Empress of Germany
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"A girl and not a boy, as we had so hoped and wish, Queen Victoria wrote in her journal, we were, I am afraid, sadly disappointed, but yet our hearts were full of gratitude for God having brought me safely and having such a strong and healthy child. Dearest Albert hardly left me at all and was the greatest support and comfort.
The little girl was christened on February 10,1841, first anniversary of her parents wedding day. Vicky, as the girl was called, became the cleverest of the Queen's children and also the most beloved by her father. Both, Victoria and Albert, made her daughter feel they were proud of her, and this created in the young girl a sense of superiority and self confidence since her early years. To her father, Vicky was perfect; her brother Bertie, the Prince of Wales, almost a year younger, was constantly compared in disadvantage with his sister. Albert made Vicky as himself; he transmitted her his political liberal ideas, which would carry Vicky great troubles during her life.
Prince Albert, born at Coburg, had promised himself, when he left home to marry the Queen of England, to remain a loyal German. Later on he got to know the British Constitutional Government and his highest dream became to unificate the nearly forty German states under Prussia and to set in Germany a constitutional and parliamentary government as the British one., eradicating the outdated autocratic government. He transmitted Vicky this ideal . Deep in Albert's mind was beginning to grow an idea: Vicky could marry the Prussian heir presumtive to the throne, Prince Frederick. This matter had first been suggested by Albert's and Victoria's uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians, but now Albert, who saw great possibilities in this marriage, was maturing the idea.
In 1851, The Great Exhibition, conceived by Albert, was held in Hyde Park. Queen Victoria invited Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, his wife Augusta, and their children: twenty one year old Frederick and thirteen year old Louise. As her parents expected, ten year old Vicky, although her young age, caught immediately Fritz's (as Frederick was called) attention. The young Prince already knew that his future might be linked to the English princess. In 1855 Fritz visited England again. This time the Royal family received him in Balmoral, the family's castle in Scotland. He caused a special impression on Vicky, now fourteen. Fritz too, found Vicky prettier than the girl he had seen in 1851. He described her as "sweet natural, friendly an unaffected, ...with a pleasant mixture of childlike simplicity and virginal charm....she posses great feeling and intelligence and has lively interests in art and literature.."; Fritz spoke to Victoria and Albert and the engagement was formalized, but they would wait to marry until Vicky was seventeen.
Vicky and Fritz's wedding was celebrated on January 25 1858, in the Royal Chapel of St. James Palace. The Prussians wanted the wedding to be held in Berlin, but Queen Victoria replied that it would be celebrated in London since not every day one marries the eldest daughter of the Queen of England.
When Vicky arrived in Prussia, the country was nominally ruled by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who was mentally insane. Vicky's father in law, Prince Wilhelm, was the King's brother and the heir to the throne. Fritz was second in succession. Prince Wilhelm, in whose hands actually laid the government, had assumed the title of Prince Regent. Fritz's mother, Augusta, was the daughter of the Grand Duke of Saxe Weimar.
Soon Vicky became pregnant. A fluently correspondance began between Vicky and her mother, which would last until the Queen's death. This letters are nowadays an important historical document. Vicky's labor began shortly before midnight on January 26 1859. The delivery was very difficult because the baby was in breech position and mother and child almost died during the process. The baby's left arm was severely injured during childbirth. Vicky's first child; was the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the damage in his arm was to be of vital influence in his future life and personality.
Vicky and Fritz had, besides Wilhelm, seven more children: Charlotte, Henry, Sigismund, Victoria, Waldemar, Sophie and Margaret. Sigismund and Waldemar died in childhood.
But meanwhile, Vicky couldn't get accustomed to German ways; she would remain English forever, fact which gave her a great unpopularity. Two parties were beginning to develop in the Prussian Court: the Conservatives (King Wilhelm, Queen Augusta, the Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck and Prince Wilhelm) and the Liberals (The Crown Prince and Princess). Because of her liberal ideas, Vicky was a constant victim of Queen Augusta's humiliations. Wilhelm and Augusta were constantly trying to push her grandson Wilhelm towards them and away from his parents, educating him in the Conservative regime. Vicky's other eldest children, Charlotte and Henry also took the Conservative side meanwhile Victoria, Sophie and Margaret stayed with their parents. Vicky never got along with her eldest son. Wilhelm had a difficult character, maybe as a consecuence of his damage arm. Because of this, Vicky demanded too much of him so he could overcome his handicap; but the young Prince reacted with a rebel attitude towards her, finding more understanding in his grandparents and getting apart from his parents.
Prime Minister Bismarck, through several wars (with Denmark, Austria and France), suceeded in the unification of Germany under Prussia. The King assumed the title of Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany and Bismarck became Chancellor of the Empire. But Bismarck regime was not the one Prince Albert have dreamed of and Vicky and Fritz were fighting for; his regime was an autocratic one in which Wilhelm I was the nominally ruler and the Chancellor the one who actually governed.
During the following years the antagonism between Bismarck and the Crown Prince and Princess were constantly increasing. There was even an attempt to move Fritz from the line of succession and make Wilhelm the heir to the throne. The only thing Vicky could do was to fantasise of a time when her father in law's reign would be over and she and Fritz became sovereigns. Then, her father's dream would become reality.
But life would play Vicky a bad turn. Few days after New Year in 1887, Fritz began to be bothered by hoarseness. By March his voice had almost disappeared. Fritz and Vicky consulted Dr. Karl Gerhardt, a German throat specialist, but not a laryngologist, who found a strange growth on Fritz left vocal cord. Gerhardt and other German doctor named Bergman suspected cancer and suggested an operation. In 1887, this kind of operation was dangerous and had a high risk for the patient of loosing life. A British throat specialist, Morell Mackenzie, was then consulted, on Vicky's instance, diagnosing a wart or papilloma. Mackenzie sent a sample of Fritz's affected tissue to Dr. Virchow, an eminence in cells, who didn't find cancer, but said that the sample was too superficial for a proper diagnosis.
Fritz's illness developed into a virtual battle between the British doctors and their German colleagues. Mackenzie wanted the Crown Prince to go to England to be able to treat him with more facilities. Vicky desperately wanted to go because she wanted to attend to the Jubilee ceremonies of Queen Victoria's fiftieth aniversary on the throne so they departed to England in June. Two days after the Jubilee, Fritz visited Mackenzie, who cut out as much as possible of the growth in Fritz's throat, and sent another sample to Virchow, who couldn't find any evidence of cancer again. But despite Dr. Mackenzie's extraction, the growth on the Prince's throat was still there and his voice had almost completely gone.Fritz and Vicky decided not to go back to Berlin because of the proximity of winter; instead they went to a health resort in the Austrian Tyrol, where the weather was more benign.
Meanwhile in Berlin, Emperor Wilhelm was getting close to the end of his life; he was now ninety one yaars old. Bismarck urged the Crown Prince to come back, but Vicky hide this urgency from her husband; for her, Fritz's health was more important. She took him to the warmer weather of St. Remo in the Italian Riviera. It was there where, in November, Dr. Mackenzie finally diagnosed cancer on Fritz's throat; he had found more swelling on his vocal cords, persuading himself that a malignant tumour was the cause of it. Mackenzie suggested two options: surgery, which offered very little possibilities of success, or to let the disease follow its course and, when necessary, to perform a tracheotomy which would allow the patient to breath.
While his father was suffering with cancer, Prince Wilhelm, supported by Bismarck's son Herbert, was trying to skip Fritz from the line of succession. They considered that in spite of the Crown Prince's weak health, when he acceded to the throne, his wife would try to govern the country bending German policy to England's will. Vicky was more unpopular than ever; she was accused of pushing her husband into the hands of incompetent British doctors, instead of consulting the German eminencies.
At the beggining of 1888, the tracheotomy on Fritz's throat could not be postponed for more time, in spite of his impediment for breathing. A large canula was inserted into Fritz's trachea, causing him hemorrhages and discomfort. In Berlin, Wilhelm I was getting weaker, so Bismarck demanded the Crown Prince to come back immediately. Vicky finally agreed, considering it was his husband obligation. Wilhelm I died on the morning of March 9 1888 and Fritz, mortally ill, became Kaiser Frederick III. Now Vicky was Empress; she was called the Empress Frederick. She was at last able to accomplish her father's old dream. But there would be no time for this. By June 1888, three months after his accession, Fritz was so weak that he could just move his arms. Bismarck visited him; with he and Vicky around his bed, the Emperor gathered in his hands those of his wife and his old enemy, imploring Bismarck with his eyes to look after Vicky when he had gone. The Chancellor said: "I will take care of her". Vicky knew that Bismarck had won the battle. Frederick III died on the afternoon of June 15, 1888; he had fifty six years old and only three months in the throne.
Vicky would suffer more humiliations from his son, now Kaiser Wilhelm II. Immediately after his father's death, Wilhelm sent a troop of Hussars to surround the palace forbidding anybody to leave or enter the building. He wanted to avoid any private paper of his father to leave Germany; but nothing was found because all his papers were already kept safely in England. Vicky and Fritz took them away when they attended to the Jubilee. Despite Vicky's opposition, Wilhelm ordered an authopsy on his father' body.
Vicky was now alone, feeling she had nothing to hope for. "Day by day, she wrote, I feel more lonely and unprotected";. She found some refuge on her charity activivties and in the visits of her grandchildren, specially of Feodora, Charlotte's only child, and Henry's haemophiliac son, Waldemar, both of who were her most frequent visitors. Bismarck, her old enemy, now retired from politics because of his differences with Wilhelm II, died on July 30 1898. From the spring of 1899, Vicky's health began to deteriorate. She was feeling so bad that she declined to go to England in her mother's eightieth birthday. A breast cancer was detected on her and was said to be very advanced. But what caused her more pain was a lumbago on her back, probably caused by a falling from a horse. By the beginning of 1900, she was in constant pain almost all day and night. On October 1900, Vicky wrote her daughter Sophie: "The terrible nights of agony are worse than ever, no rest, no peace. Tears rush down my cheeks when I am not shouting with pain";. Queen Victoria died on January 22, 1901. Vicky, for obvious reasons, couldn't attend to the funerals She wrote to Sophie: "To have lost her seems so impossible...What will life be to me without her.".
On a visit her brother, the new King of England, Edward VII, made to Germany that same year, Vicky asked to her brother's secretary, Frederick Ponsonby to take with him to England her personal letters, which once she and Fritz took away and which she had asked her mother to return, in order to tell the story of her life in Germany, defending herself and Fritz against any calumny. Now, she wanted Ponsonby to keep the letters. On March 1, 1901, King Edward and his secretary left for London, taking Vicky´s letters with them. The Empress Frederick survived five more months. She died on August 5, 1901. Immediately after her mother's death, Wilhelm sent his troop to Vicky's palace, Friedrichshof, to search for his mother's papers, as he had done on the event of his father's death. Nothing was found again. They were safely kept in Frederick Ponsonby's house in Windsor. In 1929, Ponsonby published a selection of Vicky's letters with the title "Letters of the Empress Frederick".
Pakula, Hannah, An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick
Packard, Jerrold M., Victoria's Daughters
