(1866-1953)
; Prince Henry was born in August 14, 1862 at Neues Palace in Postdam. As her eldest sister Charlotte, Henry caused certain dissapointment to his mother, since he wasn't very smart, a condition that Vicky deplored. About him Vicky wrote to her mother: "Henry is awfully backward in everything... is hoplessly lazy, drole and idle about his lessons, but such a good nature boy- everybody likes him, though he is dreadfully provoking to teach from being so desperately slow".
Prince Henry entered the navy; when he was sixteen, in 1880, he went on a cruise in a warship. After two years of sailing, his ship docked in Kiel , where he was to continue his naval studies. In Kiel he was visited by his mother with whom he spent that afternoon and evening. His return from the cruise rised Vicky's estimation towards him; her favourite son, Prince Waldemar, had died last year and Henry told her he felt lost without his brother.
Together with his brother Wilhelm and sister Charlotte, Henry formed an alliance agaisnt his parents' policy and opinions. When his father, Crown Prince Friedrich fell ill with a throat cancer and Vicky preferred English doctors to treat her husband instead of Germans, Henry accused his mother of been killing his father. On May 24, 1888, Henry married his cousin Irene of Hesse and by the Rhine. His father, now Emperor Friedrich III, altough he was very ill, made an effort to attend his son's wedding; in fact the Emperor died a month later.
Princess Irene was born on July 11, 1866 at Dramstadt. She was named "Irene";, which came from the Greek for "peace", because the Austro Prussian war had just ended. In 1878 all the Hessian children (except the second sister Ella) and their father, Grand Duke Louis IV, became ill with diphteria. Princess Alice nursed them all and by November she had contracted the disease and died on December 14. Irene was just 12 when she lost her mother.
Henry and Irene made a very happy marriage but a great tragedy would shadowed their lives. Irene, as her mother and grandmother, was a carrier of the haemophilia gene. Of her three sons, two were haemophiliacs. The eldest, Waldemar, who was born on March 20, 1889, was haemophiliac. The second, Sigismund, born on November 27, 1896, was the only one who was healthy. The third son, Henry, born on January 9 1900, was also haemophiliac and died when he was 4 years old in 1904. As a daughter of Queen Victoria, Vicky could have been a haemophilia carrier and introduced the defective gene into the Prussian Royal family by marring Friedrich III. If that had happened and Henry had inherited the gene, he as haemophiliac and Irene as a carrier could have produced the very strange case of a haemophiliac daughter. Nevertheless, it was not Vicky but her niece Irene who introduce the gene into the Prussian Royal family.
Prince Henry was during all his life at the shadow of his brother, Kaiser Wilhelm II. His few attempts into diplomacy were a failure. He acted twice as a messenger between his brother the Kaiser and his cousin King George V of Great Britain. The first time was in 1912 and the second in 1914 after the assasination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand but before the outbreak of the War. Both times, Henry's messages made the Kaiser believed that England would remain neutral during the War, adding more confusion at the outbreak of the War.
Henry and Irene had bought an estate in Northern Germany called Hemmelmarck, and they lived there since then. In 1922, a bunch of strange letters began to arrive at Hemmelmark. They came from a Clara Peuthwert who suggested Irene to meet a woman named Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia, Irene's niece, daughter of the late Empress of Russia, who was Irene's sister. It was supposed that the whole Russian Imperial family had been killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918 during the Revolution, so Irene was shocked with the possibility that her niece could be alive. Irene visited Anna Anderson and she admitted she had a great resemblance to her nice burt certainly she was not. It was said that Anna had been rude with Princess Irene during the interview and she was deeply offended. Irene wrote: ";She did not even answer when I asked her to say a word or give me a sign that she had recognized me. It was the same when I asked her -not to leave anything out- Don't you know me? I'm your aunt Irene" I saw immediately that she could not be one of my nieces. Eventhough I had not seen them for nine years, the fundamental characteristics could not have attored for that degree in particular the possition of the eyes, the ears and so forth."
. Later on, Prince Oskar of Prussia, one of the Kaiser's sons and who believed in the claimant, challenged Irene to have comited a mistake in not having recognised Anastasia. Irene replied: " I could not have made a mistake. She is similar. She is similar but what does that means if it is not she?";. Irene was confused and burst into tears. The affair upset her so muchthat Prince Henry forbid Anastasia as a topic of conversation in Hemmelmark. Princess Irene never made another visit to Anna Anderson, who never succeded in demonstrate to be who she claimed she was.
Prince Henry died on April 20, 1929. Irene's eledest son Waldemar, who had lived a very restricted life because of his haemophilia, had married in 1919 to Princess Calixta of Lippe; the couple had no issue. During World War II, while living in Silesia, Waldemar was forced to escaped from the Soviet advanced in 1945; he became ill and died because of the lack of blood for transfussion. Her death pained Irene terribly. Her other son, Sigismund, went ot live to Guatemala in 1922 to start a coffee plantation; later on he moved to Costa Rica. He married to Charlotte Agnes of Saxe Altenburg and had two children, Barbara and Alfred, Irene's only grandchildren. Irene begged his son several times to come back to Germany, burt he never did. Only her grandaughter Barbara went to live with her at Hemmelmark, and she was adopted by Irene as her legal heir. Irene's grandson, Alfred, is still living in Costa Rica. Princess Irene died in Hemmelmark on November 11, 1953.
Eilers, Marlene: Queen Victoria's Descendants
Pakula, Hannah: An Uncommon Woman
Kurth, Peter: The Riddle of Anna Anderson
Massie, Robert K.: The Final Chapter
