Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (72 page)

Amid a flood of tears, the family finally entered their automobiles bound for the imperial hunting lodge at Eckartsau, near the Hungarian border. Decades later, the memory of their flight from Schönbrunn remained fresh in Zita’s mind: “It was dark by now, and a misty autumn night. The emperor and I and all the children except Karl Ludwig squeezed into the back of one car with Count Hunyády at the front. In the next one came the infant Karl Ludwig and the children’s nurses … I did not risk driving out of the main gate in front of the palace. Instead we continued parallel with the main building along the broad gravel path that leads to the eastern side gate. We slipped out of this and left the capital by a special route. Late that night—without any trouble or incidents—we arrived at Eckartsau.”
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Arguably, the fall of the Habsburgs created more shock than any other dynasty deposed at the end of the First World War. They had reigned the longest, the fiercest, and the proudest of any of Europe’s modern dynasties. A British newspaper described theirs as “the oldest and most eminent dynastic name in European history.”
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One Habsburg historian poignantly summarized their downfall with these words:

For centuries, Christians regarded the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by the Habsburgs, as the opposite of a sign of the apocalypse: so long as it existed, the world would not end. In the early nineteenth century the Holy Roman Empire had been dissolved, but the Habsburgs, under Franz Josef, had recovered and endured, throwing a grey cloak of timelessness over the shuddering body of a continent changing itself from within. Now, with empires destroyed and dynasties dethroned, progressive time began. It was socialist time, the promise of new beginnings for oppressed classes at the end of a feudal age; national time, the conviction that peoples could move forward from a dark past of imperial oppression into a brighter future of state independence; or liberal time, the confidence that new republics would create the conditions for lasting peace in Europe and the world.
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As a symbol of their nearly millennium-long reign, the Habsburgs had chosen a black, double-headed eagle as their crest. The day that the Habsburgs were forced to vacate their throne would be forever remembered as the fall of eagles.

In Germany, the appointment of a new government headed by Prince Max of Baden did not solve any problems. Like Vienna and Petrograd, a dangerous cloud of anarchy swirled. Streets were empty because there was no fuel for automobiles. The sidewalks were crowded with “heart-broken women,” who had deprivation written across their “faces like masks, blue with cold and drawn with hunger.” The protests outside government buildings earlier in the year were replaced with bellicose demonstrations in city squares. Bands of mounted police were now forced to patrol the capital day and night. They looked on the people uneasily but were unable to act against their growing hostility.
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Despite his claims of bridging the gulf between the monarchy and the Leftist groups, Prince Max immediately sounded out the Allies for peace terms. Their demands were steep. On top of already harsh political and economic reparations, President Wilson issued a series of notes declaring that the German Empire must become a full democratic republic devoid of its emperor. The most inflammatory of the notes, sent to the German government on October 14, referred to the “destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere that can […] disturb the peace of the world” and added that “the power which has hitherto controlled the German nation is of the sort described here. It is within the choice of the German nation to alter it.”
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“It aims directly at the fall of my house, and above all at the abolition of the monarch!” Wilhelm angrily declared when he saw Wilson’s note.
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Dona was equally outraged, decrying “the audacity of the parvenu across the sea who thus dares to humiliate a princely house which can look back on centuries of service to people and country.”
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When word of Wilson’s terms leaked out to the public, political rallies sprang up everywhere. As the people gathered, they cried out, “Down with the Kaiser.”
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Berlin descended into being a city on the brink, with riots on a scale it had not seen in seventy years. The people’s fury, held in check for so long, was set to erupt, fanned into a flame by the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The collapse of the German Empire began in the north with the imperial navy, whose sailors revolted on the night of October 29. Some forty thousand sailors and soldiers succeeded in taking Germany’s two largest seaports, Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, after the commanding officers ordered a final kamikaze mission against Allied naval forces. Thousands of sailors took to the streets of Kiel singing “La Marseillaise.” By the first week of November, the empire’s outer territories were engulfed in the sea of revolutionary fever that was sweeping across eastern and central Europe. Hanover, Frankfurt, and Munich were firmly in the hands of the revolutionaries, who were calling themselves the Workers and Soldiers Councils. On November 7, public services in Berlin came to a standstill. Railway lines were cut to prevent monarchists from sending for reinforcements. In Brunswick, Wilhelm’s son-in-law Ernest Augustus abdicated his ducal throne, ending his daughter Sissy’s role as Duchess of Brunswick. The dukedom of Brunswick had been a particular hotbed of revolutionary activity. Throughout the war, protestors had taken to the streets outside the Brunswick Palace chanting for reform. Once the German Revolution began, the people of Brunswick were among the first to rise up. Within two weeks, German revolutionaries managed to force the abdication of every one of the empire’s royal rulers. By the end of the week, the Stadtschloss in Berlin was flying the revolutionary flag. Dona was personally offended when her brother-in-law Prince Frederick Leopold hoisted the revolutionary banner above his hunting lodge at Glienicke. “The red flag floated over the palaces, while royal mottoes vanished from the courts, the newspapers and the commercial world,” wrote Ralph Haswell Lutz in his study
The German Revolution
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Violent riots broke out as monarchist and rebel forces exchanged cannon fire across Berlin.

At the time, Dona was still recuperating from her heart attack. Upon her return from Wilhelmshöhe, it was deemed too unsafe for her to return to Bellevue in Berlin, so she returned to the Neues Palais in Potsdam. It was here in October 1918 that Dona was reunited with her husband. It was the first time they had been together since Wilhelm’s nervous breakdown, recovery, and subsequent departure for Spa. Given the revolutionary atmosphere in Berlin, it was decided the emperor needed to return to face the oncoming storm in person. As much as Wilhelm II was being faced with the most difficult moment of his reign, many people were closely watching Empress Augusta Victoria. To the people around her, she exhibited a calm, grave exterior, but the voices that were now crying out for her husband’s abdication both angered and frightened her. She was worried about Germany and the effect that Wilhelm’s possible abdication would have on the country. Princess Ina Luise of Solms-Baruth, one of Dona’s ladies-in-waiting, wrote to Princess Daisy of Pless, “About the Emperor, I hope and pray he will be firm, and won’t abdicate; they were quite resolved to be firm, and the Empress told me to say everywhere that she stands firm.”
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With the revolution spreading, Wilhelm decided to leave Potsdam for his military command at Spa on October 29. When the uprisings began, and before they spread to the rest of the empire, it made sense for the emperor to be closer to the epicenter. But once it was clear this was more than an isolated revolt, Wilhelm and his advisors felt the greatest place of strength from which he could preserve his reign was military headquarters. The decision to leave Potsdam was not one the emperor came to easily. It required heavy prodding from both his advisers and his wife. Dona loathed being parted from her husband, but she believed that if he had any chance of restoring order, he would have to appeal to the army and hope to trigger an uprising in favor of the monarchy. When Wilhelm found his wife to say good-bye, she collapsed into tears. “This is the end,” she sobbed; “now I have no more hope.”
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It was the last time Augusta Victoria would lay eyes on the man who was both her husband and the German emperor. The next time she saw him, he would simply be Wilhelm Hohenzollern.

As soon as Wilhelm reached Spa, he sent Dona two letters. The first, written on November 7, never made it to Potsdam because the postal stations nearby had been seized by the revolutionaries. His second letter, written and sent the next day, made it through but contained the direst reports.

My letter of yesterday did not come through as there is insurrection in Cologne and the station is occupied. The people have all gone insane! They have proclaimed a republic in Munich, as the King [of Bavaria] is supposed to have abdicated. I don’t know if this letter will reach you. God be with you and us. I am gathering all the troops from the front together, so as to march on Berlin with them as soon as an armistice has been declared. Our sons must take over your defence until we can come to your help from here. If it’s no longer safe for you in Potsdam, then you must go with the children to Königsberg or Rominten if necessary. I cannot judge matters from here. All connections are so uncertain …
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With the emperor out of the capital, Prince Max again received pressure from the Allies on November 9 that the only way to ensure peace would be if Wilhelm abdicated. Knowing that he would never willingly abdicate, Max took it upon himself to force the emperor’s hand. He composed a personal letter calling on the emperor to step down.

Your abdication has become necessary if civil war in Germany is to be avoided … The great majority of the people believe that you are to blame for the present situation … Today I can no longer hold my protecting hand before the wearer of the crown … We are heading straight for civil war …

There are two possibilities. First, abdicate, nomination of a deputy and the summoning of a National Assembly. Second, abdication and renunciation of the succession by the Crown Prince and a Regency for his son. Whichever course is chosen, it must be acted on with the utmost speed … This is the final hour … If abdication does not follow today, then I can no longer carry on [in the Reichstag], nor can the German princes protect their Emperor any further.…

A voluntary sacrifice must now be made if your good name is to be preserved in history …
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At Spa, Wilhelm was promptly joined by the crown prince, whose chief of the general staff read the letter to the emperor. Indignant, Wilhelm shot back, “You, a Prussian official, who have sworn the oath of fealty to your king, how can you venture to come before me with such a proposal!”
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Wilhelm also declared that if he must abdicate as German emperor, he was unwilling to abandon the Prussian throne. He may have to renounce the federated imperial throne, but he refused to give up the crown which the Hohenzollerns had worn for centuries. What he failed to realize was that the abdication was all encompassing. There could be no thrones left in Germany if there was to be peace with the Allies.

His first reaction after being told that his abdication must be total was to immediately set into motion his earlier plan of rallying the army to march on Berlin, except instead of simply restoring order, he would be fighting to preserve his divine right to rule. This was rather ambitious, since most of the railway lines had already been cut, which would mean marching the army for nearly three weeks on foot to reach Berlin. Although the emperor was willing to see his plan to completion, it was doomed to failure. General Wilhelm Groener, the deputy chief of the general staff, informed the emperor that the troops were now in full revolt. “The army will return home in good order under the command of its chiefs, but not under the orders of Your Majesty,” Groener told him. “The army is no longer behind Your Majesty.”
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Fearing for the future of Germany, Wilhelm finally capitulated. He shriveled into his chair and accepted the abdication, both for him and his son Crown Prince Willy, who described his father as looking “so sallow and emaciated” that day.
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In a single moment, Emperor Wilhelm II was forced from the throne that his ancestors had sat upon for more than five hundred years since first being chosen as rulers of Prussia in the fifteenth century. By those standards, the German Empire’s lifespan was fleeting. It existed for forty-seven years, nine months, and twenty-one days.