HRH The Princess Victoria, Princess Royal, Empress Frederick of Germany
HRH The Princess Victoria, Princess Royal was betrothed at the relatively early age of 16 to Prince Friedrich of Prussia. Victoria and Albert wanted closer ties with the up-and-coming German state of Prussia and had educated Victoria to be quite liberal in her views. Friedrich was a soulmate for the young Vicky, but their liberalism would be their downfall in an increasingly strict Prussian/German court.
Nevertheless, Victoria and Friedrich produced 8 children. Two sons, Sigismund and Waldemar, died as children of, respectively, meningitis and diphtheria.
Wilhelm
When Wilhelm was born he was 'merely' Prince of Prussia. His childless great-uncle, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, was King. His Grandfather, Wilhelm, was Regent as his elder brother had suffered a stroke. Wilhelm Snr succeeded as King in 1861 when Friedrich Wilhelm died and became Emperor of Germany in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War and the Unification of Germany. 1888 was a momentous year for the German Royal Family and is known as The Year of the Three Emperors.
Firstly, Emperor Wilhelm I died on 9th March at the age of 90. His son became Emperor Friedrich III and young Wilhelm became Crown Prince of both Germany and Prussia. Friedrich was already suffering from throat cancer and, before he could establish any policies of note which would be reversed by his son anyway, he died at the untimely age of 56 on 15th June. Queen Victoria's eldest grandchild was now His Imperial and Royal Majesty Wilhelm II, The German Emperor and King of Prussia.
The German Imperial Coat of Arms is the black Eagle on a yellow background of the Holy Roman Empire which had governed over most of the German speaking world for many centuries, but which had been dissolved after the Napoleonic Wars. The Eagle went from two heads to one as the Hapsburg lands had separated to form an independent Austrian Empire. The colours - black, red and gold - are still the universal German colours.
The Shield the carries an initial Inescutcheon of the Prussian Eagle - black on white with red legs and beak (the Prussian colours). You will notice the strange 'leaves' on the Eagle's wings which are a typical feature in German heraldry. This Inescutcheon in turn carries a dynastic Inescutcheon of the Hohenzollern dynasty Coat of Arms, namely white and black Quarterings.
The shield is supported by Wild men of the Forest, similar to Denmark only here they support flags instead of clubs. (The flags are for Prussia (left) and Brandenburg (right), the historic basis for the Prussian Kingdom. The Shield is surrounded by the Chain of the Order of the Black Eagle and surmounted by a purely heraldic Imperial Crown, based on the Crown of Charlemagne but never produced in reality further than a wooden replica. There is a very grand Imperial Pavilion in gold with black Eagles and trimmed with Ermine, topped with another Imperial Crown and a Prussian flag.
The image (left) is the only reliable rendition of the Coat of Arms of a Crown Prince of Germany that can be found on an internet search and comes from the marvelous 1897 German Roll of Arms by Austrian artist Hugo Gerhard Ströhl. Unfortunately, it is black and white. However, it shows the middle Arms differenced with a red (trust me!) Bordure. (This actually forms the basis of the Flag of the present-day German President.) The Supporters are the same as the Emperor and the Crest is of a black Prussian Eagle with the shield of Hohenzollern on its chest. The Crown is a scaled down version with two full arches. Again, no real Crown was ever produced further to any wooden 'replica'. A version as Crown Prince of Prussia should exist with a white background to the Shield, rather than gold, but still with a red Bordure. The Pavilion would also be red. |
Wilhelm married Her Highness Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, mainly on the rebound from a rejection by his first cousin Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, but also to try and mend the rift between Prussia and Schleswig-Holstein. She and Wilhelm were second cousins. Their maternal Grandmothers - Queen Victoria and Princess Feodora of Leiningen - were half-sisters.
Known as Dona in the family, Augusta Victoria was the last Empress of Germany and died shortly after the end of the First World War in 1920. She doted on her youngest son Joachim who was born prematurely. It is thought that exile in The Netherlands, combined with Joachim's divorce and suicide contributed to Dona's ill-health and subsequent death.
In 1922, a chance birthday card brought the sender and his Mother, Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz, to Huis Doorn in The Netherlands where Wilhelm was living in exile. They were married on 9th November that year, much to the objections of Wilhelm's children and supporters, and remained close companions.
Charlotte
Eager to escape from parental control, at age sixteen, she married Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Meiningen in 1878. Her husband had little influence on her and Charlotte turned into a typically gossipy, trouble-making Prussian princess.
She became Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen in 1914, only for her husband to lose his title with the end of World War I in 1918. Charlotte died the following year of a heart attack in Baden-Baden. She had suffered from a lifetime of ill-health and many now believe she had porphyria, a genetic disease that afflicted other members of the British Royal Family., notably King George III and Prince William of Gloucester.
Heradlically, Charlotte marshalled her parental Prussian Arms with those of her husband. She was not granted any individual Arms. On closer inspection, the above envelope seal with Charlotte's title as Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen shows Saxony (rather than the many Quarterings of a minor German duchy) alongside the Prussian (rather than german) Eagle.
Heinrich
Even after the First World War, Heinrich carried on with sporting activity, including sailing and popularised a certain kind of sailing cap called the Prinz-Heinrich-Mütze.
Heinrich married his first cousin, Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine, daughter of Princess Alice. Unfortunately, two of their three sons, Waldemar and Heinrich, were hemophiliac, inherited from their Mother/Grandmother. (Irene's Sister was Alix who would marry Tsar Nicholas of Russia and give birth to the most famous hemophiliac ever, The Tsarevich Alexei.) Heinrich and Irene, as a consequence, had no grandchildren themselves.
Heinrich is known to have differenced his Coat of Arms with a Bordure Compony of black and white (the Hohenzollern colours). The above representation purports to be of Heinrich's Coat of Arms as on his Stall Plate as a Knight of the Garter, from which he was expelled in 1915. I would question the Coronet but, as only the Emperor and Crown Prince were of Germany, the rest of the German Royal Family remained of Prussia, so the Shield should be authentic.
Viktoria
Crown Princess Victoria was keen for Viktoria to marry Prince Alexander of Battenberg who had been chosen to become sovereign Prince of Bulgaria. Viktoria promptly fell in love with his lean good looks. The German Court, however, was against the match for fear of offending the Russian Tsar and so The Crown Princess had to back down.
Viktoria ended up marrying Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe, whose Coat of Arms is displayed above. The marriage was childless and Adolf died in 1916.
She then caused a scandal when she married Russian refugee Alexander Zoubkoff, supposedly a dancer, in 1927. The marriage was a disaster as Viktoria was forced to sell virtually all her possessions to try to pay off Zoubkoff's debts, but the sale only covered a third of the sum needed. Just as Viktoria had announced her intention to divorce Zoubkoff she caught pneumonia and died on 13th November 1929.
Sophia
Under her Mother's more liberal education, Sophia became the most anglophile of her siblings. She attended her Grandmother's Golden Jubilee in 1887 where she met the equally young Crown Prince Constantine of Greece, Duke of Sparta, who himself had undergone military training in Germany. They next met at the funeral of Sophia's Grandfather, Emperor Wilhelm I and fell in love. Unfortunately, before the couple could get engaged, Sophia's father, Friedrich, died of throat cancer the day after her birthday.
Sophia and Constantine married the following year. The wedding was a popular international event in Greece but caused the now Empress Frederich much sadness and did not go down well with the new German Emperor (Sophia's brother Wilhelm) and Empress. Sophia's marital Coat of Arms are shown above and are simply Greece and Prussia under Greek Crowns and within a blue Pavilion scattered with white Crosses.
Sophia rode the turbulent political scene in Greece, especially in the 1920s, but ended up in exile in Frankfurt where she died of cancer in 1932. Her son, King George II, managed to repatriate the bodies of the Greek Royal Family who had died in exile. Sophia had been buried in the Russian Church in Florence alongside Constantine (and his mother, Queen Olga) and was buried in the royal burial ground at Tatoi Palace, just outside Athens, in an elaborate ceremony in November 1936.
Margarethe
Their marriage was opposed by Kaiser Wilhelm as Friedrich Karl was considered of lower rank, but was very happy by all accounts. Margarethe and Friedrich Karl would go on to produce 6 healthy Princes. Unfortunately, the two eldest, Friedrich Wilhelm and Maximilian, died in action in the First World War. The next son, Philipp, and the youngest, Christoph, were involved with the Nazis during the Second World War. Christoph became disillusioned and was about to leave the Party when he died in a plane crash in Italy in 1943. He was married to Sophie of Greece, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh's sister, who married Prince George William of Hanover 3 years later.
For 2 months in late 1918 they were considered the elected King and Queen of Finland. After accepting in the first place, Friedrich Karl soon renounced the offer and the project was sidelined with Finland becoming a republic.
Margarethe inherited Schloss Friedrichshof from her Mother and was subject to a jewellery theft as the Castle was used as an officer's club by the military authorities during the American occupation. Only 10% of the jewels is believed to have been recovered.
Margarethe died in 1954 on the 53rd anniversary of her own Mother's death.
I can find no reliable example of the Coat of Arms of the Landgarviate of Hesse, let alone an example of Margarethe's Arms. There are examples of proposed Arms for the Kingdom of Finland, but these can be disregarded as fanciful.