Albrecht of Prussia (1809–1872)

Prince Albrecht of Prussia

Prince Albrecht of Prussia (born October 4, 1809 in Königsberg , † October 14, 1872 in Berlin ; full name Friedrich Heinrich Albrecht Prince of Prussia ) was the youngest brother of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia , Kaiser Wilhelm I , the Russian Tsarina Alexandra Fjodorovna and the Grand Duchess Alexandrine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin . In the Prussian army he rose to the rank of colonel general . After divorce from his first wife Marianne Princess of Orange-Nassau and the morganatic marriage of his second wife Rosalie Countess von Hohenau, née von Rauch , he had to move his residence from Berlin to Dresden . For this purpose he had Albrechtsberg Castle built there.

Life

Prince Albrecht and his sister Princess Luise (painting by Gerhard von Kügelgen )

Prinz-Albrecht-Palais in Berlin (around 1837)

Princess Marianne
of Orange-Nassau, Albrecht's first wife

Albrecht was the fifth son and last of ten children of King Friedrich Wilhelm III. and Queen Luise born in Königsberg, her residence during the French occupation of Berlin. He was the brother of the Prussian kings Friedrich Wilhelm IV and Wilhelm I , who was also German Emperor from 1871. His mother died when he was less than a year old. Albrecht and his siblings came into the care of Princess Marianne .

At the age of 10, like all Prussian princes, he joined the 1st Guard Regiment on foot in the Prussian Army in 1819 as a second lieutenant , in which he was promoted to general of the cavalry until 1852 , a branch to which he devoted himself particularly; In 1865 he was appointed inspector of the Third Army Division. In the war against Austria in 1866 he commanded the cavalry corps of the 1st Army and attended the battles near Münchengrätz , Gitschin and Königgrätz .

At the beginning of the war against France in 1870 he was given command of the 4th Cavalry Division assigned to the 3rd Army and took an active part in the lead of the 3rd Army from Weißenburg via Wörth and Sedan to Paris . At the beginning of October he was given the task of observing the French Loire Army within the framework of General von der Tann's army division . His cavalry covered the Bavarians in the battle at Artenay and when advancing towards Orléans .

In the battle of Loigny and Poupry and Beaugency , his cavalry division successfully participated in the operations of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg Friedrich Franz II and Prince Friedrich Karl Nikolaus of Prussia until the end of the Loire campaign. Albrecht was awarded the Pour le Mérite on December 31, 1870 .

After the end of the war, Albrecht was appointed Colonel General. From 1867 to 1871 he was a member of the Reichstag of the North German Confederation as a member of the Reichstag constituency of Gumbinnen 3 . He did not join any parliamentary group and was an independent conservative. He died on October 14, 1872 and was buried in the mausoleum in the park of Charlottenburg Palace (in a tin coffin in the crypt under the vestibule).

From September 14, 1830 to March 28, 1849 Albrecht of Prussia was married to Marianne Princess of Oranien-Nassau (1810-1883), the youngest daughter of King Wilhelm I of the Netherlands . The marriage broke up in 1845 when he entered into an extramarital, inappropriate love affair with Rosalie von Rauch (1820–1879), the daughter of the Prussian Minister of War General of Infantry Gustav von Rauch and his wife's lady-in-waiting . He morganatically married Rosalie in 1853. The Dutch and Prussian courts had previously only agreed to the divorce of Albrecht and Marianne when Marianne von Oranien-Nassau was expecting a child from her coachman and later cabinet secretary Johannes van Rossum , with whom she had had a love affair in 1848. The inappropriate wedding of Albrecht and Rosalie had to take place outside of Prussia. The court of Saxony-Meiningen was chosen because Albrecht's eldest daughter Charlotte from his marriage to Marianne von Oranien-Nassau was married to the Hereditary Prince of Saxony-Meiningen (from 1866 Duke Georg II of Saxony-Meiningen ). Rosalie von Rauch was raised to the rank of Countess von Hohenau shortly before the marriage . Your newly created family name looked like an allusion to the name Hohenzollern.

Prince Albrecht monument in Charlottenburger Schloßstraße

Albrechtsberg Castle near Dresden

Due to his divorce from Marianne von Oranien-Nassau and his second wife Rosalie Countess von Hohenau, who was not in line with his rank, Albrecht was not wanted at the Prussian court. Therefore, from 1850 to 1854, he had the splendid Albrechtsberg Castle built on the Loschwitzhang near Dresden by the Schinkel student Adolf Lohse , where he lived with Rosalie and two sons were born. Inside the palace, Albrecht had his favorite travel destinations recorded through landscape paintings in the galleries: Cairo, Constantinople, Merano and Naples. The Moorish or Turkish bath recalls his trip to the Orient in 1843.

In Berlin, from 1860, he had Lohse's house on Wilhelmstrasse, the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais , rebuilt again after Schinkel had fundamentally changed it 30 years earlier in accordance with his wishes.

Honors

A monument to the prince was designed by the sculptor Eugen Boermel and the painter Conrad Freyberg and was ceremoniously unveiled on October 14, 1901 at the northern end of Schloßstraße in Charlottenburg in the presence of Kaiser Wilhelm II , see Prince Albrecht Monument .
The Berlin Albrechtstrasse bears his name.
An apple variety, the Albrecht apple, was discovered by the court gardener C. Braun from Kamenz in 1865 and named after his son Albrecht.

family

Children from first marriage (1830–1849) with Marianne Princess of Oranien-Nassau (1810–1883):

Charlotte (1831–1855)

⚭ 1850 Duke George II of Saxony-Meiningen (1826–1914)

Rosalie Countess von Hohenau, née von Rauch - second, morganatic wife of Albrecht

Albrecht (1837-1906)

⚭ 1873 Princess Marie of Saxony-Altenburg (1854–1898)

Elisabeth (* / † 1840)
Alexandrine (1842–1906)

⚭ 1865 Duke Wilhelm of Mecklenburg (1827–1879)

Children from a second, morganatic marriage with Rosalie von Rauch (1820–1879), Countess von Hohenau:

Wilhelm (1854–1930) Count of Hohenau

⚭ 1. 1878 Freiin Laura Saurma von und zu der Jeltsch (1857-1884)

⚭ 2. 1887 Princess Margarethe zu Hohenlohe-Öhringen (1865–1940)

Friedrich (1857–1914) Count of Hohenau

⚭ 1881 Charlotte von der Betten (1863–1933)

literature

Hans Zeidler and Heidi Zeidler: The forgotten prince. History and stories about Albrechtsberg Castle. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1995, ISBN 3-7608-0341-5

Gorch Pieken / Cornelia Kruse: Prussian love luck. Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-549-07337-7

Daniel Schönpflug : The marriages of the Hohenzollern. Kinship, Politics, and Ritual in Europe 1640–1918. Publishing house Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht . Göttingen, 2013. p. 104.

Bernhard von Poten : Albrecht (Prince of Prussia) . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 45, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1900, pp. 741 f.

Maik Without Time: Military Current Account . A souvenir of Prince Albrecht of Prussia from the war of 1870/71 , in: Buck, Meike; Derda, Hans-Jürgen; Pöppelmann, Heike (ed.): Tatort history. 120 years of searching for traces in the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, Petersberg 2011 (publications of the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum 113), pp. 194–195.

Samuel Wittwer : Glass tulips, Persian vases and Moorish brocade from Berlin: Prince Albrecht of Prussia's journey to the Orient in 1843 and its consequences. Annual report 2019. Ed. Friends of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens eV, Berlin 2019.

Web links

Commons : Prince Albrecht von Preußen (1809–1872) - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Family history of Prince Albrecht of Prussia on www.schloss-albrechtsberg.de
Albrecht of Prussia in the database of members of the Reichstag

Individual evidence

^ Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite 1740-1918. Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf 1998, ISBN 3-7648-2473-5 , p. 406.
^ Fritz Specht, Paul Schwabe: The Reichstag elections from 1867 to 1903. Statistics of the Reichstag elections together with the programs of the parties and a list of the elected representatives. 2nd edition, Verlag Carl Heymann, Berlin 1904, p. 9.
^ Hartmut Heinemann: Princess Marianne of the Netherlands (1810-1883) and the Rheingau. A woman between tradition and emancipation. In: Rheingau Forum. 2/2002, p. 4.
↑ Henryk Grzybowski, Grafschafter Obst or fruits that bear the name of Grafschafter noblemen , in: Altheider Christmas Letter , 2014, pp. 127–128.

personal data
SURNAME	Albrecht of Prussia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Friedrich Heinrich Albrecht Prince of Prussia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Prussian Prince and Colonel General
DATE OF BIRTH	October 4, 1809
PLACE OF BIRTH	Koenigsberg
DATE OF DEATH	October 14, 1872
Place of death	Berlin

[1] Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite 1740-1918. Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf 1998, ISBN 3-7648-2473-5 , p. 406.

[2] Fritz Specht, Paul Schwabe: The Reichstag elections from 1867 to 1903. Statistics of the Reichstag elections together with the programs of the parties and a list of the elected representatives. 2nd edition, Verlag Carl Heymann, Berlin 1904, p. 9.

[3] Hartmut Heinemann: Princess Marianne of the Netherlands (1810-1883) and the Rheingau. A woman between tradition and emancipation. In: Rheingau Forum. 2/2002, p. 4.

[4] Henryk Grzybowski, Grafschafter Obst or fruits that bear the name of Grafschafter noblemen , in: Altheider Christmas Letter , 2014, pp. 127–128.