Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (77 page)

In March 1920, Auwi divorced his wife, Alexandra Victoria, after a long and bitter separation. “This marriage,” wrote Sissy, “which was greeted with such joy by the two mothers [Dona and Calma], alas, did not live up to their expectations.”
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In the divorce proceedings, Auwi won sole custody of their only child, Alexander. Alexandra Victoria eventually remarried to a commoner and later told reporters she was infinitely happier as a commoner’s wife than living as a princess of Prussia. Like Eitel-Fritz, Auwi and his son settled in Potsdam near the Neues Palais. Auwi continued to cause his parents grief by taking an active role in the German socialist movement, which eventually paved the way for the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party in the 1930s. Of Dona’s six sons, the only two who caused her little difficulty were Adalbert and Oscar. Adalbert, along with his wife, Adelaide, and their two young children, settled down to a quiet life in La Tour-de-Peilz, on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Oscar’s life remained devoid of scandals as well—though, eventually, he too would join the Nazi ranks. He and his wife, Ina, were raising three children, whom the ex-empress doted on. Since his abdication, Wilhelm had grown so close to Oscar that he forgave his morganatic wedding. This may not have been a great leap, since Ina was reportedly Wilhelm’s favorite daughter-in-law. Using his authority as the head of the House of Hohenzollern, Wilhelm, under the witness of Cardinal Brandr Beekman-Ellner, bestowed upon his daughter-in-law the style and title of Her Royal Highness the Princess of Prussia, although since the monarchy no longer existed, this was purely a courtesy title.

Reports of unrest in Hungary had been mounting since the end of the war. The country’s loss of two-thirds of its territory at the Paris Peace Conference triggered turmoil amongst all classes. The people soon turned their anger on Prime Minister Michael Karolyi. By 1919, his government was overthrown by a Communist coup d’état led by the insidious Bela Kun. But Kun’s own junta failed after only six months, when Hungary was humiliated in a short-lived war with Romania. The National Assembly of Hungary soon proclaimed that the country should restore the monarchy—but without asking Emperor Charles I to return as king. In March 1920, with the National Army in control of the Hungarian Parliament Building, the assembly voted Nicholas Horthy, a Hungarian admiral, as regent. An ambitious man with a thirst for power, Horthy served in the imperial navy and had been an aide-de-camp to Emperor Franz Joseph. During the war, one of the archdukes had recommended that Charles promote Horthy to commander in chief of the navy. Upon becoming regent, Horthy’s first condition was that he be granted expanded executive powers and personal equality for him with the position of king.

In Switzerland, Charles and Zita were alarmed by the chain of events in Budapest. At first, “Horthy immediately sent protestations of loyalty to [Charles at] Prangins but, as the months passed, he became more evasive as Karl pressed him over handing back the throne.” Horthy made the Royal Palace in Budapest his new home, but what was most difficult for Charles and Zita to accept was when “Horthy declared himself, as Regent, to be a [royal] Duke and started receiving foreign ambassadors as ‘His Serene Highness.’”
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Prompted by his family and other royalists, Charles traveled to Hungary. He only agreed to go on the condition that Zita accompany him, but when she announced to everyone that she was pregnant for the seventh time, the entire plan fell into doubt. Charles and his advisors wanted a postponement, but Zita would not hear of it. “Every minute counts!” she exhorted her husband.
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After a long discussion, she convinced him to go. He first traveled to Strasbourg, where he met one of his followers who supplied him with a train ticket and a forged Spanish passport. Dressed in an ordinary gentleman’s suit with a walking stick, Charles arrived in Hungary on March 26, 1921—Easter weekend—to reinstate himself as the rightful king. Having shaved his trademark mustache and using forged passports, Charles slipped across the Austro-Hungarian border and traveled directly to the home of Count Janos Mikes, a well-known Hungarian monarchist who was in favor of Charles’s restoration.

At Mikes’s palace, the emperor called a secret meeting of his Privy Council, which included Horthy’s minister of education and his military advisor Colonel Antal Lehar, who pledged Hungarian troops to support Charles. “But I don’t want to take Hungary with soldiers,” Charles replied quietly. “I am not
usurping
a throne, you know. And there is to be no fighting.”
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But when attempts to negotiate with Prime Minister Pal Teleki failed at 2:00 a.m., Charles decided to confront the regent himself. On March 27, Charles—dressed in a military cadet’s uniform that his aide found at the last minute—arrived unannounced at Horthy’s country estate, Kenderes, as he and his wife were sitting down to Easter dinner. The two men sequestered themselves in Horthy’s office—the same office that had once belonged to Charles. The two-hour meeting was exhausting. The regent would later describe it as one of “the most difficult moments in my entire life” and a “thoroughly odious” experience. Charles told him the time had come to hand over power.

“This is a disaster,” Horthy replied. “In the name of God, Your Majesty must leave at once and return to Switzerland, before its too late and the [Allied] Powers learn of your presence in Budapest.” The emperor spent the rest of the time locked with Horthy in a battle of wills, using every argument he could think of to induce the regent to surrender the crown. Exhausted from having been awake for more than two days, Charles reached the end of his rope.

“I stick by my position. I’ll give you five minutes to think it over,” he told Horthy.
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Horthy and Charles eventually agreed to a three-week political cease-fire so both men could strengthen their positions, but it soon became clear that the odds were stacked against the emperor. At the end of March, both Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia declared that they would be willing to start another war if the Habsburgs were restored to the throne. The Allies, led by France, were unwilling to recognize a Hungarian kingdom led by Charles. By April 6, Charles was forced to concede defeat. Not only was the army still loyal to Horthy, but Hungarian support for the monarchy had all but evaporated. Most of the people were apathetic at the sight of the last emperor. Depressed and suffering from a severe cold he caught on his first night in Hungary, Charles dejectedly returned to Switzerland no closer to reclaiming the throne. The foreign press quickly jumped on the chance to show yet another failed endeavor on the emperor’s part. In England, one newspaper wrote drily,

the outcome of the interview between Karl and the Regent is best demonstrated by the fact that the ex-King was forced to leave Budapest immediately for Szombathely.

Soon thereafter it became known that Regent Horthy had minced no words in informing Karl that the ill-timed visit was detrimental to the best interests of Hungary, since the country needed nothing so much as peace and time for recovery.

The Regent further assured His Majesty of his, Horthy’s, unchanging loyalty and devotion, explaining nonetheless that the mandate placed upon him by the Nation could not be laid down except by parliamentary procedure.

At half past five the ex-King left Budapest in the company of Prime Minister Teleky, Count Sigray and the commanding officer of the Hussars, Captain Gjörgy …
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The first Hungarian power play had ended with a resounding victory for Nicholas Horthy. But what Charles did not realize was that in less than a year, another opportunity would present itself to reclaim the throne of Hungary, with permanent consequences for the House of Habsburg.

25
The Last Journey
 

(1920–21)

I
t took nearly a year, but eventually Dona and Wilhelm were able to move into their new home at Huis Doorn. When they relocated, their court numbered nearly fifty people, more than half of whom were servants. Many of the other courtiers remained in and around Amerongen, making the commute to Doorn when needed.

By the time the estate was ready, Dona’s health was barely hanging on. Suffering from a failing heart, arthritis, and high blood pressure, she was confined almost entirely to a wheelchair or her bed. Many of her friends and family were afraid “that the empress, terminally ill, would not live to warm her new house.”
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The prospect of moving into her new home, surrounded by its bucolic forests and rolling hillsides, sustained Dona. When they finally moved in on May 15, 1920, it was the happiest Wilhelm had seen his wife since they left Germany. To help her feel more at home, he had an elaborate rose garden planted near her rooms. Of all her life in Germany, it was the beautiful gardens at the Neues Palais in Potsdam that Dona said she missed the most. The garden at Doorn included a species of rose, the Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria, which had been named in her honor in 1890. With the burdens of state no longer on his shoulders, Wilhelm took an almost selfless devotion to caring for his wife. Once the garden was finished, he had a small greenhouse built so that fresh roses could be grown and delivered daily to her room.

The Hohenzollerns’ fortunes seemed to be improving as more of their family came from Germany to visit. Their son Willy was a regular guest, though his movements on Wieringen Island were strictly monitored. He could only leave the island and visit his parents with the permission of the Dutch authorities. During one of Willy’s first visits to Doorn, he and Dona were sitting in the gardens outside. In one of the rare moments of her life, Dona confided her great depression to her son when he remarked of the natural beauty surrounding them. “My boy,” she said, “yes, it is beautiful here, but oh! it is not my Potsdam, the New Palace, my little rose-garden, our home. If you only knew how homesickness often gnaws at me. Oh, I shall never see my home again.”
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In mid-June, Dona’s youngest son, Joachim, visited from his home in Switzerland, where he had bought a villa after the war. He had spiraled into a tailspin of grief and depression and was never able to accept life as a commoner after the end of the monarchy. The idea of having to work for a living and being just like everyone else, without the extravagant comforts of royalty, proved too much for the thirty-year-old former prince. Though Dona was happy to see him, it was not a pleasant reunion between father and son. Wilhelm never forgave Joachim for what he considered cowardice and weakness. In the sitting room at Doorn, Joachim told his parents that his marriage to Marie-Augusta was over. Theirs had never been a happy marriage, “but an arrangement.” According to one contemporary source, Joachim “suffered from depression and other mental health issues, and may have been an abusive husband. The princess fled the marital home”
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once already. Joachim had since become addicted to gambling, and his wife left him a second time. He filed for divorce, winning custody of their only child, Karl Franz (b. 1916). Wilhelm was furious and ordered his son out of the house. In a tearful embrace, Dona said good-bye to her son. She would never see him again.

The arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Brunswick on July 15, 1920, greatly lifted the mood at Doorn following Joachim’s bitter parting from his father. When they arrived, Sissy immediately received a report on her mother’s health from her physician Dr. Hähner before going in to greet her.

The day before yesterday Her Majesty suffered a heart spasm which, thanks to treatment, was alleviated. On this account, Her Majesty must keep to her bed and will, therefore, have to greet Your Royal Highness from her bed … The consequences of this attack have not yet been completely overcome, though the strength of the heart itself has improved, but there is nevertheless an increased breathlessness … I hope that if no unforeseen troubles arise, good progress will be made.
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Trouble did indeed arise. Instead of returning to Switzerland after leaving the Netherlands, Joachim traveled to one of his family’s old homes, Villa Liegnitz, in Potsdam. Three weeks later, he was dead. On the afternoon of July 18, 1920—three days after Sissy arrived at Doorn—Joachim shot himself. He died a few hours later at Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Potsdam. The Berlin correspondent for the
New York Times
reported that Joachim “had been suffering from great mental depression, according to those intimates of the Hohenzollerns who had seen him.” When the reporter questioned Eitel-Fritz “as to the motive of his brother’s suicide, [he] declined to make any statement, referring … to the official announcement that Joachim was suffering from ‘a fit of excessive dementia.’”
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When the news arrived at Doorn, Wilhelm was the first to be told. Overcome by emotion, he collapsed into a nearby chair, holding his head between his hands in shock. That afternoon, as he gazed silently out the window in despair, he summoned the household together and told them. The empress must never be told the truth, he said. With her condition deteriorating, he knew that her youngest son taking his own life would most likely kill her. Everyone therefore agreed to keep up the facade that Joachim had been killed in a hunting accident. On that sunny afternoon when Wilhelm broke the news to his wife, she “took the news calmly and with the usual composure she exhibited when fate dealt her severe blows, but there was no doubt of the pain the news had caused her.”
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Although she accepted her husband’s explanation and never wavered in her outward calm, everyone around her believed that she knew the truth about her son. In their grief, Wilhelm and Augusta Victoria were denied permission to return to Germany for their son’s funeral. In his memoirs, Willy described his brother’s death: “our parents and we children have suffered a heavy blow: my brother Joachim, utterly broken down, has passed out of this life. Immediately on receipt of the news, I travelled to Doorn, in order to be with my mother in, at any rate, the first and severest hours of her sorrow. What a deal of suffering destiny has heaped upon this poor and sick maternal heart.”
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The presence of Willy and Sissy brought Dona comfort. Another relative she delighted in was her grandson Karl Franz. Following Joachim’s death, Wilhelm issued an edict declaring Eitel-Fritz was to take sole custody of the boy, who was promptly sent to Doorn for extended visits with his grandparents—a German court would rule a year later that Wilhelm had no legal authority to issue such an edict, and the boy was returned to Marie-Augusta. Little Karl Franz brought “an atmosphere of gaiety and insouciance to a house where the outlook is often sombre.” One witness observed that Wilhelm “delights in the child’s prattle.”
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As a living link with Dona’s beloved dead son, Karl Franz had a special bond with his grandmother. But unlike her husband, she could not run and play with him. Her time with Karl Franz was limited to her sitting in a wheelchair at lunch or watching him play in the garden. In the autumn months, Karl Franz was joined by his cousins, Willy and Cecilie’s children. For the first time since their exile, Wilhelm and Dona were surrounded by most of their children and grandchildren, who had largely been spared the horrors of the war and abdication. Wilhelm felt reinvigorated hearing his grandchildren laughing and playing in the halls at Doorn.

The leitmotif of Dona’s family could not hide the truth: she was dying. It was only a matter of time. On October 22, 1920, the Hohenzollerns celebrated Augusta Victoria’s sixty-second birthday, but it was a somber occasion. Her son Willy poignantly recalled sitting with his mother on her birthday.

It was on the 22[n]d, the anniversary of my mother’s birthday.—They were quiet, sad days in Doorn; for it cannot escape the eye of any one who loves her that my mother’s strength is waning, that sorrow is eating her up. The wound made in her maternal heart by the death of my brother Joachim has never healed; he was the weakest of us boys and claimed a greater share of her motherly care.

On the birthday itself, she had kept to her bed. I could only sit beside her, hold her hand in mine and talk to her. I told her a number of amusing and harmless little anecdotes concerning my island household; and it was a pleasure to see a faint smile light up her kind features every now and then; but it was only a short flicker of sunshine, that was gone again almost instantly. And when she is up and walks through the rooms and her tired eyes wander caressingly over all the old furniture and mementos of her Berlin and Potsdam days, it is as though she were bidding them all a silent farewell.
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Within a month, Dona was at death’s door. Newspapers across Europe and North America were on standby to release her obituary. The former empress was suffering from repeated heart attacks, which were complicated by the formation of blood clots. This left her so weak that during the last half of November, she was only semiconscious on all but a few days. It became even more difficult to treat her when she developed a fever of 104 degrees. So often was Dona expected to pass away before the end of the year that her son Willy was summoned to Doorn half a dozen times. On December 1, the
New York Times
ran the headline
GERMAN EMPRESS NEAR DEATH
. The article went on to say that Dona’s “death is expected at any moment.” One member of the household at Doorn told reporters, “Her Majesty, realizing the seriousness of her condition, is quite resigned, and actually longs for the end of her sufferings, which began in 1918.”
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Miraculously, she rallied and made it to Christmas 1920.

Dona’s final months were made even more unbearable by sinister threats on her husband’s life. Plots abounded claiming that the former imperial couple would be kidnapped and murdered. Dona became obsessively paranoid about her and Wilhelm’s safety. She rarely slept because she was awoken by every noise in the night, terrified that it was someone coming to kidnap them. “They are coming for him,” she would scream and then burst into tears.
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A few poorly planned kidnap attempts were made on the couple as early as 1919, when a group of American officers based in Luxembourg managed to break into Amerongen Castle, but they were easily thwarted. It was enough to prompt Wilhelm to consider arranging a police guard for himself.

Dona believed that the British were responsible for all the threats against them. Even in her twilight years, her antipathy for Britain had not subsided. She was so convinced of her final fate that she wrote a farewell letter to her family in the event she and Wilhelm were captured or murdered: “In case Papa and I, by God’s Will, never see you again, this letter brings you our final greetings and out blessings … I know, my dear children, that you will, with God’s help, be brave. It is bitterly hard to say goodbye, but our warm love for you transcends the grave. And now, God protect you until we meet again with God.”
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She also assured her children that neither she nor Wilhelm “would permit themselves to be delivered to the enemy, but even if that fate was avoided, there was no certainty as to where they could wile away their old age.”
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The frail Hohenzollern matriarch spent Christmas 1920 surrounded by her children and grandchildren. She made few appearances during the festivities, being unable to walk even a few steps without needing her wheelchair. By the spring of 1921, there was little doubt that the end was near. She spent most of her time in bed, but she rarely slept in peace. She was restless, spoke in her sleep, and suffered delusions that caused her to think she was surrounded by absent family, especially Joachim. “What she said was often surprising, almost clairvoyant,” Sissy recalled. “One night, when my brother August Wilhelm was keeping vigil [at her bedside], she bade us children goodbye in her sleep. Shattered, Auwi told us later what he had heard.”
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On February 22, Dona’s controversial brother Ernest Günther, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, died at Primkenau at the age of fifty-seven. “According to the doctors who are treating the Kaiserin,” reported the
New York Times
, Dona was not “informed about her brother’s death, due to the frailty of her own health.”
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A week later, a faint glimmer of gaiety appeared at Doorn as Dona and Wilhelm commemorated their fortieth wedding anniversary. The former empress barely noticed the milestone because was she so ill she could only remain conscious for a few hours each day. It was the last occasion the Hohenzollerns celebrated as a family. In mid-March, Augusta Victoria’s death vigil began. Her five sons dutifully arrived at Doorn, but the instability in Germany and Austria prevented Sissy from arriving in time. Willy recalled that Dona “was so feeble that she could scarcely speak; and yet the slightest attention was received with ‘Thank you, my dear boy’; and then she gently stroked my hand.”
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Along with Wilhelm, each of the princes took turns holding the vigil at Dona’s bedside. In one of her last conversations with her husband, Dona told him in her typical selfless fashion, “I must live, because I cannot leave you alone.”
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