Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (39 page)

While Eitel-Fritz and Lotte were on their honeymoon, Augusta Victoria and Wilhelm celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. The actual date of their anniversary fell on the day Eitel-Fritz and Lotte were married, so festivities were postponed for a few days. The royal publicity machine was hard at work producing memorabilia to commemorate the milestone. The most popular item created was a photograph of the emperor and empress “in a sort of cloud floating above a bird’s-eye view of Berlin, with the palace and the cathedral dimly seen below.”
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The official celebrations in Prussia were suitably grand. King Edward VII sent his brother-in-law Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg as his personal representative. As Dona’s uncle, the choice of Christian was a personal one designed to highlight the bonds between their two empires. On February 26, the emperor and empress received deputations from the Reichstag and several other government organizations offering their best wishes. In lieu of gifts, the couple asked for money to be donated to German charities. The mayor of Berlin proudly told Wilhelm that the city raised $125,000 for a number of charitable organizations.

After a quarter of a century, Dona and Wilhelm enjoyed a strong marriage. They endured difficulties that other couples would not have been able to weather. As they grew older, they became more devoted to one another, realizing their need for each other’s strengths. When they attended a banquet during a visit to Dona’s ancestral homeland of Schleswig-Holstein in 1890, the emperor presented a speech in which he devotedly sung his wife’s praises: “The bond that unites me to this province, and chains me to it in a manner different from all others of my Empire, is the jewel that sparkles at my side—Her Majesty the Empress. Sprung from this soil, the type of the various virtues of a German princess [
sic
] it is to her that I owe it that I am able to meet the severe labours of my office with a happy spirit, and make head against them.”
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On another occasion, Wilhelm proudly called his wife a “pearl among women … [forged] from her works of charity to the poor and suffering, and from her strengthening and fostering of the security and domestic life of our people.”
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In some ways, their relationship mirrored that of Nicholas and Alexandra, who wrote touching love notes to one another. Though Dona and Wilhelm were not given to public displays of affection, they were deeply emotional in their private letters. “Last night I dreamt of you so vividly, darling,” Dona wrote in one such letter. “At first you were quite out of my reach, then you came to me and I clung to you so tightly so as not to let you go again. You were wearing something very strange on your head, but in my dream I told you how well it suited you, and then of course you had to go away again.”
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One historian noted that, even after so many years, the emperor and empress were still “very good friends. They have two things in common, an intense love of religion and their children.” Dona shone as an example of strong moral character: “Intellectually she is not the Kaiser’s equal, but she is a good mother and is ever busying herself with work among the poor. The Kaiser is very proud of her; he still believes her beautiful.”
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The revelry for Wilhelm and Augusta Victoria’s silver wedding anniversary created a celebratory atmosphere in Prussia that helped remind the public of their interest in the royal family. The birth of the emperor and empress’s first grandchild on their twenty-fifth anniversary year helped further cement the monarchy’s popularity that year. On July 4, 1906, Crown Princess Cecilie gave birth to a son that was named—what else?—Wilhelm. At the time, the crown prince and princess were living at the Marble Palace until their new home, the Cecilienhof Palace, could be completed. At the time of the delivery, the emperor was on a Norwegian getaway, and the crown prince was off on a hunting trip with his friends. Willy returned home when Cecilie went into labor but made his annoyance at having to leave his friends apparent to everyone. In the end, the only person who was there “to encourage and soothe” the crown princess “during her trial” was Dona.
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When the infant was only a few hours old, the crown prince left the Marble Palace and returned to his hunting trip, leaving the empress to comfort her exhausted daughter-in-law and new grandson. The succession to the Prusso-German throne was now secure for another two generations. The fact that Dona’s first grandchild—and a boy, no less—was born on the twenty-fifth anniversary of her wedding to her beloved Wilhelm helped to assuage, somewhat, the guilt of seeing Eitel-Fritz’s marriage collapse. Dona’s growing guilt over his marriage came from the role she played in getting the couple together.

Something else that helped take Dona’s mind off her son’s failing marriage was yet another visit to Britain. Unlike in previous years, this time Wilhelm had no desire to see his British relatives. Anglo-German relations were at an all-time low, and the emperor tried to get out of the visit by using the false excuse of suffering from bronchitis. Edward VII was not amused by his nephew’s antics. “Your telegram has greatly upset me,” he wrote to Wilhelm, “as your not coming to England would be a terrible disappointment to us all—my family—and the British nation. Beg of you to reconsider your decision.” The emperor knew Edward’s telegram was an attempt to discredit him diplomatically, so Wilhelm relented. The original plan was for the emperor to go alone; his daughter was sick with chicken pox, and the empress insisted on caring for her herself. At the last minute, when Sissy showed some improvement, Dona “changed her mind … and decided at a late hour to-night to accompany Emperor William on his visit to England.”
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He and Dona arrived at Victoria Station on November 13, 1907. Prince George, dressed in his Prussian field marshal’s uniform, met them. Despite the ebbing relations between the German and British monarchies, the people of London gave the emperor and empress a hearty welcome. “There were great crowds in the street and they got a splendid reception,” George wrote.
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Wilhelm recalled the visit in his memoirs more than a decade later: “In the late autumn of 1907 the Empress and I paid a visit to Windsor, at the invitation of King Edward VII. We were most cordially received by the English royal family and the visit went off harmoniously.”
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The English visit became a royal affair
en famille
, with a horde of other royals coming to Britain at the same time. Visiting Windsor Castle at the same time as Wilhelm and Dona was Queen Maud of Norway, Edward VII’s daughter; Queen Amélie of Portugal; and King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain. The
New York Times
described it as “a larger assemblage of royalties than had ever taken place” at Windsor Castle.”
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In a formal portrait taken at Windsor to commemorate the visit, Dona is seated between the much-younger queens Ena and Amélie. She is turned away from the camera, in what is most likely an attempt at striking a formal stately pose. Unlike Wilhelm, who could still charm his relatives, Dona’s haughty demeanor made her no friends among the queens of Norway, Spain, or Portugal.

The weeklong visit was a whirlwind. The town of Windsor put on a medieval pageant for Dona and Wilhelm, who told the crowds gathered there that they made him feel as if he were “coming home.” King Edward was the epitome of hospitality. He commented on what “good health” Their Majesties appeared to be in but was greatly relieved when the visit was over. “Thank God he’s gone!” he muttered crossly as he watched the emperor and empress depart.
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Lord Esher was equally unimpressed with the German sovereigns. “Our King makes a better show than William II,” he wrote. “He has more graciousness and dignity. William is ungraceful, nervous and plain. There is no ‘atmosphere’ about him.”
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At the end of the visit, the emperor left a $10,000 tip for the staff, gamekeepers, and stable attendants at Windsor Castle. Before returning to Germany, Wilhelm went up to Highcliffe Castle in Dorset, while Dona traveled on to the Netherlands to meet with Queen Wilhelmina.

As an attempt at improving Anglo-German relations, the British visit ultimately proved futile. Three days after Dona and Wilhelm returned to Berlin, the proposals were published for the historic German Navy Bill that the Reichstag passed in 1908. The controversial legislation raised eyebrows across the continent and was one of imperial Germany’s most significant steps toward provoking a war with Britain for mastery of the seas. The bill called for an increase in the production of battleships and a shorter lifespan on vessels, so they could be replaced more frequently. During this period, Dona paid little attention to domestic politics because her energies were focused on another family wedding. Her son Auwi married his first cousin Princess Alexandra Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg on October 22, 1908—Dona’s fiftieth birthday. The wedding, held at 5:00 p.m. in the Berlin palace,
was attended by more than eight hundred guests. Like previous Prussian royal weddings, a civil ceremony was carried out in one of the palace’s private apartments. When this ceremony was completed, Dona placed the bridal crown upon Alexandra Victoria’s head, and everyone proceeded to the chapel for the religious service. The bride wore “a white silk dress trimmed with lace, and her train, which was richly embroidered with silver and thirteen feet long, was borne by four pages.”
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At the reception that followed in the palace’s White Hall, the number of guests swelled to two thousand.

As the matriarch of the House of Hohenzollern, Augusta Victoria went to great lengths to see her children married to suitable partners. If the crown prince’s marriage was dynastic, and Eitel-Fritz’s was to stave off gossip, then Auwi’s was of a more personal nature. The empress herself had arranged the union, since Alexandra Victoria was her sister Calma’s daughter. Dona’s daughter Sissy admitted that though she and Calma “were vastly different personalities … they clung together with a deep, inner love which was later strengthened by the marriage of Calma’s daughter, Alexandra, to my brother Auwi.”
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Alexandra Victoria was considered the most beautiful, and the favorite, of Dona’s daughters-in-law. Princess Catherine Radziwill observed that the princess “had always shown herself willing to listen to her mother-in-law. She is a nice girl—fair, fat, and a perfect type of the ‘Deutsche Hausfrau’ dear to the souls of German novel-writers.”
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But after being married for a short time, Alexandra Victoria quickly earned a reputation for being sarcastic and snide. Beyond the empress’s circle of friends, who were watching Alexandra Victoria closely, most people at court were concerned about the serious blow that Anglo-German relations suffered with the creation of the Navy Bill. Any pretext of amity between the two empires was fading, marking the beginning of an antagonistic relationship between London and Berlin that would only get worse over the next six years.

The tranquility Princess Zita experienced at her boarding school in Bavaria was shattered in November 1907 when her father died from heart disease. According to the
New York Times
, the Duke of Parma bequeathed his children, in addition to their many homes, a fortune in cash that was worth $40 million at the time.
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This was one of the largest cash inheritances in royal history, estimated at approximately $942 million today.
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Settling the late duke’s estate caused a serious break within the Bourbon-Parmas. The head of the family and new titular duke was Zita’s thirty-five-year-old, mentally disabled half brother Enrico. An Austrian court eventually ruled that six of the other children from Robert’s first marriage were mentally unfit to care for themselves. Prince Elias, one of Zita’s many half brothers, became the legal guardian of those six siblings, including Enrico. This meant that almost all of the Bourbon-Parma fortune was given over to Elias and the other children from Robert I’s marriage to Maria Pia. Two of Zita’s full brothers—Sixtus and René—sued Elias for a greater share of the family fortune but lost in court.