Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (35 page)

When it came to her family, Dona remained the center of their world. For her husband, she became his rock. Her moments of frantic anxiety had grown few and far between, replaced by a quiet submissiveness and determination to add strength, prestige, and stability to the imperial and royal House of Hohenzollern. For Emperor Wilhelm II, a man who was driven by sentiment and emotion, Dona’s influence started having a calming effect on him. One contemporary observed that the empress “acquired a considerable influence over her husband precisely by the way in which she effaced herself and subordinated all her thoughts and actions to his.” Dona made it a point to never offer advice to her husband but rather waited for him to come to her, which began to happen frequently. Count Axel Schwering, a member of the Prussian court, concluded that Wilhelm “learned, in consequence, to look up to” his wife “in many of the difficulties in which he found himself not infrequently entangled.”
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Dona’s support of her husband was not limited only to emotional issues. At some point in their marriage, she had realized how fragile his ego truly was. In her efforts to be Wilhelm’s helpmate, she “did everything she could to ingratiate herself into her husband’s life, memorizing the uniforms of his various regiments, forcing herself to read books on military subjects that she knew interested him, and accompanying him on his daily horseback rides, his early morning calls on his officials, and (when he would permit it) his trips.”
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Like her husband, the empress was a creature of habit that rigidly followed a daily routine. She awoke every morning at 6:00 a.m. and joined Wilhelm for breakfast in their private dining room. This was their own personal space, into which even servants were not admitted. One member of their court described this as “the one hour which the All-Highest [Wilhelm] … devoted to domesticity, when husband and wife could gossip and discuss matters alone and in secret.”
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After breakfast, the empress reviewed the daily kitchen menus and consulted with each member of the household on the day’s plans. She then checked in with her children before the start of their lessons. Much of the day was then spent working at her desk. In her memoirs, Dona’s daughter, Sissy, recalled how busy her mother was: “My earliest childhood recollection of my mother evokes the picture of her never-ending writing. I can still hear the continuous scratch of her pen on her diary as I went into her sitting-room.”
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Dona’s children deeply loved and respected her. When it came to the children, she made it clear to her husband that she was in charge. She once told Poultney Bigelow, a childhood friend of Wilhelm’s, that though her husband was “German Emperor I am Empress of the nursery.”
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This was supported by a contemporary who observed that Dona, “even in the intimacy of her home life never forgets or allows others, even William II., to forget that she is an Empress.”
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No matter how busy or tired Dona was, she always made it a priority to check in on her children in their nursery before she went to bed. One evening, the princes were eager to receive a goodnight kiss from their mother, who was attending a function with Wilhelm and would not be home until late. The princes assured their mother they would remain awake for her, which they did until after midnight. When Dona asked the boys how they were able to stay up so late, Little Willy explained that he and his brothers tied a string to each other, and when one started falling asleep, the others would tug on the string to wake him up. It is not difficult to imagine that Dona’s children worshipped their mother. In their memoirs, letters, and reminiscences, they seem to have nothing but praise for her. Of all her children, Willy and Sissy left the most vivid recollections. In his memoirs published in 1922, the crown prince wrote of his relationship with the empress.

As far back as I can remember, the centre of our existence has been our dearly beloved mother. She has radiated a love which has warmed and comforted us. Whatever joy or sorrow moved us, she has always had for it understanding and sympathy. All that was best in our childhood, nay, all the best that home and family can give, we owe to her. What she was to us in our early youth, that she has remained throughout our adolesence and our manhood. The kindest and best woman is she for whom living means helping, succoring and spending herself in the interests of others; and such a woman is our mother.
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For Dona’s sons, she was their confidante, advisor, and intercessor. One of the main reasons for this was her accessibility. Any of the children could approach Dona at any time, but to speak to Wilhelm, they needed to apply for permission first from either their tutor or their military governor. A true soldier, Wilhelm was a strict disciplinarian who rarely indulged his sons, especially the oldest three. This strictness was somewhat surprising, given his own rowdiness as a child. At the wedding of George’s parents—the future King Edward VII and Alexandra of Denmark—young Willy, then aged four, caused a long string of embarrassments for his family. On the way to Saint George’s Chapel, he hurled his aunt’s muff out the carriage window. During the ceremony, he tried to toss the cairngorm from the head of his dirk across the choir. He bit his uncles Leopold and Arthur when they tried to restrain him. He also caused a shock by publicly addressing Queen Victoria as “Duck.”

The emperor’s unflinching, demanding attitude toward his sons eventually led to strained relationships between the boys and their father. When any of them had committed some transgression, it was always the empress who went to her husband to smooth things out. When it came to these intercessions, Dona never made more than on behalf of her eldest son. The emperor and the crown prince never saw eye to eye, and it almost always fell to Dona to mediate. The concern of a loving mother, though, could not cover over Willy’s multitude of sins. Like Eddy of Clarence, Willy was famous for his libertine lifestyle, which was almost certainly a rebellion against his father’s dictatorial style of parenting. Just to annoy his father, Willy very publicly aligned himself with the Reichstag’s extreme political Far Right “who criticized the Kaiser for being insufficiently nationalist and aggressive, and upset his father even more by deliberately modelling himself on Edward [VII] and his English playboy style.” He made Wilhelm and Dona especially angry the last time he visited England, where he and King Edward were “unseemly romping in unlighted corridors” and a lady had “removed her slipper,”
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behavior that Dona decried as inappropriate. “My wife,” Wilhelm told his chancellor in 1908, “has a fanatical hate for the British majesties.”
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“The old fat king,” was how Dona once described Edward VII.
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Part of the princes’ deep love for Dona was rooted in her strong moral character, which time and experience began to make more balanced and less fanatical. When her children were young, the princes received Bible lessons. One day, when the teacher said, “There is no one without sin,” little Eitel-Fritz popped up and declared, “That is not true, for my mamma has never sinned.”
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Dona took delight in her close relationship with her children. All of the empress’s children grew to love outdoor activities like their mother. Dona was especially fond of tennis, which she played with her family. Wilhelm ensured that tennis courts were installed at each of the family’s residences. Her favorite outdoor activity, though, was riding. She made it a point to ride every day if possible. “She was a superb horsewoman,” Sissy recalled, “and it was from her that I inherited the passion for riding. But she had to put up with a lot of anxiety, particularly when I galloped away and jumped over obstacles she considered dangerous and which I did not.”
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The empress’s exemplary equestrian skills did not mean that accidents never happened. While riding in Sanssouci Park in Potsdam one afternoon in June 1908, Dona’s horse tripped and fell on its knee, throwing the empress. “Staff Surgeon Dr. Wiemuth and Prof. Wolff instituted an examination as soon as her Majesty arrived” back at the palace, reported the
New York Times
. “They found that she suffered no injury, except a severe bruise on the back of her right hand, which was bleeding.” Even though Dona was lucky that time, the same article reported that this was not an isolated incident.

This is the fourth time the Empress has had a fall within the last seven years. On one occasion she fell down an incline while in the upper Bavarian lake region. In 1903 she injured her arm in falling from her horse while riding in the Tiergarten, in Berlin … In the summer of 1907 her Majesty sustained another fall from vertigo while playing lawn tennis at Wilhelmshohe. It is understood that her Majesty is obliged to take unusual care of herself because of the fact that she is subject to sudden spells of faintness.
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Dona’s health, which had grown increasingly delicate, prevented her from taking a more hands-on approach with her younger children. Among her most crippling ailments were excruciating migraines that left her incapacitated for days. In this way, her life was strikingly similar to Alexandra of Russia’s. Both women were loving wives and mothers, but both were limited in their scopes of activity because of their health problems. Unlike Alexandra, who took morphine, arsenic, and Veronal for her pain, Dona allowed her physician to administer only chloroform in large doses. She suffered so much that sometimes she was given chloroform eleven times in a single day. As much as she railed against her infirmities, the ordinarily tireless empress was forced to reduce her busy schedule from time to time. In those instances when she could not be present at official functions, she was frequently represented by her sister Princess Louise Sophie, who was available whenever her husband, Prince Frederick Leopold, was away on active duty with his regiment in the Prussian army. To help ease her symptoms, Dona also visited the mineral spa at Bad Nauheim in Hesse every year. Although her health would continue to decline in the coming years, she counted herself fortunate that she did not suffer as severely as the empress of Russia. Nor did she let her illnesses interfere with her life the same way Alexandra did; Dona rarely succumbed when her husband or her family were around.

As the heir to both the Prussian and German thrones, Crown Prince Willy naturally received more attention than his brothers from their parents. Following in the Hohenzollern tradition, Willy received a strict education at the military academy at Plön in Schleswig-Holstein. Dona hated being separated from any of her children, but both she and Wilhelm believed firmly in all their children being taught strong discipline. After completing his studies at Plön, the crown prince attended university, but once this period in his life began, he shed all his inhibitions. Since the late 1890s, Willy had told his parents half a dozen times that he intended to marry one woman or another. This was especially painful for Dona, who was a firm believer in the sanctity of royal blood. For any of her sons, let alone the crown prince, to marry morganatically was unforgivable. One woman in particular, an American singer named Geraldine Farrar, caught the crown prince’s eye shortly after Queen Victoria’s death. When Willy told his parents he planned to marry her, the emperor exploded in shock, anger, and indignation. Dona used all her influence to dissuade her son from marrying his commoner fiancée. After an exhausting meeting that lasted more than two hours, the empress had succeeded.

In 1904, Crown Prince Willy became involved in another romance, but this one led to the altar. This time, Dona was thrilled because Willy’s bride-to-be was a princess who came from one of Germany’s most prominent royal families. The woman who had caught the profligate crown prince’s eye was Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, whose pedigree and connections rivaled even the Hohenzollerns—the Mecklenburgs were reportedly “the oldest sovereign house in the Western World.” Cecilie’s brother, Frederick Francis IV, had been the reigning Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin since the age of fifteen; her sister was married to Crown Prince Christian of Denmark; and her mother was a Russian grand duchess and cousin of Alexander III. The official engagement announcement was made in September 1904 during a state dinner Wilhelm and Dona were giving for officials from Schleswig-Holstein. “The announcement was received with great enthusiasm,” reported the
New York Times
.
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The wedding took place at the Stadtschloss in the unusually hot June of 1905. The official festivities began when Cecilie, accompanied by Empress Augusta Victoria, made her inaugural entry into Berlin on June 4. They rode in the gold carriage of the Prussian kings, used only on the most important occasions. Their carriage took the traditional route through the Brandenburg Gate. As they rode down Unter den Linden, thousands of well-wishers threw roses at the couple. Willy was the first crown prince of the German Empire to get married, prompting so many royal guests to flood into Berlin that it was “one of the most distinguished assemblages that could be gathered in Europe.”
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Sissy wrote how “Cecilie’s beauty, grace and charm filled me with astonishment.”
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In keeping with the traditions of the Prussian court, the empress took an active role in each stage of the wedding ceremony. On the morning of the wedding, June 6, she accompanied Cecilie in a gold state landau from Potsdam into Berlin. Just before the wedding, she placed the glistening Prussian bridal crown on the princess’s head. When Dr. Ernst von Dryander, the court chaplain, concluded the Lutheran ceremony, Willy and the new crown princess knelt to receive the emperor and empress’s blessing. As Dona embraced Cecilie, kissing her on each cheek, she turned to her son and said, “My dear boy, you have made a good choice.”
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