Auguste Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg

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Empress Auguste Viktoria, 1910
Empress monogram

Auguste Viktoria Friederike Luise Feodora Jenny von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg VA (born October 22, 1858 in Dolzig , Niederlausitz ; † April 11, 1921 in Haus Doorn , Netherlands ) was the wife of Kaiser Wilhelm II and as such from 1888 to 1918 German Empress and Queen of Prussia.

Childhood and adolescence

Portrait of Heinrich von Angeli from 1880
Dolzig Castle, birthplace of Auguste Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg

Auguste Viktoria, Princess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg , was the eldest daughter of Duke Friedrich VIII of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg (1829-1880) and his wife Princess Adelheid zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1835-1900), Daughter of Prince Ernst I of Hohenlohe-Langenburg and his wife Princess Feodora of Leiningen .

She and her siblings first spent a quiet childhood in Dolzig in Lusatia (today: Dłużek, district of Lubsko ) in their father's mansion. When the crisis in Holstein came to a head at the end of 1863 because the Danish government had initially excluded the duchy from the constitutional community with Denmark and Schleswig , contrary to the international agreement of 1852 , her father went back there, like his father Christian August in the 1840s to register his inheritance claims to the duchies. In fact, after the Hanoverian and Saxon troops occupied Holstein in the course of the federal execution , Friedrich was enthusiastically received.

As Frederick “the eighth” (he saw himself as the legitimate successor to the recently deceased Danish king Frederick VII ), he tried to rule from Kiel after Prussia and Austria separated Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg from the Danish crown in the German-Danish War in 1864 had. The Austrians administrating Holstein initially let him go. But at the latest after Prussia had expelled Austria from the German Confederation and Holstein in 1866, Friedrich was finally sidelined politically and had to leave Holstein with his family. From then on she lived alternately in Gotha and at Primkenau Castle ( Sprottau district ), which had belonged to his father, Duke Christian August, since 1853. It was not until Auguste Viktoria's marriage to the Prussian-German heir to the throne Wilhelm that the Augustenburger officially reconciled with the new state.

Marriage and offspring

Auguste Viktoria (top center) as a young girl with her mother and siblings, around 1873
Wedding medal Berlin 1881, obverse
The Imperial Family, around 1902
The back with the prince couple in medieval costume. Behind it 3 pages with the coats of arms of Prussia, Germany and Schleswig-Holstein

When the princess fell in love with Prince Ernst of Saxony-Meiningen (1859–1941), son of Duke George II of Saxony-Meiningen , she was sent to England in 1875 to visit relatives. Through her maternal grandmother, she was a great niece of the British Queen Victoria (1819-1901).

Wilhelm of Prussia, who later became Kaiser Wilhelm II, met her in 1868 in Reinhardsbrunn Castle in Thuringia . The acquaintance was renewed by the befriended parents in Potsdam in the summer of 1878 . The engagement on February 14, 1880 in Gotha (immediately after the death of her father) was entirely in line with the family policy of the Prussian Crown Prince couple, in contrast to the Prussian court society and initially also Emperor Wilhelm I. Family of the princess was not considered equal (by a middle-class great-grandmother and a grandmother who was only a countess). In addition, there was concern about political entanglements in Prussia because of the annexation of the duchies in 1866, since Duke Friedrich VIII upheld his claims. For this reason, the engagement was not officially announced until June 2, 1880.

On February 27, 1881, she married in Berlin Prince Wilhelm of Prussia (1859-1941), son of Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia and his wife Princess Victoria of Great Britain, grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm I and the maternal side of Queen Victoria . The marriage had seven children:

empress

With her husband's accession to the throne on June 15, 1888, Auguste Viktoria became German Empress and Queen of Prussia. She took over numerous protectorates, including about the German Red Cross Society and the Patriotic Women's Association . Under their patronage, the Evangelical Church Aid Association for the “Fight against Religious and Moral Emergency” was founded, from which the Evangelical Church Building Association emerged shortly afterwards . The Empress supported the construction of Protestant churches in Berlin with great commitment, primarily in the new workers' quarters. But this commitment also bore fruit elsewhere. After the Empress had accompanied her husband on his Palestine trip in 1898 , the Protestant " Empress Auguste Victoria Foundation " in Jerusalem was able to inaugurate the Church of the Assumption on the Mount of Olives in 1914 . The empress's strong commitment to Protestant church building earned her the popular name "Kirchenjuste".

Auguste Viktoria was particularly involved in the social field. Not least because of this, she was more popular and respected than her husband, whose actions in public were often criticized and mocked by the population. She supported the women's movement and, thanks to the suggestions of Marie Martin, advocated a better education for girls and young women. Through her commitment to charitable and church efforts in the German Reich, she came into contact with Christian reform efforts around Friedrich von Bodelschwingh and Adolf Stoecker .

During the First World War she worked in charitable organizations and took care of the hospital system in particular .

Exile and death

Empress coat of arms
Empress Auguste Viktoria, 1918 (commemorative postcard from 1921)

In the course of the November Revolution, she followed her husband into exile in the Netherlands on November 27, 1918, after a short stay in the Villa Ingenheim of her son Eitel Friedrich, and in 1920 she moved into the Doorn house in the province of Utrecht. Wilhelm II wrote in 1922: “The revolution broke the heart of the Empress. From November 1918 onwards she was visibly aging and was no longer able to counteract the physical ailments with the previous resistance. Her sickness soon began. Most of all, she was homesick for the German soil, for the German land. Nevertheless, she still tried to comfort me… ”In July 1920, her youngest son Joachim ended by suicide, which Wilhelm commented:“ That the kid did that to us and especially to his mother! ”

Auguste Viktoria, the last German Empress, died on April 11, 1921. One of her last words has been handed down: "I must not die, I cannot leave the Kaiser alone."

Many German newspapers put a black margin on the news of his death. The death of the empress after three years in exile was felt by her supporters as particularly difficult and the deceased was honored as the mother of the country. Her body was transferred to the Temple of Antiquities in the park of Sanssouci Palace (Potsdam); Wilhelm II and the Crown Prince were not allowed to attend the funeral. Thousands followed the Empress's coffin.

Shortly before her death, Auguste Victoria expressed the wish for the emperor to be remarried after her death. Wilhelm II married the widowed Princess Hermine von Schönaich-Carolath on November 5, 1922, just one and a half years after her death .

Honors

Statue of the Empress in Marl

After Auguste Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg were named:

schools

Hospitals

Foundations

Districts

Streets and parks

Victoriastraße in Marl with an additional legend sign

miscellaneous

Empress Auguste Viktoria ( Lambert 1890), in the rosarium in Baden near Vienna

  • Philip Alexius de László : The Empress , 1908

  • Kaiser Wilhelm II and Auguste Viktoria

  • Commemorative brooch, around 1890, Auguste-Viktorias gift of honor (monogram "AV" with Prussian royal crown)

  • Postcard "Our Imperial Couple". Auguste Viktoria and Wilhelm II., Around 1910

  • Dedication inscription by the Empress from 1907 in the altar bible of the Reformation Church in Berlin

Personal correspondence

In 2018, around a thousand sealed private letters to Auguste Viktoria from the period between 1883 and 1889 were discovered in the Potsdam New Palace, which had been kept in a previously unknown secret cabinet in the wall above her safe. These come from close family members from Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, but also from the English Queen. The letters are to be opened, scientifically evaluated by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation with the Secret State Archives in Berlin and published as an edition in Auguste Victoria's 100th year of death in 2021.

Private letters, postcards and telegrams by Auguste Viktorias from 1880 to 1919 are kept in the Hohenlohe Central Archive in Neuenstein . They are addressed to her uncle, Prince Hermann zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg , his wife Leopoldine von Baden and their son Ernst II zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg .

reception

literature

Documentary film

  • Auguste Viktoria - The last empress . ZDF-History Production, Germany, 2021, 52 min.

Web links

Commons : Auguste Viktoria, Deutsche Kaiserin  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Augusta Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Auguste Viktoria  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Polska 51 ° 46 '11 0964 "N, 14 ° 55' 45 282" E. See map: Google Maps: The palace in Dluzek. Retrieved April 8, 2021 .
  2. ↑ Angelika Obert: Kirchenjuste - a portrait. Deutschlandradio Kultur , April 10, 2011.
  3. ↑ Angelika Obert: Empress Auguste Victoria. How the provincial princess became the empress of hearts. Wichern, 2011.
  4. ↑ Angelika Schaser: Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer. A political community. Cologne: Böhlau, 2010, p. 121 f.
  5. ↑ Harenberg's personal dictionary 20th century, data and services . In: Harenberg (Ed.): Lexicon . 1st edition. Harenberg Lexikon-Verlag, Dortmund 1992, ISBN 3-611-00228-3 , p. 61 .
  6. ^ Wilhelm II .: Events and characters from the years 1878-1918 . P. 288.
  7. ^ SZ quotations from Wilhelm II.
  8. ↑ Friedhild den Toom, Sven Michael Klein: Hermine - the second wife of Wilhelm II.
  9. ↑ Auguste-Viktoria-Platz . In: Street name dictionary of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
  10. ↑ Dolziger Strasse. In: Street name dictionary of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  11. ↑ slesvigske.dk ( Memento of the original dated June 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / slesvigske.dk
  12. ↑ selters.de ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.selters.de
  13. ↑ selters.de
  14. ↑ Letters to the last German Empress could shed light on a dramatic epoch ( Memento of the original from August 8, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: arte, August 7, 2018, on: arte.tv @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / info.arte.tv
  15. ↑ Markus Wehner: Treasure trove of letters from the last German Empress found . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 7, 2018, at: faz.net
  16. ↑ Vanja Budde : Find of Empress Auguste Victoria Letters, 100 years hidden in a secret safe . In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur, August 7, 2018, on: deutschlandfunkkultur.de
  17. ^ Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, HZAN La 140 Bü 110: Letters from the niece of Prince Hermann Auguste Victoria, later wife of Kaiser Wilhelm II, to her uncle. Retrieved August 16, 2018 .
  18. ^ Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, HZAN La 141 Bü 56: Letters to Leopoldine from her niece in law, Empress Auguste Viktoria (1858–1921). Retrieved August 16, 2018 .
  19. ^ Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, La 142 Bü 743: Letters and telegram to Ernst II from his cousin Empress Auguste Viktoria, née Princess of Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg. Retrieved August 16, 2018 .
predecessor Office Successor
Victoria (Empress Friedrich) German Empress and Queen of Prussia
1888–1918 		Title expired
personal data
SURNAME Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, Auguste Viktoria von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schleswig-Holstein, Auguste Victoria Princess of; Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, Friederike Luise Feodora Jenny von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Empress and wife of Wilhelm II.
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Dolzig , Sorau district
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1921
PLACE OF DEATH House Doorn , Netherlands