Alexandra Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg

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Alexandra Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, around 1910

Princess Alexandra Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg , full name Alexandra Viktoria Auguste Leopoldine Charlotte Amalie Wilhelmine of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg , (* April 21, 1887 at Gut Grünholz in Thumby near Kappeln ; † April 15, 1957 in Lyon , France ) was a German noblewoman and by marriage Princess of Prussia. She was also a painter .

Life

Origin and marriage to August Wilhelm von Prussia

Gut Grünholz , Alexandra Viktoria's birthplace
Princess Alexandra Victoria (1906). Photo by Ferdinand Urbahns

Princess Alexandra Viktoria was the second of six children and the second eldest daughter of Duke Friedrich Ferdinand of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and his wife Princess Caroline Mathilde of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg (1860–1932), daughter of Duke Friedrich VIII. of Schleswig-Holstein and Princess Adelheid zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg . Through her mother she was a niece of the last German Empress Auguste Viktoria .

She was born on April 21, 1887 at Gut Grünholz in Thumby and spent a large part of her childhood and youth there. Together with her sister Viktoria Adelheid , who is two years her senior , she was trained by private tutors and governesses . She received lessons in languages ​​(German, English, French), mathematics, history and politics as well as additional music and dance lessons. In May 1908 she named the saloon steamer Alexandra named after her in Hamburg .

On October 22, 1908, she married her cousin Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia , the fourth son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, in the Berlin City Palace . The marriage was largely arranged by the imperial couple, but was considered relatively happy. Alexandra Viktoria was considered the darling of her mother-in-law and aunt Empress Auguste Viktoria. Princess Catherine Radziwill , who spent a few years at the imperial court, remembered that Alexandra Viktoria was always ready to listen to her mother-in-law. She is a nice girl - fair, fat and the perfect "German housewife". Another contemporary wrote that the marriage was a love match and that Alexandra Viktoria was a charming, pretty, cheerful girl .

Alexandra Viktoria and Prince August Wilhelm on the way to the Reichstag for the election of the President of the Reichstag, October 1930

Actually, August Wilhelm and his wife were supposed to move into Schönhausen Palace (then still) near Berlin, but changed their plans when August Wilhelm's father decided to leave the Villa Liegnitz in Park Sanssouci to his son . The two were very interested in creativity and music. The couple's house in Potsdam developed into a meeting place for artists and scholars. On December 26, 1912, Alexandra Viktoria gave birth to her only child, Prince Alexander Ferdinand of Prussia .

During the First World War , her husband became district administrator of the Ruppin district with his official residence and residence in Rheinsberg Castle . His personal adjutant, Hans Georg von Mackensen , with whom he had been close friends since his youth, played a major role in his life. These "pronounced homosexual tendencies" contributed to the breakdown of the marriage. However, a formal divorce did not take place at first because of the contradiction of the father, Kaiser Wilhelm II. The couple divorced on March 16, 1920. August Wilhelm received custody of their son.

Second marriage

On January 7, 1922, she married her second husband, Corvette Captain Arnold Rümann, in Grünholz . The marriage lasted eleven years and divorced in 1933.

progeny

  • Alexander Ferdinand von Prussia, Alexander Ferdinand Albrecht Achilles Wilhelm Joseph Viktor Karl Feodor (born December 26, 1912 - June 12, 1985) ⚭ 1938 Armgard Weygand (1912–2001) (1 son)

Artistic career

Alexandra Viktoria was trained by the history painter , graphic artist and university professor Arthur Kampf in Berlin. During her studies she also designed wallpaper samples, made watercolors and studies with red chalk and pencil . During her first marriage, she ran two children's homes in Berlin by selling her paintings. In 1920 she first exhibited her landscape paintings with views of the Glücksburg as well as the Flensburg Fjord and the area around Rheinsberg in the Flensburg Museum . From 1926 to 1932 she traveled to the USA with a trailer and exhibited there, for the first time in New York in 1926 . In the United States, she sold over a hundred paintings, including landscapes, flower pieces, and portraits. In 1942 she exhibited an oil painting showing white peonies at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in the National Gallery . After the Second World War , a caravan in the shape of a boat cabin was built according to their specifications in a boat builder's shipyard in Kappeln or Schleswig . She traveled with him and a dog through Europe and sold her pictures for a living. Even Egypt had traveled. In 1949 she drove to Wiesbaden in the caravan on a railroad car to heal a joint inflammation in the Red Cross hospital there. In 1955 she traveled to Morocco alone . Their last trip was to France . She died of sudden cardiac death in Lyon on April 15, 1957 at the age of almost 70. In 1969, a memorial exhibition in her honor was held in the orangery of Glücksburg Castle , which her cousin Prince Friedrich Ferdinand of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg arranged. Your estate will be kept in Glücksburg Castle.

literature

  • Ulrike Wolff-Thomsen: Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Alexandra Victoria Princess too. In: Ulrike Wolff-Thomsen: Lexikon Schleswig-Holsteinischer Künstlerinnen , Städtisches Museum Flensburg (ed.), Verlag Boyens & Co., Heide 1994, ISBN 3-8042-0664-6 , p. 288.

Web links

Commons : Alexandra Viktoria von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Person Page. Retrieved February 6, 2017 .
  2. ^ A b Paul Theroff: Schleswig-Holstein. Retrieved February 6, 2017 .
  3. a b c d Preussen.de - August Wilhelm. Archived from the original on February 7, 2017 ; accessed on February 6, 2017 .
  4. a b c d e f Ulrike Wolff-Thomsen: Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Alexandra Victoria Princess too. In: Ulrike Wolff-Thomsen: Lexikon Schleswig-Holsteinischer Künstlerinnen , Städtisches Museum Flensburg (ed.), Verlag Boyens & Co., Heide 1994, p. 288.
  5. a b c d e f Princess Alexandra Victoria. In: Der Spiegel , December 22, 1949
  6. a b c d e f Alexandra Viktoria zu Schleswig-Holstein - The princess in the caravan. In: Flensburger Tageblatt , June 20, 2015
  7. Exhibition catalog , Berlin 1942