Battenberg affair
The Battenberg affair is the name given to the conflict at the German imperial court, which lasted from 1881 to 1888, over the marriage of Princess Viktoria with Alexander von Battenberg . Princess Viktoria was the daughter of the later German imperial couple Friedrich III. and Empress Victoria , who at the beginning of the conflict were still as crown prince couple without any political influence. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was able to prevent the marriage, which would have seriously endangered his pro-Russian policy.
Alexander von Battenberg was the second eldest son from the morganatic marriage of Alexander von Hessen-Darmstadt with Julia Hauke . Was as a candidate for the Bulgarian throne searched, he was on a proposal of his uncle, the Tsar Alexander II. As Prince of Bulgaria used, the expected from him a decidedly pro-Russian policy. When he did not meet this expectation, Prince Alexander was forced to abdicate by the Tsar in 1886. The Prussian Princess Victoria had been in love with the handsome Prince Alexander since the beginning of the 1880s; her mother Victoria von Sachsen-Coburg and Gotha and her grandmother Augusta von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach both welcomed this possible connection. Otto von Bismarck, on the other hand, saw this planned connection as a threat to his pro-Russian policy and ultimately enforced a ban on Wilhelm I. The dispute with the Crown Prince couple over the marriage of Princess Viktoria ultimately led to Wilhelm I passing over his son and heir to the throne and entrusting his grandson Wilhelm II to represent the Prussian court on state trips. After Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm succeeded his father Wilhelm I on the German imperial throne in 1888, the affair escalated a second time. The connection, especially wanted by Empress Victoria, was ultimately not realized because Otto von Bismarck threatened to resign and the mother of the German Empress, the British Queen Victoria , was able to convince her that the connection was not very advantageous.
literature
in order of appearance
- Patricia Kolander: Frederick III - Germany's Liberal Emperor . Greenwood Press, Westport 1995, ISBN 0-313-29483-6 .
- Hannah Pakula: Victoria. Daughter of Queen Victoria, wife of the Prussian Crown Prince, mother Wilhelm II. Marion von Schröder-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-547-77360-1 .
- Haralampi G. Oroschakoff : The Battenberg Affair. Life and Adventure of Gavriil Oroschakoff or A Russian-European Story . Berlin-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-8270-0705-6 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pakula, pp. 443-451