s behaviour convinced him that “in his English family relationships H.M. had not kicked off his children’s shoes; he was still completely under the influence of his earlier visits to the Isle of Wight, where as a child and youngster he was treated in accordance with his mother’s precepts”25 . On the last day of the visit, the German sailors paraded past the royal tent under Wilhelm’s command. The German Foreign Secretary later recalled: “The culmination was the parade of 1200 sailors [. . .] led personally by H.M. on the lawn in front of the tent in which the Queen sat in her armchair, waving. H.M. commanded and dressed the ranks like a lieutenant on the barrack square and with drawn sword led the contingent goosestepping past the tent. Our generals turned away grumbling and murmuring the words ‘unseemly comedy”26 .

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Queen Victoria to Salisbury, 15 October 1888, George Earle Buckle (ed.), The Letters of Queen Victoria, Third Series, 3 vols., I, 440f. Alexandra Princess of Wales to Prince George, 17 October 1888: Röhl (note 13), 84. Malet to Queen Victoria, 15 June 1889: Buckle, Letters of Queen Victoria, I, 503f. Eulenburg to Herbert Bismarck, 17 July 1889: Eulenburgs Korrespondenz, I, No. 228. Kaiser Wilhelm II to Malet, 14 June 1889: Buckle, Letters of Queen Victoria, I, 504. Cited in Röhl (note 13), 103. Ibid., 104. Ibid. Ibid., 105.

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On his voyage to Athens for his sister Sophie’s wedding later that year, Wilhelm ordered the Union Jack, signalling the rank of Admiral of the Fleet, to be hoisted next to the Imperial Standard. “A German battleship with an English admiral’s flag!”, muttered the Commandant of the Deutschland in disbelief, neatly capturing the “two souls” in the Kaiser’s breast.27 If we recall how closely juxtaposed in time these episodes were with his appalling behaviour during his father’s illness and over the Vienna Incident, we shall see how difficult it is to disentangle the contradictory strands which comprised Wilhelm’s attitude to England. In the face of many indications to the contrary, the Kaiser believed all his life that Queen Victoria felt an “extraordinary love” for him, her “favourite” grandson28 . He was genuinely hurt when, as happened on several occasions, she let him know that he would not be welcome in England29 . He tried to rationalise such hostile signals by drawing a distinction between her attitude towards him as “Sovereign” on the one hand and as “Grandmother” on the other30 . To Eulenburg the Kaiser confessed: “The [German] people have no idea how much I love the Queen. [. . .] How profoundly she is interwoven with all my memories of childhood and youth!”31 , and in 1901, just after she had died with him at her bedside, he wrote: “I have only just learned how much she loved me and how highly she thought of me”32 . But the Kaiser’s belief that his grandmother was especially fond of him was the product largely of wishful thinking. In reality, for several years before Victoria’s death, the relationship between the Queen and her Prussian grandson had come under increasing strain as a result of the deterioration in the political relationship between their two countries. In early 1896, on hearing of the Jameson Raid, Wilhelm demanded that German troops be sent to defend the Boer Republic, and when Chancellor Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst objected that that would mean war with England, he inanely retorted: “Yes, but only on land”33 . As is well known, the ensuing Krüger telegram probably did more to inflame popular hatred of Germany in England than any other event before 191434 . It also brought a reprimand from the Queen – “I gave him a piece of my mind as to his dreadful telegram”, she 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34

Vice-Admiral Paul Hoffmann, diary, 26–28 October 1889: ibid., 106. Kaiser Wilhelm II, marginal comment on Bismarck, Gedanken und Erinnerungen, III, 143, Geheimes Staatsarchiv (GStA) Berlin, BPH 53/170; W. H. H. Waters, Potsdam and Doorn, London 1935, 7. See also Kaiser Wilhelm II to Waters, 24 April 1928: ibid., 95–97. Holstein to Hatzfeldt, 25 April 1896: Gerhard Ebel, (ed.), Botschafter Paul Graf von Hatzfeldt, Nachgelassene Papiere, 2 vols., Boppard-am-Rhein 1977, II, No. 680. Kaiser Wilhelm II to Queen Victoria, 2 February 1899, Buckle, Letters of Queen Victoria, III, 337. Eulenburg to Kaiser Wilhelm II, 26 January 1901: Eulenburgs Korrespondenz, III, No. 1443. Kaiser Wilhelm II to Eulenburg, 5 February 1901, ibid., III, No. 1444. Adolf Freiherr Marschall von Bieberstein, diary, 3 January 1896: Friedrich Thimme, Die KrügerDepesche, Europäische Gespräche, 1924, 212ff. See Lothar Reinermann, Der Kaiser in England. Wilhelm II. und sein Bild in der britischen Öffentlichkeit, Paderborn-Munich-Vienna-Zürich 2001, 145–179; Norman Rich, Friedrich von Holstein. Politics and Diplomacy in the Era of Bismarck and Wilhelm II, 2 vols, Cambridge 1965, II, 469.

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wrote in her diary – stressing her “pain and astonishment” at Wilhelm’s behaviour35 . The latter replied, pharisaically, that his anger had been directed not against England but against the international “mob of gold diggers” who had rebelled against the Queen. “Rebels against the will of H. Most Gracious Majesty the Queen are to me the most execrable beeings [sic] in the world & I was so incensed at the idea of your orders having been disobeyed [. . .] that I thought it necessary to show that publicly! [. . .] I was standing up for [. . .] obedience to a Sovereign whom I rever[e] & adore & whom to obey I thought paramount for her subjects. [. . .] It is simply nonsense that two great nations nearly related in kinsmanship & religion, should [. . .] view each other askance, with the rest of Europe as lookers on, what would the Duke of Wellington & old Blücher say if they saw this?”36 If the British had difficulty in seeing in such protestations of affinity more than a ploy to lull them into a false sense of security, this was above all because of the battleship-building programme which now became the Kaiser’s obsession37 . After a visit from her son at Schloss Friedrichshof in Kronberg in October 1896, the widowed Empress Frederick, as Vicky now called herself, warned her own mother of Wilhelm’s alarming plan to build a “Navy that shall beat the English”, his aim being to “outdo England – & wrest fr[om] her the position of supremacy she has in the world”38 . The only hope the Kaiser’s mother now saw of averting disaster lay in an Anglo-German alliance. In 1898, she urged on Wilhelm “the immense importance of an alliance between the 2 great Germanic & Protestant nations”. In her view, such an alliance would be “the most blessed thing that could happen not only for the 2 Countries but for the world and civilization!!” “For yourself, your own position, your own future, for Germany, I could conceive no more magnificent opportunity. Misunderstandings would be swept away – and peace secured!”, for with “the German Army and English Fleet combined, who would take up the gauntlet?”39 Wilhelm’s reply shows the extent to which he felt rebuffed in his own efforts to reach precisely such an “Alliance of the Anglo-Saxon race”, which in his view conformed to the aims pursued by “dear Papa & Grandpapa (Consort)”. “In the first 5 years of my reign I 35 36

37

38 39

Queen Victoria, diary, 5 January 1896, Royal Archives (RA) QVJ. Queen Victoria to Kaiser Wilhelm II, 5 January 1896, RA VIC/O45/55. Kaiser Wilhelm II to Queen Victoria, 8 January 1896, cited in Röhl (note 13), 792f. See Karl Alexander von Müller (ed.), Fürst Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Denkwürdigkeiten der Reichskanzlerzeit, Stuttgart-Berlin 1931, 154f. Eugen von Jagemann, report of 9 January 1895: Walter Peter Fuchs (ed.), Großherzog Friedrich I. von Baden und die Reichspolitik, 4 vols., Stuttgart 1969–80, III, No. 1407. On the origins of the German battleship programme, see Jonathan Steinberg, Yesterday’s Deterrent. Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet, London 1966, and in particular Volker R. Berghahn, Der Tirpitz-Plan. Genesis und Verfall einer innenpolitischen Krisenstrategie, Düsseldorf 1971. For further evidence of the Kaiser’s growing naval enthusiasm, see Röhl (note 13), 999–1039. The Empress Frederick to Queen Victoria, 24 October 1896: Röhl (note 13), 1023. The Empress Frederick to Kaiser Wilhelm II, 29 May 1898: ibid., 975f.

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tried to the very utmost of my powers [. . .] to elicit from L[ord] S[alisbury] a word implying the approval of the idea of a Anglo-German cooperation”, he wrote. “But it was utterly without any result.” Far from earning England’s gratitude, “I for the last 3 years have been abused, illtreated & a butt of any bad joke any musikhall singer or fishmonger or pressman thought fit to let fly at me!” As a result of “the treatment I have gone through at the hands of the British Government & notably of L[ord] S[alisbury], & the result of the experience I had in the 10 years of my reign of British Foreign Politics!”, he, Wilhelm, now felt “pushed back, illtreated & riled by Grt Britain & her Prime Minister”. He was still interested in an “Alliance of EnglandAmerika & Germany”, but only if the British proposal were made openly and formally, for Salisbury could not expect him, the German Kaiser, “to ‘slip in by the back door’ like a thief at night whom one does not like to own before ones richer friends”.40 Not only did Wilhelm throw away whatever slim chance there was of an AngloGerman alliance because of his sense of personal injury; he turned to Tsar Nicholas II and asked him for even more favourable terms as a reward for rejecting the British offer!41 Only a few months later, in the aftermath of the Anglo-French clash over Fashoda, the Kaiser, in the words of Lord Salisbury, expressed “his outspoken desire that there should be a war between England and France”, Russia’s ally42 . And indeed, Wilhelm now told his mother that the time had come for Britain “to settle the accounts with France on the whole globe”, and he assured her of Germany’s benevolent neutrality if Britain went to war against France alone, and her active military support if Russia became involved. “Should it come to war, I of course in private as Grandmama’s grandson will pray for the success of her arms with all my heart. [. . . ] Officially as head of the German Empire I would uphold a strict & benevolent neutrality. Should a second Power think fit to attack England from the rear, whilst it is fighting, I would act according to our arrangements made with [the British ambassador] Sir Frank Lascelles”43 . In consternation, both Queen Victoria and Salisbury asked Lascelles what Wilhelm might be referring to, since no such “arrangement” existed44 . In May 1899, stung once more by his grandmother’s refusal to invite him to England for her birthday45 , the Kaiser again accused Salisbury of grossly insulting be40

41

42 43 44 45

Kaiser Wilhelm II to his mother, 1 June 1898, draft, not sent, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (PA AA) Bonn, Preußen1 Nr. 1d Bd. 1: Norman Rich and M. H. Fisher (eds.), The Holstein Papers, 4 vols., Cambridge 1956–63, IV, No. 657. Kaiser Wilhelm II to Tsar Nicholas II, 30 May 1898: Walter Goetz (ed.), Briefe Wilhelms II. an den Zaren, Berlin 1920, 309ff. Copy in PA AA Bonn, Preußen 1 Nr. 1d Bd. 1. See also Kaiser Wilhelm II to Tsar Nicholas II, 18 August 1898: ibid. Also Hatzfeldt to Holstein, 31 May 1898: Holstein Papers, IV, No. 655; Holstein to Hatzfeldt, 11 June 1898: Hatzfeldt, Nachgelassene Papiere, II, No. 728. Salisbury to Queen Victoria, 3 June 1899: Buckle, Letters of Queen Victoria, III, 379. Kaiser Wilhelm II to his mother, 20 November 1898: Röhl (note 13), 985. Salisbury to Queen Victoria, 26 November 1898; Lascelles to Queen Victoria, 9 December 1898, ibid. Holstein to Hatzfeldt, Hatzfeldt, Nachgelassene Papiere, II, No. 757.

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haviour towards Germany. “Public opinion over here has been very much agitated & stirred up to its depths by the most unhappy way in which Lord Salisbury has treated Germany”, he complained to the Queen. “This way of treating Germany’s feelings & interests has come upon the People like an electric shock & has evoked the impression that Lord Salisbury cares for us no more than for Portugal, Chili [sic], or the Patagonians, & out of this impression the feeling has arisen that Germany was beeing [sic] despised by his government, & this has stung my subjects to the quick.” In a remarkable fit of self-pity the Kaiser lamented: “I of course have been silent as to what I have personally gone through these last six months, the shame & pain I have suffered, & how my heart has bled when to my despair I had to watch how the arduous work of years was destroyed – to make the two Nations understand eachother & respect their aspirations & wishes – by one blow by the highhanded & disdainful treatment of Ministers who have never come over to stay here & to study our institutions, & People, & hardly ever have given themselves the trouble to understand them. Lord Salisbury’s Government must learn to respect us as equals”46. The shocked Queen retorted: “I doubt whether any Sovereign ever wrote in such terms to another Sovereign, – & that Sovereign his own Grand Mother, about their Prime Minister”47 . With the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899, Wilhelm’s mother pointed out to him how wounding the anti-British cartoons appearing in Germany were to Queen Victoria in particular. “Her Mother was German, – her Husband was German, – her Sons in Law & Daughters in Law (nearly all) – her sympathies always were German. [. . .] You can imagine my feelings when I see her made the subject of gross and insulting caricatures sent as Post cards through the Imperial Post at Berlin!!”48 Surprisingly, and risking immense unpopularity at home, the Kaiser remained ostensibly pro-British throughout the crisis, twice sending plans of campaign drawn up by his General Staff to Windsor to facilitate a British victory over the Boers49 , and conferring the Order of the Black Eagle on Field Marshal Lord Roberts50 . For a brief moment, as public anglophobia in Germany reached unheard-of levels of hysteria, relations between the two dynasties improved. As his uncle Edward wrote in 1900: “You have no idea, my dear William, how all of us in England appreciate the loyal friendship which you manifest towards us on every possible occasion. We hope always to look upon Germany as 46

47 48 49 50

Kaiser Wilhelm II to Queen Victoria, 27 May 1899: Buckle, Letters of Queen Victoria, III, 375– 9. See Erich Eyck, Das Persönliche Regiment Wilhelms II. Politische Geschichte des Deutschen Kaiserreiches von 1890 bis 1914, Zürich 1948, 234. Queen Victoria to Kaiser Wilhelm II, 12 June 1899: Buckle, Letters of Queen Victoria, III, 381f. The Empress Frederick to Kaiser Wilhelm II, 19 March 1900, GStA Berlin, BPHA Rep. 52T Nr. 13. Kaiser Wilhelm II to Albert Edward Prince of Wales, 21 December 1899 and 4 February 1900, RA VIC/W60/26–28 and VIC/W60/66–67. Hermann von Eckardstein, Ten Years at the Court of St. James, London 1921, 196ff.

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our best friend as long as you are at the helm”51 . As we shall now see, that opinion was soon to change. ***** In the ten years of Edward VII’s reign, the Kaiser’s correspondence with his uncle was overshadowed by the bitter contest for supremacy between their two empires. Their letters to one another should not be taken at face value, as they were little more than carefully calculated moves in a lethal game of global poker. Wilhelm’s effusive assurances of friendship in particular need to be seen as a cynical ploy designed to dispel British suspicions of German hegemonial ambitions. From the beginning of Edward’s reign, the Kaiser sought to press his close ties with the Royal Family into the service of his pursuit of Weltmacht. In December 1901, for example, looking back on the year which had seen the death of Edward’s mother and that of his own mother, he wrote: “Thank God that I could be in time to see dear Grandmama once more, & to be near you & Aunts to help you in bearing the first effects of the awful blow! What a magnificent realm, she has left you, & what a fine position in the world! In fact the first ‘World Empire’ since the Roman Empire! [. . .] I gladly reciprocate all you say about the relations of our two Countries and our personal ones; they are of the same blood, & they have the same creed, & they belong to the Great T[e]utonic Race, which Heaven has intrusted with the Culture of the World; [. . .] that is I think grounds enough, to keep Peace & to foster mutual recognition & reciprocity in all what draws us together, & to sink everything, which could part us.” Edward should ignore the anglophobia of the German newspapers, Wilhelm urged. “The Press is awful on both sides, but here it has nothing to say, for I am the sole arbiter & master of German Foreign Policy & the Government & Country must follow me, even if I have to face the Musik!”52 Personal relations between the two monarchs deteriorated rapidly. The King’s decision to cancel his son’s visit to Berlin for the Kaiser’s birthday in 1902 on the grounds that George would be “liable to be insulted” by the German public53 , “deeply wounded” the German monarch, who spoke of “another Fashoda” and considered recalling his ambassador from London54 . Only months later, the Kaiser was aghast to learn of Edward VII’s decision to give Osborne House to the Royal Navy. “This is absolutely shameless and unheard of!”, he thundered. “To destroy in this way 2 years 51 52 53 54

Albert Edward Prince of Wales to Kaiser Wilhelm II, 7 March 1900, PA AA, England Nr. 78 geheim Bd. 3. Kaiser Wilhelm II to King Edward VII, 30 December 1901, RA VIC/X37/51, cited in part in Roderick R. McLean, Royalty and Diplomacy in Europa, 1890–1914, Cambridge 2001, 98. King Edward VII to Kaiser Wilhelm II, 15 January 1902, RA VIC/W42/58. Lascelles to Sir Francis Knollys, 17 January 1902, RA VIC/W42/61; Lascelles to Lansdowne, 22 and 24 January 1902, RA VIC/W42/64, Public Record Office (PRO) London, FO 800/129.

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after her death the Queen’s very own private property and the sacred place where she worked, where we spent our youth, and where she died!!”55 Wilhelm in turn insulted Edward by refusing to allow the young Crown Prince to visit England, accusing the King of inviting his son “behind his back” with the dual Machiavellian purpose, he claimed, first, “to divide father and son, [and] second, to secure (according to an old English recipe) a member of the family here, who could serve him as a spy and observer and whom he could use in his own interests just as he thought fit”56 . Edward then outraged the Kaiser by refusing to permit his son George to attend the wedding of the Crown Prince57 . Wilhelm told the British ambassador bluntly at the wedding: “I have nothing to say to your King, nor to your Minister, nor to anyone else in England. I don’t want to have anything to do with any of these gentlemen so long as they don’t behave in a better way towards me”58 . It was painfully clear that the personal animosity between uncle and nephew had become a grave factor in the worsening relationship between the two countries. As the German ambassador put it in 1905, the King’s attitude was characterised by “a profound ill-feeling [. . .] towards German policy and unfortunately towards the person of His Majesty the Kaiser in particular”59. And Edward now talked about the Kaiser “in terms which make one’s flesh creep”60 . He seemed to take a perverse delight in goading his oversensitive nephew into fits of fury. But, as mentioned earlier, an issue far more fundamental than Royal Family squabbles lay at the centre of the deepening Anglo-German antagonism, namely the Reich’s drive to become a Weltmacht both in Europe and in the wider world and Britain’s determination, often fronted by the King, to contain that grand ambition by forming a ring of Ententes around Germany to contain her and maintain the balance of power. As Bülow put it in a letter to the Kaiser in 1900, shortly before becoming Chancellor: “In Your Majesty’s reign the British are playing the same role as the French played under the Great Elector and the Austrians under the Great King. Handling the English is infinitely troublesome, infinitely difficult, and demands infinite patience and skill. But just as the Hohenzollern eagle drove the double-headed Austrian eagle from the field and clipped the wings of the Gallic cock, so with God’s help and Your Majesty’s strength and wisdom he will be successful against the English leopard”61 . 55 56 57 58

59 60 61

Kaiser Wilhelm II, marginal note on Coerper to Tirpitz, 27 December 1902: Roderick R. McLean, Monarchy and Diplomacy in Europe, Dissertation, University of Sussex 1996, 32. Heinrich von Tschirschky to Bülow, 22 August 1905: Bernhard Fürst von Bülow, Denkwürdigkeiten, 4 vols., Berlin 1930, II, 152f. See Sir Sidney Lee, King Edward VII. A Biography, 2 vols., London 1925–27, II, 355. Ladislaus Graf von Szögy´eny to Vienna, 14 June 1905: Fritz Fellner, Die Verstimmung zwischen Wilhelm II. und Eduard VII. im Sommer 1905: Mitteilungen des österreichischen Staatsarchivs, Vol. 11, 1958, 504. Paul Graf von Wolff-Metternich to Bülow, 14 August 1905, Große Politik der Europäischen Kabinette, XXII, No. 6870. Lansdowne to Lascelles, 25 September 1905, McLean, Royalty and Diplomacy, 123. Bülow to Kaiser Wilhelm II, 6 August 1900, GStA Berlin, BPHA Rep. 53J, Lit. B Nr. 16a.

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Once we grasp the idea that the Kaiser’s paramount aim was to establish German hegemony in Europe, we shall hold the key to understanding the many apparently contradictory elements of his policy towards England: the Tirpitz Navy was to act as a “power-political lever” to prise Britain out of her position as guarantor of the balance of power on the Continent; until the battlefleet was ready, the Royal Family, the government and public opinion in Britain would have to be lulled into believing that no such challenge was intended. None other than the future Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg revealed the consistent aim behind the Kaiser’s seemingly vacillating policy when he said in 1903: “His [Wilhelm’s] first and most fundamental idea was to break England’s position in the world in Germany’s favour; to achieve this he needs a fleet, to have a fleet he needs much money, and, since only a rich country can give him this, Germany must become wealthy”62 . Over and over again in the years leading up to war in 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm defined the keynote of his policy as uniting Europe under Germany’s leadership. To him, Britain’s balance of power policy was, as he put it, nothing more than the shameless “playing off of the Great Powers against each other to England’s advantage”63 . Naturally Edward VII was fully aware of the irreconcilable conflict between the Pax Britannica which existed and the Pax Germanica which the Kaiser sought to establish. The King realised the true purpose behind the Tirpitz navy and saw through his nephew’s protestations of friendship when he observed that if Britain gave in to German naval blackmail and bound herself to remain neutral in a continental war, as Wilhelm was demanding, “Germany would have the power of demolishing her enemies, one by one, with us sitting by with folded arms, & she would then probably proceed to attack us”64 . To Prince Louis of Battenberg, Edward referred to the Kaiser in 1905 as that “most energetic but tactless not to say dangerous Sovereign!”65 When Battenberg reported that Wilhelm had told him after his landing in Tangiers in 1905 that the world would eventually be divided between the Teutons and the Slavs, and that the German army knew “the road to Paris”, Edward’s patience snapped. “I consider the Tangiers incident was one of the most mischievous & uncalled for events which H.M. G[erman] E[mperor] has ever undertaken. It was a gratuitous insult to 2 Countries. [. . .] It was a regular case of ‘Bombastes Furioso’! I suppose G[erman] E[mperor] will never find out as he will never be told how ridiculous he makes himself. [. . .] I have tried to get on with him & shall nominally do my 62 63

64 65

See Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.), Das Tagebuch der Baronin Spitzemberg, Göttingen 1960, 428. Kaiser Wilhelm II to Archduke Franz Ferdinand, 9 December 1912, printed in John C. G. Röhl, An der Schwelle zum Weltkrieg. Eine Dokumentation über den ‘Kriegsrat’ vom 8. Dezember 1912: Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen (1977), Document No. 8. See R. A. Kann, Emperor William II and Archduke Francis Ferdinand in their Correspondence: American Historical Review 57 (1952), 344f. Also R. A. Kann, Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand. Studien, Munich 1967, 74f. Knollys to Hardinge 13 November 1909: McLean (note 52), 208. King Edward VII to Prince Louis of Battenberg, 15 July 1905: McLean (note 52), 119.

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best till the end – but trust him – never. He is utterly false & the bitterest foe that E[ngland] possesses!”66 ***** In July 1914, when he, his General Staff and the men in the Wilhelmstrasse had decided to stake everything on a quick military victory over France and Russia in a continental war, Wilhelm sent his brother Prince Heinrich on a secret mission to London to speak personally to King George V. Heinrich’s brief was to ascertain whether Britain would indeed, as hoped, stay out of the impending war. He met George in Buckingham Palace on Sunday morning, 26 July – their meeting lasted all of six minutes – and reported to Wilhelm that the King had assured him: “We shall try all we can to stay out of this and shall stay neutral.”67 The effect of this message was disastrous, for the Kaiser, whose resolve had begun to waver, now brushed aside warnings of likely British intervention with the words: “I have the word of a King and that is enough for me.”68 When, just a few days later, it became apparent that Britain would not stay neutral after all, the Kaiser’s emotional turmoil took on psychopathological forms. In savage marginal comments on the official documents he ranted: “England, Russia and France have agreed among themselves [. . .] to take the Austro-Serbian conflict for an excuse for waging a war of extermination against us. [. . .] That is the real naked situation in nuce, which, slowly and cleverly set going, certainly by Edward VII, has been carried on, and systematically built up by disowned conferences between England and Paris and St. Petersburg; finally brought to a conclusion by George V and set to work. [. . .] The net has been suddenly thrown over our head, and England sneeringly reaps the most brilliant success of her persistently prosecuted purely anti-German world-policy, against which we have proved ourselves helpless. [. . .] A great achievement, which arouses the admiration even of him who is to be destroyed as its result! Edward VII is stronger after his death than am I who am still alive!”69

66 67 68 69

King Edward VII to Prince Louis of Battenberg, 15 April 1905: ibid., 114f. Prince Heinrich to Kaiser Wilhelm II., 28. July 1914: Imanuel Geiss (ed.), Julikrise und Kriegsausbruch 1914, 2 vols., Hanover 1963–64, II, No. 594. Alfred von Tirpitz, Deutsche Ohnmachtspolitik im Weltkrieg, Hamburg-Berlin 1926, 2–4. Kaiser Wilhelm II, marginal comment on Pourtal`es to Jagow, 30 July 1914: Imanuel Geiss (ed.), July 1914. The Outbreak of the First World War: Selected Documents, London 1967, No. 135.

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The Hessens and the British Royals The post-World War I experiences of European royals is an under-researched topic1 . The most sensitive part of this history, for both British and German princes and their supporters, concerns the inflammatory allegations surrounding British Royals and National Socialist leaders. The Hessens would figure in because they were related to the British Royals, and also closely connected to an array of high ranking Nazi leaders. Philipp von Hessen, for example, was governor (Oberpräsident) of the province of Hessen-Nassau and had closes ties to both Hitler and Göring. Philipp von Hessen met with George Duke of Kent on several occasions in 1939, where the two princes discussed the dire international situation and worked to avert war. Such contact – such extra-diplomatic communication on the part of Hitler, Chamberlain, and King George VI – was built upon generations of interfamily contact between the British Royals and the Hessens, as well as a broader common culture long cultivated by European royals. Several points about the Hessens and the British Royals over the past several centuries should be underscored at the outset. First, the relationship has been largely harmonious but extremely complicated. Second, although allies in an effort to move Germany and the European Continent in a more liberal direction, they were in many ways thwarted by the Hohenzollern, who seized control of Germany and dominated other princely families until the collapse of the imperial system. And third, interfamily ties remained exceedingly strong into the twentieth century, and continue to be so up to the present. After World War II, the British Royals and the Hessens attempted to be more private about their relationships, but they gradually grew more open. One can track the changes over time: from 1947 and the exclusion of many of Prince Philip’s Hessen family members from his wedding to Princess Elizabeth; to 1953, when they were allowed to attend the coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey; and more recently, in 2004, when the Duke of Edinburgh began speaking on the record about his German family members’ involvement with National Socialism. This should not obscure the larger point: there is much that we do not know about the relationship 1

In light of my recent book, Royals and the Reich: The Prince von Hessen in Nazi Germany, I was asked to expand the scope of my discussion chronologically and to discuss the Hessens and the British Royals in the years after 1914 as well – even though this transgresses the chronological boundaries of this volume. See: Jonathan Petropoulos, Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany. New York 2006.

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between the British Royals and the Hessens in the contemporary period. Family members and their agents have protected secrets for decades. They continue to do so today, although in most cases perhaps not with the same zeal as their predecessors. What kind of questions can one ask about the subject – the Hessens and the British Royal Family? Myriad, of course, as evinced by the essays in this volume, but six questions stand out and shed light on the complex relationships over the centuries: 1) Who were the key figures who provided points of contact between the families? 2) How did they view themselves and define themselves in terms of nationality? 3) What kind of influence did the British Royals and the Hessens have on each other and on society more generally? 4) What was the relative power of the families, and how did they see their function in the political and social life of their respective nations? 5) What does the study of the two families tell us about the social history of the times? And finally, 6) What don’t we know? In order to answer the first question about the key figures linking the families, one must understand the genealogies of the families: how there were points of connection but also important distinctions. This is not quite as simple as it may appear on first glance. During the period in question, the Hessens, for example, were not a singular or unified family. There were actually three branches: the older, Hesse-Kassel line, which ruled the principality (or Landgrafschaft) until 1866; the Hesse-Darmstadt line, which stood as a ruling family of the Grand Duchy until 1918; and the less prestigious Hesse-Philippsthal-Barchfeld branch, which is sometimes conceived as a branch of the Hesse-Kassel line2 . The first two branches united in 1997 as a result of the last prince and princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, who were childless, adopting the current head of the House of Hesse-Kassel, Landgrave Moritz. This took place in 1960, and the death of Margaret (“Peg”) von Hessen-Darmstadt in 1997 (Ludwig died in 1968) left Landgrave Moritz as the head of both houses. For the period in question – 1760 to 1914 (and the decades that followed) – the different branches of the Hessen family regarded themselves as distinct, but inter-related. Of course, among princes, to be a cousin is regarded as a significant connection – a relationship to be nurtured (and one governed by fairly elaborate conventions – including what appears to today’s observers as intimate forms of address in letters – including the use of Christian names and salutations such as “dearest . . . ”). This essay examines both the Hesse-Darmstadts and the Hesse-Kassels, slipping back and forth between the two quite freely. I am not aware of any significant relationships between members of the Phillippsthal-Barchfeld branch and the British Royal Family. Regarding the key individuals who provided the point of contact between the British Royals and the Hessen families, one would start with Grand Duchess Alice von Hessen und bei Rhein (1843–78), the third child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. She married Prince Ludwig IV von Hessen-Darmstadt (1837–92) in 1862 and 2

Note that there are other Nebenlinien of the House of Hessen; most often conceived as subsidiary branches of either the Kassel or Darmstadt lines. See Hans Philippi, Das Haus Hessen. Ein europäisches Fürstengeschlecht, Kassel 1983.

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was an effective ambassador between the two families, not to mention a matriarch of a large and influential family (Hesse-Darmstadt-Battenberg), and widely regarded as the Landesmutter of her adopted German home. Alice impressed nearly everyone she encountered: as her cousin by marriage Prince Alexander (future King of Bulgaria) wrote to his sister, Marie, Empress of Russia, after first meeting Alice in the early 1860s, “She is a funny little woman, full of charm [. . . ] very cultured, and very talented”3 . Alice worked assiduously to advance a liberal agenda in her adopted land, and enjoyed many triumphs in the realm of social services and education reform. She remained close to her mother and brother, who visited her in Darmstadt on numerous occasions; the Prince of Wales in particular preferred the more relaxed atmosphere of Darmstadt to the formality and bustle of Berlin/Potsdam, and he was not alone in this regard among British Royals4 . As Lord Louis Mountbatten of Burma said, summing up the accomplishments of his grandmother, Alice was “the most important among Queen Victoria’s important children”5 . Alice and Ludwig’s children were also to play a significant role in mediating relations between the two families. In particular, their eldest daughter Victoria (1863– 1884), who married Prince Louis of Battenberg (1954–1921). The latter, of course, became First Lord of the Admiralty from 1912 to 1914. As Matthew Seligmann shows in his chapter, patronage from the British Royal Family was crucial to his success, starting with Queen Victoria and her son, who became Edward VII (Louis had a vigorous correspondence with both). Yet Prince Louis had the talent and drive to take advantage of the opportunity. He had learned to avoid publicity about his German origins, especially after 1904 with the escalation of the Anglo-German naval rivalry. Of course, there was little the prince could do after the outbreak of war in 1914, and he was “hounded out of the Admiralty because of his German origins [. . . ]”6 . Recent research has shown that German espionage initiatives against the British Navy during World War I were limited both in scope and results, but the British sensed a greater threat and took corresponding steps: this included expanding the intelligence services7 . But it was the anti-German atmosphere that made Prince Louis’ command untenable. As a result of the 1917 name changes, Prince Louis converted his name to Mountbatten and King George V eventually gave him the very English sounding title, the 1st Marquess of Milford Haven. The prince, with his eventful life, undoubtedly contributed to the linkages between the two families.

3 4 5

6 7

Meriel Buchanan, Queen Victoria’s Relations, London 1954, 49. Ibid., 52. Eckhart G. Franz, Victorias Schwester in Darmstadt. Großherzogin Alice von Hessen und bei Rhein: Victoria Kaiserin Friedrich (1840–1901). Mission und Schicksal einer englischen Prinzessin in Deutschland, ed. Rainer von Hessen, Frankfurt 2002, 80. The German reads “die Bedeutendste unter Königin Victorias bedeutendsten Kindern.” More generally, see Franz (note 5). Jerrold Packard, Victoria’s Daughters, New York 1998, 328. Thomas Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser. German Covert Operations in Great Britain during the First World War Era, London 2005.

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The youngest of Queen Victoria’s and Prince Albert’s children, Beatrice (1857– 1944), married Prince Henry of Battenberg (1858–96) – known as Liko. They resided in England, and he served as a Colonel in the British Army before becoming Governor of Carisbrooke Castle and the Isle of Wight. Queen Victoria had decided that her youngest child should remain with her – as one writer said, as “the crutch of her old age” – and the Battenberg Prince was by-and-large turned into an Englishman8 . But as a Hessen who served as a member of the British monarch’s court, Liko contributed in his own way to the intertwined histories of the two families. Finally, there is Victoria, Empress Friedrich (1840–1901), the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The Princess Royal married Hohenzollern Crown Prince Friedrich in what was both a love match and a dynastic marriage. They were wed at St. James’s Palace in 1858. Kaiserin Friedrich, as she came to be known, entered the Hesse-Kassel family, one might say, through the back-door. Or, alternatively, one might view it the other way around and say that the Hessens joined her entourage. Empress Friedrich’s youngest daughter, Margarethe (Mossy), married Prince Friedrich Karl von Hessen-Kassel (Fischy) in 1893. Empress Friedrich had an especially close relationship with Mossy and Fischy: the former was one of her three younger children who shared her anglophile tendencies (as compared to the elder three, including Wilhelm). She regarded Friedrich Karl as her favorite son-in-law and they spent considerable time together at Schloss Friedrichshof in Kronberg near Frankfurt. Upon her death Empress Friedrich left Mossy and Fischy her cherished castle, which was also a memorial to her husband, who had shared her liberal worldview. Princely genealogy always presents certain challenges: in this case, it is important to stress that Empress Friedrich was not a Hessen. She was a member of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha dynasty that had married into the Hohenzollern family. Yet if anything, Vicky felt herself an English princess (as John Röhl has written, she remained so close to her mother that the confidences she shared about naval policy, among other topics, may have constituted treason). But yet, the Kaiserin felt herself German as well, and in this regard, she would have acknowledged a link to the Hessens. First, she was a cousin, and part of the pan-European royal family (especially among the Protestant lands of northern Europe). The Hessens and the British Royals connected in numerous ways genealogically (see the Hesse-Windsor family tree). As John WheelerBennett noted about her grandson, Prince Philipp von Hessen (1896–1980), “He had, thus, the curious distinction of being, on his father’s side, a great-great-great grandson of George II of England, and also of George III on his mother’s side”9 . Beyond the blood relations, Empress Friedrich’s close ties to the Hessens through her daughter, when combined with her bequeathing them Friedrichshof (and also her art and book collections, and much of her private archive objects of considerable interest to certain British royals), helped foster closer relations between the two families.

8 9

Packard (note 6), 111. John Wheeler-Bennett, King George VI. His Life and Reign, London 1958, 396.

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The Hessen-Darmstadts, however, were generally closer to the British Royals than their cousins in Kassel. Of course, the current Queen Elizabeth married a descendent of the Hessen-Darmstadt/Battenberg family in Prince Philip. But even before this, the Hesse-Darmstadt were on more intimate terms with their English relations. For example, Ernst Ludwig von Hessen-Darmstadt, whose first wife, Victoria Melita (1876–1936), was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and stemmed from the SaxeCoburg and Gotha family (and hence the British Royals), refused to fight against the British in World War I and instead devoted himself largely to hospital work and representational duties (although this aversion to military service was also due, in part, to his artistic nature)10 . Conversely, Friedrich Karl von Hessen-Kassel and his sons pursued active military careers, which in several instances entailed fighting against British forces. Friedrich Karl himself volunteered for active service in 1914 and led the 81st Infantry Regiment into Belgium, whose neutrality was being defended by the British. He was wounded by French troops early in World War I, but one of his sons, Maximilian was killed by a British cavalry regiment near the French-Belgian border in November 1914 (the British cared for him before his death and then took special measures to inform the family and eventually return the body)11 . As compared to their cousins in Darmstadt, the Hesse-Kassels appeared not to have had any compunction about fighting the British. To look at later periods, if one examines the documents regarding George VI’s coronation in 1937 that are in the Mountbatten Papers at the University of Southampton – one sees that Georg-Donatus von Hessen-Darmstadt (son of Ernst Ludwig) and his wife C´ecile were in attendance (and staying at Buckingham Palace), but that neither the Head of the House of Hesse-Kassel, Landgrave Friedrich Karl and his wife Margarethe, nor his heir Philipp von Hessen, made the trip. Later, Prince Christoph von Hessen would serve as a Luftwaffe officer on the French coast as planes from his squadron attacked Britain. Luftwaffe targets in the fall of 1940 included Buckingham Palace, and Christoph may have played a role in planning such missions (he certainly was not aboard any plane as some authors have maintained). The fact remains that Christoph was fighting against the British – and in some cases, against family members: in June 1943, Christoph was stationed in Sicily just miles from his brother-in-law, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark (later Duke of Edinburgh), who was serving aboard the Royal Navy frigate HMS Valiant 12. That is not to say that the Hesse-Kassels and the British Royals did not have a more normal relationship among cousins – they did and sometimes more – but the Hesse-Darmstadts emerged

10

11 12

David Duff and Jerrold Packard stress the anglophile tendencies as the reason for Ernst-Ludwig’s decision not to lead troops against the British, but it should be noted that he would inspect troops and often wore a General’s uniform. See David Duff, Hessian Tapestry, London 1967, 348; Packard (note 6), 326. Wolfgang von Hessen, Aufzeichnungen, Kronberg 1986, 43–46, 55–67. Petropoulos (note 1), 248.

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as comparable to Hanover, Hohenzollern and Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, as the German princely houses with the strongest links to the British Royals. A second question concerns identity. How did they define themselves in terms of nationality? The answer would be, as primarily English-German and GermanEnglish. Yes, both families felt themselves part of a trans-European caste, and both felt closely related also to the ruling families of Denmark, Russia, and Greece. But if one were to ask the multi-national royal families of Britain and Hessen about their secondary national background, they would say German and English respectively. As Queen Victoria wrote in 1861, “My husband and my mother were German. . . [and her maiden name was Hannover]. I wish that the German element in our beloved home was more highly honored and propagated”13 . The Germanness of the British Royals dissipated very slowly, even with the name changes of 1917 and the public relations machinations that accompanied the act. King Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, spent months at a time in Germany as a young man working on his language skills and even called German his Muttersprache (no doubt, exaggerating the point)14 . Both he and his younger brother, the Duke of Kent, made frequent trips to Germany and Austria until the late-1930s. Nearly all members of the Hessen families spoke excellent English. Even the Nazi Princes von Hessen continued to write to family members in English during the Third Reich, using colloquial expressions with a distinctly upper-crust tone. The Hessen princes confined themselves to German later in the war, as communication in the language of the enemy would only exacerbate suspicion about the internationally connected princely family. Prince Christoph von Hessen, who directed a signals intelligence agency for Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, advised family members to take caution: to speak outdoors when possible and to expect that they were being watched. Yet up until 1942 or 1943, the Hessens corresponded with one another in both English and German, often with some odd but charming mixture of the two. Beyond issues of national identity, both the British and Hessen families – at least in the nineteenth and early twentieth century - viewed themselves as liberal and progressive in terms of their political views. As discussed elsewhere in this volume, Prince Albert played a crucial role among European royals, as he tried to propagate his liberal views among the courts of the Continent. He inspired his children to continue this mission; in particular, his eldest daughter Victoria, who sought to liberalize the Prussian royals, and Princess Alice, who pursued a similar agenda in the more fallow grounds in and around Darmstadt. Their political program included a deep regard for 13

14

Niall Ferguson, Das Haus Sachsen-Coburg und die europäische Politik des 19. Jahrhunderts: Victoria Kaiserin Friedrich, ed. Rainer von Hessen, Frankfurt 2002, 38. The German reads, “Meine Gatte und meine Mutter waren Deutsche. . . . Ich wünsche, dass das deutsche Element in unserem geliebten Heim mehr denn je verehrt und weitergeführt wird.” Queen Victoria felt more acutely German than did her successor, Edward VII and the subsequent British monarchs, but the point above about the British Royal family’s Anglo-German identity remains valid. For the Duke of Windsor’s remark about German as his “Muttersprache,”see James Fox, Oddest Couple in: Vanity Fair (August 2003), 288.

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parliamentary government, a belief in the transformative power of education and a concern for many who suffered hardship and disadvantages (the poor, the sick, and women, among others). The Hesse-Darmstadts, in particular, shared this fundamentally liberal outlook. It was not just most members of the princely family, but also the population of the area where they had long ruled, that had such strong liberal tendencies. In 1862, for example, the liberal Progress Party (Fortschrittspartei) won a majority in the Darmstadt assembly (Landtag), and they would remain the dominant party there for years to come15 . The Hesse-Kassels offer a more complex case. Most family members from the eighteenth century onwards pursued military careers (often in the Danish and later in the Prussian-German armies), and many admired so-called Prussian virtues. They were also closely inter-related with the Prussians. Friedrich Karl’s mother, for example, was a Prussian princess and niece of Wilhelm II. But as a result of backing Austria in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the Hesse-Kassels were stripped of their rights to the succession of the electoral throne and denuded of considerable property. The Hesse-Kassels’ harsh treatment at the hands of Bismarck and Wilhelm I contributed to ambivalent feelings about the Hohenzollern. While maintaining family ties and not wanting to topple the dynasty, they were critical of their Prussian relations in many respects. They were soured by Wilhelm II’s treatment of his mother and frequently annoyed by his imperious manner. Mossy and Fischy believed they were providing their sons with a liberal and even anglophile education – at odds with the Kaiser’s predilections. But the Hesse-Kassels remained obedient to the Emperor and many close individual relationships flourished between the families. The Kaiser’s fourth son, Prince August Wilhelm, for example, was very close to Prince Philipp von Hessen: the two effectively spent their teenage years together in Potsdam and then joined together to support Hitler16 . Later Prince Auwi took refuge with the Hessens at Friedrichshof (the Americans arrested him there at war’s end). One striking irony is that despite the liberal tendencies among the Hessens in the nineteenth century, many members from both the Kassel and Darmstadt branches would later support Hitler and join the National Socialist Party. Among the HesseKassels, every adult member alive in the 1930s joined the Nazi Party or an affiliated organization, as did most of the Hesse-Darmstadts. Members of the Hesse-Kassel family were the first to join the Party, and most of the Hesse-Darmstadt princes and princesses joined in 1937 through a special act approved by Hitler personally17 . There was a decidedly National Socialist tenor to public life for both branches of the family: the Hesse-Kassels would fly the swastika flag from their castles and the funeral procession in Darmstadt that followed in the wake of the tragic airplane accident in 1937 (which killed five Hesse-Darmstadt family members, including C´ecile who was 15 16 17

Franz (note 5), 85–86. Lothar Machtan, Der Kaisersohn bei Hitler, Hamburg 2006. Petropoulos (note 1), 93–94.

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pregnant), featured a column of German princes in Nazi uniforms, including Prince Christoph in his black SS garb, and a crowd giving the Hitler salute. Up until the Great War, the majority of Hessens subscribed to the liberal agenda so ably advocated by Prince Albert. It is a testament to the trauma induced by World War I and the princes’ disaffection from the Weimar Republic that so many joined the Nazi party. A third question, or series of questions, concerns the mutual influence that the British Royals and the Hessens had on each other. As noted above, the British and the Hesse-Darmstadts were fundamentally on the same side – trying to liberalize Europe. The dominant narrative regarding Prince Albert – the key figure in many respects – is that he was well-intentioned, effective in many ways, but ultimately unable to realize his goals for the Continent. His own life was cut short – with devastating consequences – and his eldest daughter Victoria had the misfortune to have a longlived conservative father-in-law and a sick liberal husband who ruled Germany for only 99 days. While there is considerable merit in this interpretation – her son Wilhelm II’s illiberal views ultimately prevailed as he helped push Europe over the brink – the influence of the British Royals and the Hesse-Darmstadts was far from negligible. Prince Albert’s daughters, Victoria and Alice, were able to accomplish a great deal as they advanced the liberal agenda. Alice, who visited an English field hospital during the Crimean War and subsequently became acquainted with Florence Nightingale, had tremendous influence on the health care system of Darmstadt. To this day, in Darmstadt, there is the Alice Hospital and the Alice Schwesternschaft, as well as the Alice Verein für Krankenpflege. Her other main area of social engagement concerned women’s issues – in particular, education and work opportunities18 . She was the patron of the Alice-Verein für Frauenbildung and helped create the standing Alicebazaars where women would sell handicrafts that they had made. Her influence, then, was considerable, and to this day, there is a monument to her by the Jugendstil sculptor Ludwig Habich in the pedestrian zone of Darmstadt19 . Crown Princess Victoria (Empress Friedrich) had a similar – if not greater influence – in terms of her philanthropic work and progressive social views. There is a rich historiography on this subject, so I will not go into detail here20 . The Hessens (both the Darmstadter and the Kassels) were also at the heart of the socalled Rumpenheim Clique (a pejorative moniker favored by those in the entourage of the Kaiser), which was centered at the Hesse-Kassel Schloss Rumpenheim on the Main River east of Frankfurt. This group of liberal-minded princes met for decades, and included representatives of the royal families of Denmark, England, Russia, Greece, as well as the Battenberg and Hessen families. As Foreign Office State Secretary (and

18 19 20

Franz (note 5), 89. Ibid., 80. See, for example, Hannah Pakula, An Uncommon Woman. The Empress Frederick, London 1996; Patricia Kollander, Frederick III. Germany’s Liberal Emperor, Westport 1995; and Hessen (note 13).

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future Chancellor) Prince Bernhard von Bülow noted, “Almost the entire EnglishBattenberg-Hessen-Danish-etc. cousins agitate in silence against His Majesty”21 . It is difficult to gauge the political significance of the clique – other than they were viewed as a threat by both Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II, and many of their advisers. But they represented the aspirations of many liberal elites, who hoped that a united Germany might look more like Britain. They also represented various families’ resentments against the Hohenzollern: most notably, the Danish royal family was still smarting after losing Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia in 1864–65 (two-fifths of the kingdom), and the Hessens and Hannover would not forget their losses in 1866. Because Christian IX of Denmark (1818–1906) had married Luise von Hessen-Kassel (1817– 98) in 1842, members of these two families felt a sense of unity, and bonded over their mistreatment at the hands of the Prussians. One of their six children would marry into the British Royal Family (Alexandra married the future Edward VII), exacerbating the Hohenzollerns’ anxiety, but Christian IX and Luise’s other children would also marry into dynasties of varying political orientation, including the conservative Romanov family, invalidating the notion of an across-the-board liberal opposition. One observer has regarded the Rumpenheim Clique as “a family gathering of victims of Prussian politics”, a perspective that has much validity22. Hopes for more harmonious Anglo-German relations can also be seen in another Schloss: Empress Friedrich’s home, Friedrichshof, which she completed in 1893, some five years after her husband’s death. The Schloss, meant to memorialize Kaiser Friedrich III (and the couple’s tragically thwarted aspirations), was the architectural embodiment of an Anglo-German rapprochement. As Jerrold Packard noted, “In its sixteenth-century character, Vicky’s house winningly fused the architecture of her English heritage with the local areas traditional half-timber Rhenish style”23 . One could also talk of its English garden and the trees planted on the elegant grounds by her mother, Queen Victoria. (Capability Brown brought to the Continent). Previously, Empress Friedrich’s sister, Grand Duchess Alice, had used funds from Queen Victoria to construct the Neue Palais in Darmstadt. As she acknowledged to her mother, “the house and all its arrangements being so English”, the Neue Palais provided a kind of link between the British and German families24. Friedrichshof, however, was much more consciously a symbol of trans-national concord25 . One might also mention the host of modern amenities that Empress Friedrich had installed: equipped with electricity (and its own power plant), as well as modern plumbing, these features had a decidedly English cast – Crystal Palace in Kronberg, if you will. With Kaiser Wilhelm a frequent guest there, and less frequently, King Edward VII (who nonetheless 21

22 23 24 25

John C.G. Röhl, Kritiker der persönlichen Monarchie Wilhelms II in: Hessen (note 13), 211. The German reads, “Fast die ganze englisch-battenbergisch-hessisch-dänische usw. Cousinage wühlt im Stillen gegen Seine Majestät.” Rainer von Hessen to author, 21 September 2006. Packard (note 6), 290–91. Buchanan (note 3), 55. Duff (note 10), 363.

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visited in 1901, a few weeks after he ascended to the throne), Friedrichshof served as a meeting place for a host of German and British Royals in the period before 191426. Fourth, there is the question of power. This might be another way of thinking of the question posed by Karina Urbach, who asked “how did both sides see their function in the political and social life of their respective nations?” The United Kingdom, as recognized by many contemporaries, stood supreme as a world power for much of the period covered by this volume. Empress Friedrich, while she was still the Crown Princess, wrote her son Wilhelm in 1878 and maintained that Great Britain was “the greatest and most powerful Empire in the world”27 . One could devote entire conferences to the subject of the British monarch’s power; suffice to say that it was considerable if, in many respects, unofficial. Britain, to be sure, as a constitutional monarchy, limited the power of the sovereign (as compared to the more direct control exercised by some German princes up until 1871 and the Kaiser in a unified Germany). Queen Victoria and her successors appeared to embrace the notion of a limited monarchy. Perhaps these constraints were easier to accept because she and her family stood at the first level of European royalty28 . The comparable family in Germany after 1871 would have been the Preußen (Hohenzollern). The Hessens (both Kassel and Darmstadt) were a rung down. One could say that the Hessen-Darmstadts were at a somewhat higher level than the Kassels because the Darmstadts remained a ruling family, at least nominally, until 1918. But the Kassels still had standing among European royals – and indeed their position was to grow immensely because of the link to Empress Friedrich (and later her son, Emperor Wilhelm II). But they had been effectively disempowered in 1866. Their inability to liberalize the Hohenzollern and Germany more generally in a significant way served as a testament to their weakness. Wilhelm II, who rarely minced words, commented on the state of affairs when he was asked to approve the marriage of his younger sister, Margarethe, to Friedrich Karl von Hessen. He responded, that the sister of the German emperor should not marry a “minor prince” (especially one he regarded as “too thin and too solemn”). Jerrold Packard noted tellingly, “Willy threatened to veto the match, but eventually relented, graciously telling his sister she could go ahead because she was so unimportant herself”29 . Moving into the twentieth century, the Hessens, I believe, largely comprehended that they had been marginalized and humiliated. Empress Friedrich, before her death in 1901, had been quite outspoken that she had been the victim of a “terror campaign” 26 27

28

29

Packard (note 6), 309. Rainer von Hessen, Zur Einführung: Hessen (note 13), 15. He quotes John C.G. Röhl, Wilhelm II. Die Jugend des Kaisers, 1859–1888, Munich 1993, 282. The German reads, “das größte und mächtigste Reich der Welt.” See the quote from Friedrich von Holstein, “In England, zum Beispiel, wo die Königin keine eigentlicheMacht besitze, sei dieselbe gleichwohlungemein einflussreichund werde auch allgemein geliebt und verehrt,” in: Hessen(note 27), 21. Packard (note 6), 295.

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undertaken by her son30 . The manner in which Prince Friedrich Karl jumped at the opportunity to become King of Finland in 1918, and the eagerness of his son, Prince Philipp von Hessen, to wield power (he accepted Goering’s offer to become governor – Oberpräsident – of Hessen-Nassau in 1933), suggest an effort to recover some of the family’s public influence. I would argue that the Hessens – both the Kassels and the Darmstadter – were caught in between a power struggle between the British and German Royal Families. While the British, led by Prince Consort Albert, wanted to liberarlize Germany (and all of Europe), the Prussians resisted, and indeed, subscribed to a kind of conspiracy theory (or what Rainer von Hessen has called “Verschwörungsängste”), where they felt besieged by liberal princes (including the Coburgs)31 . Kaiser Wilhelm II, in particular, feared that the Hesse-Darmstadts were a kind of Trojan horse, and took steps to defend what he thought were his interests. Some writers have seen the Kaiser’s antiHessen animus as primarily about family pride: Packard wrote about “almost all the Hohenzollern [who] loathed the very idea of the Battenbergs getting above themselves [when writing about Beatrice marrying Heinrich]”32 . But there was also an important political dimension: for the Hohenzollern to rule a unified Germany: the power of the other princes had to be diminished. The Hohenzollern won most of the major political battles in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (while giving way in certain skirmishes). Queen Victoria had written her daughter Victoria in 1873, noting that she accepted German unification, “but not the overthrowing of other princes and the confiscation of their private property and their castles” – adding an emphatic, “no, that was and is difficult to accept!”33 In the case of the Hesse-Kassels’ property and political power, the British Queen was unable to exert much influence on the Prussians. Fifth, What does the study of the two families tell us about the social history of the times? For starters, it provides insight into the history of courtship and matchmaking. How it was done: rules, strategies and etiquette. Although there is a rich popular literature exploring these subjects, academic historians have devoted less time to such matters. At a conference on Empress Friedrich held in Kronburg in 2001, Niall Ferguson noted, “it is not too long ago that the proponents of ‘social history’ almost completely banished [royals and princes] from German history”34. The social history of these families offers rich material to study a variety of topics, including the issue of cultural transfer between nations. Lamar Cecil, in an article exploring Wilhelm II’s anti-English animus, noted that the Kaiser nonetheless admired English country houses and the style of the English upper-classes. He quotes Wilhelm as telling the 30 31 32 33 34

Röhl (note 21), 215. Hessen (note 27), 15. Packard (note 6), 231. Ferguson (note 13), 39. Ferguson (note 13), 28. The German reads, “Es ist noch nicht allzu lange her, dass die Verfechter einer ‘Gesellschaftsgeschichte’ sie [die Monarchen und Fürsten] fast vollständig aus der deutschen Geschichte verbannt haben.”

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wife of an English diplomat, “Ask your smart London friends to come here. Let them teach my court ladies how to do their hair and put on their clothes”35 . Wilhelm tried, albeit with limited success, to add glamour and sophistication to his own court. A sixth and final question would be: What don’t we know? Well, there are still huge gaps in our understanding of the relationship between the Hessens (both the Kassels and the Darmstadter) and the British Royals. Yes, we know that the Hessens frequently visited England: Margarethe, for example, made the trip to the United Kingdom almost every summer before World War I and, along with her sister, Sophie of Greece (and several of their children), was in London in June and July 1914 as the Balkans Crisis reached its apogee. They made it back to Germany on one of the last ships before the outbreak of war in an exciting saga. This story has been told in various ways, including by her son Wolfgang whose memoirs were published privately by the family. But there is much more about the Windsor-Hessen relationship that we don’t know. Indeed, for the generation alive in the 1930s and 1940s, the nature and extent of their contact remains murky. For example, Prince Philipp von Hessen and his younger brother, Prince Christoph, who both held important positions in the German state during the Third Reich, continued to interact with their English cousins. George, Duke of Kent, for example, traveled to Germany on many occasions in the 1930s (he had a brother-in-law – Count Törring-Jettenbach – who lived in Munich, and would visit often with his wife Marina). We also know that the Duke of Kent met with Philipp von Hessen in Rome in January 1939 and in Florence (at a wedding) in July 1939, and that they discussed a range of political topics, including what actions would precipitate a war between their two countries. But so many questions remain: Where else? To what ends? Considering that all three had some degree of influence with those in government/ruling circles, any contact that they had with one another has considerable historical significance. The Duke of Kent’s life remains, shall one say, under-researched36 . The main challenge for scholars is inadequate documentation. To phrase the question most succinctly, where are his papers? While conducting research at the Royal Archives, I requested information concerning the Duke of Kent’s trips to the Continent: to see his cousin and brother-in-law Paul in Yugoslavia and to visit his brother-in-law TörringJettenbach in Munich. He also evidently had important meetings in Poland in the 1930s and there were rumors that he was under consideration to become monarch in Poland37 . I doubt that this was realistic, but it would be important to know more about his involvement in European affairs prior to his death in 1942. The absence of a definitive biography has given rise to an array of theories, including the notion that 35

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Lamar Cecil, History as Family Chronicle. Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Dynastic Roots of the Anglo-German Antagonism: Kaiser Wilhelm II. New Interpretations. The Corfu Papers, ed. John C.G. Röhl and Nicolaus Sombart, Cambridge 1982, 106–07. Existing studies of the Kents include Christopher Warwick, George and Marina, Duke and Duchess of Kent, London 1988; and Audrey Whiting, The Kents, London 1985. Nicholas Bethell, When Kent Nearly Went to Poland: Sunday Times, 3 November 1972.

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the Duke of Kent died while trying to return Rudolf Hess to Germany (via Scandinavia). This was a thesis of a popular paperback by Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince and Stephen Prior, Double Standards: The Rudolf Hess Cover-Up. While not accepted by most academic historians, such theories can gradually shape perceptions of this history (and at over 500 pages, Double Standards goes to considerable lengths to make the case for the Rudolf Hess–Kent link). I confess to doubts about the Duke of Kent’s career (although in no way do I endorse the thesis of Double Standards). The best accessible source on the Duke of Kent’s activities in the late 1930s and early 1940s are the papers of Prince Paul of Yugoslavia that are housed in the Bakhmeteff Archive at Columbia University. The archive includes many letters from the Duke of Kent himself. There are daunting challenges regarding sources confronting the historian who works on the British Royals and the Hessens. Many of the letters of Empress Friedrich to her siblings, for example, were destroyed38 . Her younger sister, Princess Beatrice “eradicated or bowdlerized massive portions of [Queen Victoria’s] daily notes, burning the original pages she had ‘edited’, and transcribing the remains into her own handwriting. The 111 volumes that Beatrice reworked of her mother’s originals are today preserved in the Royal Archives at Windsor.” She also evidently “systematically destroyed” some thirty volumes of the Queen’s letters to her second son Alfie and to Princess Alice39 . While the rich epistolary tradition of royals offers a great opportunity to historians, we must also be conscious of gaps and limitations. In conclusion, I would return to a point that I referenced with regards to Niall Ferguson. Since the 1960s, the vast majority of academic historians have avoided the study of royals and other elites. The social history that came into vogue in the 1960s and the cultural history that attracted so many in the years after the late 1970s, resulted in many scholars eschewing the history of aristocrats. As Isabel Hull noted back in the mid-1990s, “monarchy is one of the chief embarrassments of the twentieth century. Modern German historians, anxious to discard Great Man theories, have been especially loath to grant that a monarch elevated to power by the chance of birth, might really shape politics and decide issues of war and peace”40 . Perspectives change, and we have now begun a significant collective effort to re-evaluate the individuals who were members of Europe’s most prominent families. This volume bears testament to the undertaking.

38

39 40

Eckhart Franz wrote, “Die Briefe Victorias an Alice nach 1862 wurden vermutlich nach dem Tod der Großherzogin 1878 zurückgegeben und später mit der übrigen Geschwister-Korrespondenz Victorias vernichtet.” Franz (note 5), 81. Packard (note 6), 339. Isabel Hull, Review of John C.G. Röhl, Wilhelm II. Die Jugend des Kaisers and Kaiser, Hof und Staat: Journal of Modern History 67/3 (September 1995), 764–66.

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Prince Louis of Battenberg: The Advantages and Disadvantages of being a Serene Highness in the Royal Navy Until 1917, when he renounced his German name and titles and assumed the more Anglophone persona of Louis Mountbatten, first Marquess of Milford Haven, His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Battenberg had two signatures. Depending on the person to whom he was writing, his autograph was styled either as the German Ludwig or the more anglicised Louis. This dual identity stemmed in part from his cosmopolitan heritage and life style. The scion of a morganatic marriage between an unknown and unimportant Russo-Polish countess and a young Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, whose sister was wife to the Tsarevich, the heir to the Russian throne, he was born in the Austrian town of Graz, felt most at home at the family’s German residence at Schloss Heiligenberg at Jugenheim near the Rhine, and yet to the surprise of his family, at the age of fourteen, he left for Britain, where he swore allegiance to Queen Victoria, assumed the status of a British subject and entered the Royal Navy. This complex conglomeration of different ties and identities consequent upon his parentage, background and profession was further augmented by his marriage in 1884 to his first cousin, once removed, Princess Victoria, the eldest daughter of Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and of the Rhine. Her dynastic origins both as the child of a ruling prince and as a granddaughter of Queen Victoria alongside her later dynastic connections as a sister-in-law to both Tsar Nicholas II and to Prince Heinrich, the brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II, not only cemented Prince Louis’s place in the Hessian Grand Ducal house of Brabant but also gave him additional close ties to the Royal Houses of Hohenzollern, Romanoff and, most importantly of all, to the British branch of the house of Sachsen Coburg und Gotha. In the latter case, these ties were further strengthened by the marriage of his younger brother, Prince Henry of Battenberg, to Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, a union that brought the Battenbergs into the innermost circle of the British royal family and thus deeply entwined the connection between them. It can be seen, therefore, that through a variety of geographic, national, personal and dynastic links, Prince Louis enjoyed bonds of blood, obligation and affection to a large swath of Europe’s royalty. He was, as one prominent historian of continental dynastic relations has described it, a “member of Europe’s supra-national royal fam161

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ily”1. His place within this exalted circle had a considerable impact on Louis’s life, providing him with the numerous opportunities open only to those of high standing, rank and influence. At the same time, however, his diverse connections and lack of clear roots, both of which were traits that created doubts and suspicions about the Prince’s true affiliations and loyalties, were not without their costs. As will be seen in this paper, being simultaneously a German Prince with the prefix of Durchlaucht or Serene Highness and a serving officer of the Royal Navy was a complicated balancing act that both bestowed benefits and caused problems in equal measure. In December 1912, Prince Louis of Battenberg, who had already attained the rank of Admiral, was appointed First Sea Lord, the professional head of the Royal Navy. How had he risen to this important and prestigious position? In the view of his critics this ascent to the highest naval office was due in no small measure to the exercise of undue influence in his favour by his British royal relatives. That there is some semblance of truth in this accusation can be confirmed by an examination of Prince Louis’s early naval service, which, as even the briefest scrutiny will reveal, was extensively shaped by his connections to the house of Sachsen Coburg und Gotha, many members of which took considerable interest in Louis’s career and actively intervened to shape and further it. This patronage was evident from the very outset. The example often cited is Louis’s naval education. For many entrants into the senior service this consisted of a spell as a cadet on the training ship Britannia. But not for Prince Louis of Battenberg. One reason for this was that he had already passed the maximum age for joining the vessel. However, this was no obstacle; Queen Victoria helpfully raised the limit by six months to facilitate his entry. The real reason was that Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s second son, knew Louis from his days as a student at Bonn and, for these purely personal reasons, he wished Louis to begin his naval career serving along side him in his own vessel, the Galatea. To this end he suggested to both Louis and the Admiralty that he by-pass the Britannia and begin his naval training at sea. Yet, no sooner was this scheme agreed than it was superseded, for, in January 1869, there occurred another royal intervention when the Prince of Wales invited the young prince of Battenberg to accompany him as an aide-de-camp on a cruise round the Mediterranean in the frigate HMS Ariadne. This proposal likewise allowed Prince Louis to by-pass the Britannia and, instead, undertake his training at sea, in a vessel where, unlike the other cadets and midshipmen, he would be taking his dinner with the heir to the throne. This would not be the last time that the Prince of Wales secured a choice position for his young prot´eg´ee. In 1875, he again invited Louis to join him on an official visit, this time to India, securing for him a posting to the Serapis, an old troop ship converted for Royal use. As was the case during his voyage on the Ariadne, Prince Louis spent much of his time on the Serapis attached to the Royal Suite. As a result, he once more enjoyed many of the same entertainments and diversions that were experienced by the Prince’s party, again hardly a typical experience for a young sub-lieutenant. Nor 1

Roderick R. Mclean, Royalty and Diplomacy in Europe, 1890–1914, Cambridge 2001, 169.

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was it coincidental when following his service on the Serapis, he was invited to join HMS Sultan. The vessel was commanded by Louis’s original sponsor, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, who expected Louis to act as a sort of unofficial equerry, a role that, while demanding of much patience and a considerable understanding of protocol, did little to develop its holder’s understanding of seamanship. And, of course, it once again ensured that Louis dined with and shared the hospitality of a relative, and, thus, as before, had a far from typical experience of naval life as a junior officer in the Mediterranean. When this appointment terminated, Prince Louis spent a short period of normal service on the battleship Agincourt, before once again being offered a position by a Royal cousin, on this occasion Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, who was scheduled to take his honeymoon cruising the Mediterranean on the Royal Yacht Osborne and who wanted the prince to accompany him. Louis duly did so, enjoying in the process a position that in professional terms was not so much challenging as simply diverting. Moreover, this would not be his last posting to a Royal Yacht. In 1883 he was placed on the books of the Victoria and Albert, a berth made even less arduous than might have been expected of such a posting on account of the ship lying for much of the time first in dry dock and then in harbour. Two years later, when he relinquished this appointment, he went on nearly two years’ continuous leave, at the end of which period he was asked by Captain Sir Harry Stephenson, a close friend of the Prince of Wales, to be his executive officer on HMS Dreadnought. The offer of such a desirable post by a known intimate of the heir to the throne after nearly four years without serious employment smacked of royal patronage, raised eyebrows in many circles and led to some very hostile questions in parliament about favouritism. The fact that the Dreadnought was stationed in the Mediterranean as part of a fleet now commanded by the Duke of Edinburgh also did not go unnoticed and was likewise criticised. Nor did it escape people’s attention that one of Prince Louis’s next appointments was to HMS Cambrian a ship that subsequently served for the following two springs as guardship to Queen Victoria during her stays in the Mediterranean resort of Nice. The consequence of this was that the Cambrian, a new and powerful cruiser, became less a symbol of Britain’s naval might and maritime strength than an object of service scorn and ridicule, acquiring the unflattering soubriquet ‘Prince Louis’s Yacht’ in consequence of its congenial and untaxing royal duties. As this abbreviated summary of Prince Louis’s postings makes clear, his service in the Royal Navy during the first two decades of his career was heavily influenced by his British royal relatives, who offered him the opportunity to travel with them on overseas visits and/or to serve under them in important or desirable positions. The twin contexts of royal kinship and Anglo-German dynastic family networks were, therefore, very much alive in the case of Prince Louis of Battenberg’s early professional life. However, this was not the only contribution that Louis’s British royal relatives made; they also helped to secure his rise through the ranks. Queen Victoria, with whom, as many papers in the Royal Archives reveal, Prince Louis regularly corresponded on family matters, was the most prominent figure to aid him. The clearest example of this is a letter written by the Queen to the First Lord of the 163

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Admiralty, Lord George Hamilton, in September 1891. Observing that Prince Louis had not yet secured promotion to captain, she pushed his case firmly. Written, of course, in the third person, the royal communication stated: “She hopes and expects that Prince Louis of Battenberg, to whose merits everyone who knows the service well can testify will get his promotion at the end of the year . . . There is a belief that the Admiralty are afraid of promoting Officers who are Princes on account of the radical attacks of low papers and scurrilous ones, but the Queen cannot credit this . . . She . . . trusts there will be no further delay in giving him what he deserves”2 . There was, indeed, no delay: deserving or otherwise, Prince Louis received his promotion before the end of the year. Given this catalogue of preferential preferment, it is hardly surprising if some naval historians as well as many of Louis’s biographers have responded to this evident favouritism by being less than laudatory at his two first decades’ service in the Royal Navy. John Hattendorf, for example, has commented with some understatement that “aristocratic connections were important in Prince Louis’s private life and in laying the foundations of his early career”3 . Similarly, Douglas Liversidge has observed in succinct and judicious fashion that “in the earlier years of his career, it was questionable if he was not more courtier than sailor”4 , a view echoed rather pointedly by the more acerbic Antony Lambton. He has noted in somewhat sharper tones that Louis’s early years in the Royal navy were characterised by “his acceptance of royal favours” and stressed how in this period Louis “basked at Windsor and Sandringham”, achieving promotion through privilege rather than meritorious service5 . Yet, while these accusations and criticisms are arguably justified in the light of Prince Louis’s early career path, it must be stressed that the initial dilettantism of his early postings, his seeming appetite for softer and more luxurious berths and his apparent advancement through proximity to the Royal family did not mean that he was without talent. Indeed, the opposite was the case: Prince Louis of Battenberg was, in fact, a highly competent officer, with good command instincts, a gift for leadership and sound strategic sense. Fortunately for him, at the point at which his career might have been permanently tainted by his past preferential preferment, Prince Louis realised the importance of proving himself both to the navy and to the nation by a clear demonstration of his own personal aptitude and abilities. This can be illustrated by reference to his later naval career. 2

3 4 5

Queen Victoria to Lord George Hamilton, 5 September 1891. The Royal Archives [hereafterRA]: VIC/E56/45. It is also quoted in Richard Hough, Louis & Victoria: The Family History of the Mountbattens, London 1984, 171. John B. Hattendorf, Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg (1912–1914). The First Sea Lords from Fisher to Mountbatten, ed. Malcolm H. Murfett, Westport, CT 1995, 75. Douglas Liversidge, The Mountbattens. From Battenberg to Windsor, London 1978, 25. Antony Lambton, The Mountbattens. The Battenbergs and Young Mountbatten, London 1989, 164 and 177–9.

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The year 1896 was a significant one for Prince Louis and in many ways a turning point in his professional development. In that year Queen Victoria offered him a third posting to a royal yacht, the Osborne, this time as its commanding officer. Clearly cognisant of the criticism he had received in the past for his acceptance of royal patronage and aware that another appointment to a vessel that had no serious war duties would deliver the death blow to any pretensions he had to a serious naval career, Prince Louis declined the offer, preferring instead to acquire sea time in the Battleship Majestic. Moreover, he declined any further connection with purely royal duties. Thus, while he was willing to advise his uncle, King Edward VII, about possible candidates for captain of the royal yacht – a long letter on this subject from February 1901 exists in the Royal Archives – he was not willing to be considered himself6 . Instead, in a move that was significant for his reputation and career prospects, he ensured that all his subsequent appointments were made to militarily significant posts, involving either sea-going command in a warship attached to a major fleet or squadron or service in important positions at the Admiralty in London. Amongst the latter was his appointment in 1902 to succeed Rear-Admiral Reginald Custance as Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI). This was an extremely important post as the DNI was responsible for collecting intelligence on foreign navies, supplying information on these navies both to the board of Admiralty and to the various home and overseas commands, and also for co-ordinating plans for mobilisation and war. Moreover, Custance, a very strong personality with decided views and a forceful means of expressing them, had during his period of service as DNI very much made the position his own. Prince Louis was, therefore, naturally both honoured to accept this vital post but also anxious about replacing such a dynamic and successful officer lest he vanish in his predecessor’s shadow. Such anxieties were misplaced. The Admiralty file containing the evaluation of his services on the termination of his appointment as DNI still exists – unlike the majority of such files – and makes for interesting reading. In the minutes, the Secretary to the Admiralty, Sir Evan MacGregor, stressed to his colleagues on the board the “conspicuous ability shown by [Prince Louis] in the discharge of the important duties devolving on him as D.N.I.” Lord Selborne, the First Lord of the Admiralty, concurred. “Prince Louis’s services,” he commented, “have been of exceptional value to the country both in his capacity of D.N.I. and also as a member of the C.I.D”7 . Significantly, such views were also held outside of the Admiralty. Sir George Clarke, Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence, observed after Louis’s departure: “I often miss Prince Louis’s cool view of things”8 . As Sir George Clarke was a difficult man to please, this was no small endorsement of Louis’s professionalism. Such praise was by no means unique nor limited to his time as DNI. Having once shed his image as merely a royal favourite and embarked upon a serious naval ca6 7 8

Prince Louis to Edward VII, 9 February 1901. RA VIC/W56/1. Admiralty 22 February 1905. The National Archives, Kew [hereafter TNA]: ADM 1/7808. Ruddock F. Mackay, Fisher of Kilverstone, Oxford 1973, 350.

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reer, Prince Louis began to be the recipient of numerous plaudits from discerning observers. In October 1911, Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone, the former First Sea Lord and the leading naval officer of his day, eulogised Battenberg to his friend, the influential journalist John Spender, noting in a long letter on naval affairs that Prince Louis was “the very ablest Admiral after Sir Arthur Wilson that we possess both afloat and ashore. [. . . ] He is the most capable administrator in the Admiral’s List by a long way, and he will just ‘roll up’ all Admiralty opponents in the Committee of Imperial Defence.” With typical Fisher hyperbole he then concluded: “Battenberg is Moses and Aaron in one”9 . He was not alone in this positive view. Writing the very same day, Sir Charles Ottley, the Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence, informed Lord Esher, an influential behind-the-scenes figure in the development of British defence policy, that Battenberg was widely admired and respected in the service. “There are literally hundreds of naval officers,” he wrote, “who would be quite ready to believe black was white, if he issued a memo to that effect”10 . Another, perhaps more unexpected admirer was the German naval attach´e, Captain Wilhelm Widenmann, who reported to Berlin that Prince Louis “unites a seaman’s judgement, based on long experience [. . .], with the inborn German thoroughness of a systematic worker.” He also recorded that Prince Louis was an outstanding fleet commander and enjoyed the highest respect from his subordinates11 . The judgement of many historians about the second phase of Prince Louis’s career echoes the favourable views of his contemporaries. John Hattendorf, who was cited earlier for commenting that “aristocratic connections were important in Prince Louis’s private life and in laying the foundations of his early career”, went on to observe that these connections “made no obvious difference to his later development as a naval officer.” Rather, during this period, Hattendorf contends, he advanced by “proving himself a very effective seaman and leader”12 . Arthur Marder, perhaps the doyen of naval historians, produced an even more laudatory evaluation, judging Prince Louis “a first-rate, all-round seaman, a born leader, an efficient, even brilliant tactician and strategist”13. However, neither the positive evaluations of well-informed contemporaries nor the praise of modern historians means that the second half of Louis’s naval career was free of difficulties. Although he would no longer be subject to constant criticism for his connections with his British relatives nor pilloried for being a royal favourite, instead it would now be his German background and his connections to his continental relations that would prove problematic.

9

10 11 12 13

Fisher to Spender, 25 October 1911. Arthur J. Marder, Fear God and Dread Nought. The Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone, 3 vols., London 1952–9, II, 398 (emphasis in the original). Ottley to Esher, 25 October 1911. Arthur J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, 5 vols., Oxford 1961–70, I, 407. Hattendorf (note 3), 76. Ibid., 75 Marder (note 10), 406.

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That Prince Louis’s German antecedents could be used as a stick with which to beat him had been evident for quite some time. In 1887, for example, when the controversy arose over his appointment as executive officer on the Dreadnought, some of the questions asked in the House of Commons made pointed references to his foreign origins. Charles Conybeare, the radical MP for the Camborne constituency in Cornwall, typified the attitude of many parliamentarians when he pressed the First Lord of the Admiralty on “what special qualifications have entitled a foreigner to be promoted over the heads of some 30 British officers?” The Irish Nationalist MP John Redmond of all people also wanted to know “whether a German has ever been placed [. . . ] over the heads of British officers equally qualified?”14 Yet, while such xenophobic attacks were easily made – even by those not normally troubled by the rights of mainland Britons – nevertheless, during Louis’s early career such incidents were relatively rare. However, as Britain’s relationship with Germany began to deteriorate and fears about the intentions of Germany’s naval building programme started to heighten, so the question of German ancestry and alleged German sympathies became more salient a consideration in the public consciousness. Many individuals were caught up in this burgeoning Anglo-German antagonism and so it was probably inevitable that Prince Louis, a prominent figure of high social status, would be among them, not least, of course, because he counted amongst his relatives Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of the icon of all things Teutonic, German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II. The shadow cast by Prince Louis’s German family background first became really evident in October 1902 when rumours began to circulate throughout the service that he was likely to be appointed as the next DNI, a post which, as we have seen, he was particularly good at. While it was generally acknowledged that he was well qualified for the job, purely for reasons of parentage not everyone considered him an appropriate choice. Captain George King-Hall, who was a friend of Prince Louis’s and also an admirer of his professional abilities, nevertheless recorded in his diary the common sentiment in the service that while he was “undoubtedly the man for the place”, “his sympathies” counted against him15 . He elaborated on this point the day after Prince Louis’s actual appointment was formally announced: “There is a strong suppressed feeling that although Battenberg is the best man on the list for the place, still it is rather an anomaly that he should be there, considering his relationship to the Russian and German Royal family and the necessity we have for guarding against the designs of both countries, especially that of Germany”16 . This anxiety that Prince Louis might be swayed by loyalties to the country of his forefathers was misplaced, but it continued to cast a shadow on his career. Prince Louis was himself highly conscious of this and, accordingly, tried to avoid public 14 15 16

Lambton (note 5), 179. George King-Hall Diary, 20 October 1902. Royal Navy Museum: MSS 2000/53. Ibid., 23 October 1902.

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engagements that put him in visible proximity to his German relatives. Ordered by King Edward to accompany him to Kiel for an official visit in July 1904, Prince Louis did his best to suggest this was not a good idea. As he explained to Lord Knollys, the King’s private Secretary, “it is very unpleasant for me to go to Kiel at any time in an official or semi-official position. My relationship to Prince Henry, my German name and origin, my position at the Admiralty – all combine to make it awkward for me”17 . In 1904, this argument was to no avail – probably just as well as he gathered a lot of information during the trip – but in subsequent years, the authorities themselves would do all they could to prevent Prince Louis being seen with his German relations. One example of this comes from March 1908, when the Kaiser was invited to dine at the British embassy in Berlin. Speaking to Captain Philip Dumas, the British naval attach´e, Wilhelm raised the question of his forthcoming trip to Corfu and the possibility of encountering elements of the British Mediterranean Fleet whilst there. As he informed the naval attach´e: “he hoped that while he was in the Mediterranean he would meet some of the British Fleet and especially Prince Louis of Battenberg”18 . The idea of a high profile public encounter between the Kaiser and the Prince horrified Admiral Fisher, the First Sea Lord. He informed Dumas that on diplomatic grounds the Foreign Office would not hear of such a proposal. If such an encounter had to take place, it must be low key: at most two private ships could be sent to meet the Emperor, and even then it had to be understood that no flag officers should be on board19 . In fact, Fisher’s real anxiety was not that the meeting would be mistakenly accorded some diplomatic significance, rather that such a trip would damage Prince Louis’s reputation. As he explained to the King: “I do not think it would be at all wise of Prince Louis to go to Corfu, as his enemies unjustly accuse him of being more German than English”20. Fisher, who regarded Louis as one of his prot´eg´ees, was keen to avoid anything that might instil or, even worse, reinforce such an image of the prince in the public mind, for of course were that to happen it would clearly blight the career of someone that Fisher believed could be relied upon to continue his work after his retirement. Accordingly, in place of Prince Louis, the Admiralty eventually sent HMS Implacable under Captain Mark Kerr to meet Wilhelm on Corfu. Revealingly, this would not be the only time that a direct request by the Kaiser for a meeting with Prince Louis would be circumvented. A similar message, again conveyed through the medium of the British naval attach´e, that the Kaiser would like Prince Louis (along with Winston Churchill) to come to the festivities at Kiel in June 1914, also did not come to fruition21.

17 18 19 20 21

Prince Louis to Lord Knollys, 16 May 1904. RA VIC/W56/120. Dumas to Fisher, 20 March 1908. RA VIC/W59/18. Fisher to Dumas, 24 March 1908. Imperial War Museum: Dumas Diaries. Fisher to King Edward VII, 26 March 1908. RA VIC/W59/16. Matthew S. Seligmann, Military Diplomacy in a Military Monarchy? Wilhelm II’s Relations with the British Service Attach´es in Berlin, 1903–1914: The Kaiser. New Research on Wilhelm II’s Role in Imperial Germany, eds Wilhelm Deist and Annika Mombauer, Cambridge 2003, 184–5.

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Another example of the difficulties Prince Louis faced by dint of his background came in October 1911, when Winston Churchill replaced Reginald McKenna as First Lord of the Admiralty. The new political master of the Royal Navy wanted to recast the Board of Admiralty with officers more sympathetic to his agenda and to this end he saw Prince Louis as a strong candidate for replacing Sir Arthur Wilson as First Sea Lord. Fisher strongly supported the idea and suggested to Churchill that not only was Prince Louis the best man for the job, but further that in appointing him, Churchill would be executing a clever political coup by demonstrating to his backbenchers, most of whom instinctively opposed heavy spending on the Anglo-German naval race, that he was in favour of a d´etente with Germany. “I think this should please the Liberal Party,” Fisher wrote, “they will say what better proof could we give of our confidence to Germany than selecting a man as First Sea Lord with German proclivities” 22. It is doubtful if Fisher seriously believed this argument. In any event, it did not come to pass. Churchill’s suggestion of appointing Prince Louis was passed to Herbert Henry Asquith, the Prime Minister, for his consideration. According to the well-informed Lord Esher, Asquith tested the idea on his Chancellor, David Lloyd George. As Esher noted in his journal, the latter was absolutely “horrified at the idea of a German holding the supreme place.” Esher went on: “Asquith says that [Lloyd George] is an excellent foolometer and that the public would take the same view”23 . As a result, the appointment was dropped and Sir Francis Bridgeman was nominated as First Sea Lord; Battenberg had to make do with the role of Second Sea Lord. Politically this was certainly a wise decision and it is doubtful if in the climate of the time Prince Louis could have been given the top job. Nevertheless, many informed observers recognised and regretted what had transpired. One such person was the former First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Selborne. He wrote to Churchill to congratulate him on bringing Prince Louis onto the Board of Admiralty and added this thoughtful rider: “He is the ablest officer the navy possesses and, if his name had been Smith, he would ere now have filled various high offices to the great advantage of the country, from which he has been excluded owing to what I must characterise as a stupid timidity. He has in fact had his naval career maimed because he is a Prince and because of his foreign relationships. I have stated what I think of his ability – I can only add that a better Englishman does not exist or one whom I would more freely trust in any post in any emergency”24 . Selborne’s diagnosis that Prince Louis’s foreign – i.e. German – connections had a detrimental impact on his career is, of course, most powerfully validated by the events of August, September and October 1914. The outbreak of War was potentially the 22 23 24

Fisher to Spender, 25 October 1911: Marder (note 9), II, p. 398. Oliver, Viscount Esher, The Journals and Letters of Reginald Viscount Esher, 4 vols, London 1938, III, 61. Selborne to Churchill, 20 November 1911: Randolph S. Churchill, Winston Churchill. Companion Volume, II, 1346–7.

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supreme test of leadership for any serviceman and an opportunity to reach the pinnacle of one’s professional career by applying in battle all the ideas that had previously only been committed to manoeuvres or to paper. For Prince Louis, however, whose war began brilliantly when in late July he decided on his own initiative not to disperse the fleet as was normal after the summer manoeuvres but to keep it together in case international events demanded it, the commencement of hostilities brought quite different pressures. Rather than proving his skills as a tactician and strategist, he was asked instead to demonstrate his loyalty and dedication to his adopted country. As no protestations could satisfy the doubts in some people’s minds, his resignation ultimately proved inevitable. While there is clear evidence, therefore, that Prince Louis’s connections both with Germany in general and with the Prussian royal family in particular were often disadvantageous to him, it must, however, be acknowledged that this was not always the case. Indeed, there were occasions when it proved positively beneficial to Battenberg to have privileged and easy access to the upper political strata of the German Reich. The contexts that made these family ties useful were international diplomacy and intelligence gathering. In the pre-First World War era, when a great deal of international diplomacy was still conducted at the dynastic level, with dialogue between monarchs and princes a central component of the intercourse between nations, individuals with ties to the various rival European royal houses were inevitably a potential asset for the promotion of inter-state relations. When high profile diplomatic meetings were rendered inappropriate – say by the existence of high public passions over a particular issue – or formal discussions between ambassadors and foreign ministers were considered inexpedient – say because governments did not wish to take responsibility for an idea or initiative that they wished to float or promote – it was always possible to send a minor prince to a family event – for example an engagement, wedding, birthday, jubilee, christening or funeral – and use the cover provided by this gathering to conduct behind-the-scenes political discussions. By dint of his ties of blood and marriage with various royal houses, Prince Louis of Battenberg was perfectly positioned for this role. He had numerous excuses for meeting his various royal relatives and, of course, being a family member was able to approach them on a franker and more equal level than any diplomat. In addition, he was also, in the opinion of Edward VII, temperamentally suited to the part. “You know how able & discreet he is”, the King wrote to Foreign Secretary Lord Lansdowne, before dispatching Prince Louis to Russia in August 1904 ostensibly as his representative for the christening of the Tsarevitch Alexei, in reality as a means of calming Anglo-Russian relations through a dialogue between the Prince and his friend and relative, Tsar Nicholas II25 . What was suitable as a means of maintaining unofficial lines of communication between Britain and Russia was no less applicable to the discreet behind-the-scenes conduct of Anglo-German relations. Accordingly, Prince Louis was often called upon 25

Edward VII to Lansdowne, 21 August 1904. RA VIC/W44/195a.

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to meet with his German relatives for informal discussions. Naturally, these conversations had political overtones. A notable example occurred when the Kaiser met Prince Louis at Gibraltar in the spring of 1905 in the immediate aftermath of Wilhelm’s dramatic landing at Tangiers, a diplomatic coup that sparked off the First Moroccan Crisis. The conversation was an important one, because the Kaiser took the opportunity provided by the encounter to vent his feelings at length on the diplomatic questions of the day. The content of the Kaiser’s rant included a claim that he had come to Morocco to protect German commercial interest “through direct negotiations with the Sultan”, who he referred to as an “independent brother sovereign”; a commentary on the war in the Far East between Russia and Japan; a discourse on his racist conception of international relations, at the heart of which was the prophecy of an inevitable future clash between the “two great virile races Teutonic and Slav”; and an unambiguous threat to the supposedly “moribund” France: “We know the road to Paris and we will get there again if needs be. They should remember no fleet can defend Paris.” Naturally, Louis reported all of this to the authorities in Britain26 . King Edward was disgusted by the Kaiser’s words and behaviour. “He is utterly false & the bitterest foe that E[ngland] possesses,” he informed Louis on receipt of the Prince’s report27 . Nevertheless, he was very grateful for Battenberg’s efforts, which helped the King and others to clarify the Kaiser’s mindset at the outset of this major diplomatic crisis. Prince Louis’s role as a royal go-between during periods of international tension over Morocco so clearly demonstrated by the above example was reprised in 1911, the year of the Second Moroccan Crisis. Once again Louis met the Kaiser at the very juncture when the diplomatic furore over the future of this North African kingdom was beginning to come to the surface. On this occasion the encounter took place at Spithead and, as ever, Wilhelm availed himself of the opportunity to outline his views at great length. Having begun with a statement of his wish to “cultivate the friendliest relations with England politically” and followed this up, without any sense of the evident contradiction, by launching a strong attack on the British insistence on maintaining the balance of power, a policy which he in fact ridiculed, Wilhelm went on to speak about the general state of affairs in Europe and the possibilities for future peace or conflict. With his usual ill-judged and inappropriate bravado he explained to Prince Louis that this was not a matter over which Britain had any say. As he put it: “You must be brought to understand in England that Germany is the sole arbiter of peace or war on the continent. If we wish to fight we will do so without your leave. And why? Because we continental powers dispose of armies counting millions. Of what possible use would it be for you to land your 50,000 men anywhere? I am convinced you would never attempt anything so foolish, as those beautiful life guards and Grenadier Guards would be blown sky high by my submarines before they could set foot on shore.” 26 27

Prince Louis of Battenberg: Notes of a Conversation with H.M. the German Emperor on Board H.M.S. Drake, Gibraltar, 1 April 1905. TNA: FO 800/130, ff.38–41. Edward VII to Prince Louis, 15 April 1905: Mclean (note 1),115

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Having thus discounted the possibility of Britain intervening successfully in a European conflict, Wilhelm proceeded, in a passage reminiscent of his conversation with Louis during the First Moroccan Crisis, to dismiss the power and influence of France: “As to those French, we have beaten them once and we will beat them again. We know the road from Berlin to Paris. You know you can’t mount your Dreadnoughts on wheels and come to your dear friends’ assistance.” This was followed by yet another warning, this time that Britain had been “powerless” during the Bosnian Crisis and would be likewise without influence in any future European dispute. “I settled it my way,” he told Prince Louis, “and you had not a word to say in it. And I will do so again if the occasion arises.” Then, piling threat upon threat, Wilhelm went on to inform his interlocutor that any attempt to get between Germany and Russia – an astonishing comment given the poor state of relations between the two countries – he would “look upon as the most unfriendly of all actions.” None of this bluster, it must be said, impressed Prince Louis. The Kaiser’s rant, he suggested, was clearly intended “to be brought to the knowledge of people in authority” and was no more than “a piece of bluff to frighten them into a more cautious attitude as regards friendly relations with France, but especially Russia”28. This is a judgement with which it is hard to disagree. Once again Wilhelm’s “torrent of words”, as a contemptuous Prince Louis dismissively described them, were carefully circulated in the higher reaches of the British government, being seen by, amongst others, the King, the Foreign Secretary and the First Lord of the Admiralty. As before, the Kaiser’s all too frank remarks were taken as an indication of his mindset, albeit with results that would not have pleased the All Highest had he known of them. Churchill, for example, concluded that “one is almost tempted to discern in some of the things he said to Prince Louis the workings of a disordered brain”. Of course, as Churchill acknowledged, they were none the less valuable for this29 . As the Second Moroccan Crisis ended only to be supplanted by a new period of international tension centred on the disorder provoked by the Balkan Wars, so Louis’s ties to the Prussian royal house continued to prove a useful supplement to the regular diplomatic channels. The events of early December 1912 provide some demonstration of this. This was a tense period, well known to historians of the causes of the Great War because of a speech delivered by Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg on 2 December that led Britain’s Lord Chancellor, Viscount Haldane of Cloan, to visit the German Ambassador the next day to inform him, lest he should be in any doubt, that should a war break out between France and Russia on the one hand and Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other, Britain could not stay on the sidelines. The Kaiser’s furious reaction on receiving Prince Lichnowsky’s report of this conver-

28

29

Prince Louis of Battenberg: Notes of a Statement made by the German Emperor to Prince Louis of Battenbergon board his yacht on May 20th 1911, 23 May 1911. RA: PS/GV/0 2581/1 (emphasis in the original). Churchill to Knollys, 24 May 1911. Richard Hough, Louis & Victoria. The Family History of the Mountbattens, London 1984, 242.

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sation was the infamous War Council of 8 December 1912. Coterminous with these regular diplomatic discussions, Prince Louis was engaged in the more pleasant task of meeting with his brother-in-law, Prince Henry of Prussia, who was then staying in London. As ever such family get-togethers presented the opportunity for holding informal discussions with a political stamp and advantage was taken of this to discourse on current events. The thrust of the conversation was conveyed by letter shortly thereafter to the King. In addition to informing his “Cousin George” of Prince Henry’s welcome assurance that Germany was doing all it could “to moderate” the “military ardour” of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, who was perceived in Britain as taking a strong line in the dual monarchy’s dispute with Serbia, Louis went on to record that the Germans seemed to have a totally inaccurate conception of British foreign policy. In particular, they seemed misinformed about the possibility of British neutrality in the event of a European war. As he explained: “Although it is none of my business, may I take this opportunity of pointing out that Harry of Prussia (who presumably reflects his brother’s views) does not appear to realize that if war were to break out between Germany and Austria vs. Russia and France, we here cannot permit either of the two latter countries, especially France, to be crippled – Consequently, we cannot stand out in certain circumstances”30. This news through dynastic channels, coming as it did at exactly the same moment that such conclusions were being reached through other means, provided a welcome and important corroboration. Given the nature of Prince Henry’s visit to London in July 1914 – as described in the chapter by John Röhl – this prior encounter is clearly not without significance. That Louis could and indeed did obtain information from his German relatives and also engaged in important, albeit informal, political dialogue with them, is thus clear. However, this was not the sole extent of the utility of such links to the British government. Another aspect of Louis’s dynastic connections that could be valuable was the potential symbolism that it could convey on the diplomatic stage. As we have already seen, Admiral Fisher believed – or at least claimed to believe – that the appointment to high office of a Prince “with German proclivities” could send a clear signal to Liberal backbenchers about the government’s serious wish to come to a naval agreement with Germany. In a similar fashion, one historian has claimed that Prince Louis’s appointment as First Sea Lord in December 1912, while desirable on grounds of his professional attainments, was rendered particularly suitable because, in addition, it could be used as a means to convey a message to the German government. The message in question was that Winston Churchill, the new First Lord of the Admiralty, was genuinely enthusiastic about an arms control arrangement with the Reich. As John Hattendorf explains it: “Battenberg’s continental background and 30

Prince Louis to George V, 5 December 1912. RA PS/GV/M 520A/1.

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ability with languages and diplomacy made him especially attractive [as a possible First Sea Lord] at a time when Churchill thought the naval arms race could be avoided by a ‘holiday’ from naval ship construction, followed by direct negotiation on arms control agreements”31 . Churchill was, in fact, wrong in his belief that a naval holiday could be negotiated and the Germans did everything they possibly could to disabuse him of this notion, making it clear that proposals on the issue would be unwelcome. This does not detract from the fact, however, that Battenberg, given his various connections to Prince Henry of Prussia and the Kaiser, would have been the ideal First Sea Lord for carrying such a plan to fruition and Hattendorf may be correct, therefore, to attribute Prince Louis’s promotion to the head of the service to more than just his merits as a sailor and naval administrator. His proven track record as a liaison with European royalty would, indeed, have been attractive to Churchill. As we have seen, Prince Louis of Battenberg derived various advantages and disadvantages from his royal connections. Certainly his early career was helped by the interest taken in his development by his British relatives, who ensured his rise through the service and placement in pleasant postings. True, this interest smacked of favouritism and was subject to some external criticism, but very wisely Battenberg eschewed such royal aid just before the point at which it would have tarred him as a freeloader and thus proved detrimental to his career. His subsequent rise through the ranks of the navy was achieved solely through merit. Admittedly, part of that merit was his connections to various royal houses on the continent, which allowed Prince Louis to engage in unofficial diplomatic initiatives on behalf of the King and the government. However, it must be acknowledged that, although facilitated by the accident of birth, these liaison and intelligence gathering activities were genuinely useful and could not have been done so easily by anybody else. However, the ultimate cost of these connections would become clear when war broke out in 1914. Although the King believed “there [was] no more loyal man in the country”, Louis’s German antecedents proved an insuperable barrier to continued office and he was forced to resign. The fall of Prince Louis of Battenberg, like his rise, was partly a condition of his place in the Anglo-German royal family network.

31

Hattendorf (note 3), p. 78.

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List of Contributors Clarissa Campbell Orr is Reader in Enlightenment, Gender and Court Studies at Anglia Ruskin University. Her most recent essays are ‘Dynastic Perspectives’ in The Hanoverian Dimension to British History, ed. T. Riotte and B. Simms (Cambridge 2007), ‘George III and the Christian Enlightenment’ in Monarchy & Religion, ed. M. Schaich (Oxford 2007). John Davis is Professor of History and International Relations as well as head of the School of Social Sciences at Kingston University. His most recent publications include The Victorians and Germany (Oxford and Berne 2007) as well as Divided Estate, Common Heritage. The Archives of Windsor and Gotha (Munich 2007) and Richard Cobden’s German Diaries (Munich 2007). Professor Andreas Gestrich is Director of the German Historical Institute London. He has published widely on the history of the family, e.g. Familie im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich 1999) and with Jens-Uwe Krause Geschichte der Familie (Stuttgart 2003). He is co-editor of, among others, Historische Einf uhrungen ¨ (Frankfurt 2007) and Zuruckbleiben. ¨ Die vergessene Seite der Migrationsgeschichte (2007). Jonathan Petropoulos is the John V. Croul Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California, where he also serves as director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights. His most recent publications include Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 2006); and as co-editor Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath (Berghahn Books, 2005). Dr Torsten Riotte is lecturer at the University of Frankfurt am Main. He is the author of a number of articles on British and European history and a revised version of his Ph.D. thesis has recently been published in German translation as Hannover in der britischen Politik (2005). He is co-editor of The Hanoverian Dimension in British History, 1714–1837 (2006) and British Envoys to Germany, 1816–1866, iii. 1848–1850 (2006). John Röhl is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Sussex. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the history of Imperial Germany and the origins of the First World War. In 2008 he completed his three-volume biography of Kaiser Wilhelm II: Die Jugend des Kaisers 1869–1888 (Munich 1993, engl. transl. Wilhelm II. The Kaiser’s Early Life, Cambridge 1998), Wilhelm II. Der Aufbau der Personlichen ¨ Monarchie 1888–1900 (Munich 2001, engl. transl. Wilhelm II. The Kaiser’s Personal Monarchy, Cambridge 2004), Wilhelm II. Der Weg in den Abgrund 1900–1941 (Munich 2008). 175

List of Contributors Dr Daniel Schönpflug is assistant professor at the History Department of the Freie Universit¨at Berlin. His research and teaching are focused on the Age of Revolution in a European comparative perspective and on the history of European dynasties. His recent publications include Vom Gegner lernen. Feindschaften und Kulturtransfers im Europa des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt 2007). Dr Matthew S. Seligmann is Reader in History at the University of Northampton. His publications include Germany. From Reich to Republic (Basingstoke 2000), Spies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War (Oxford University Press, 2006), and Naval Intelligence from Germany: The Reports of the British Naval Attach´es in Berlin 1906–1914 (Navy Records Society, 2007). Dr Karina Urbach is a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute. Her Cambridge Ph.D. was published as Bismarck’s Favourite Englishman: Lord Odo Russell’s Mission to Berlin. She is editor of European Aristocracies and the Radical Right 1918– 1939 (Oxford 2007) and co-editor of Birth or Talent? The Formation of Elites in a British-German comparison (Munich 2003). Professor Monika Wienfort is acting chair in Modern History at the Technische Universität Berlin. Her recent publications include Der Adel in der Moderne (G ottingen ¨ 2006) and Patrimonialgerichte in Preußen. Ländliche Gesellschaft und bürgerliches Recht 1770–1848/49 (Göttingen 2001). She is co-editor of Adel und Moderne. Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Cologne 2004).

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