Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires

by Justin C. Vovk

  In Germany, Empress Augusta Victoria’s battle with postpartum depression and anxiety seemed to have little effect on her continued popularity with her subjects. The death of Queen Victoria and the accession of Edward VII cemented her Anglophobia. It also strengthened her resolve to be as moral and pious and she believed the English royal family was not. That the Prussian court was filled with narrow-minded, fanatical conservatives who revered the empress and praised her virtues only added to her sense of self-righteousness. She was now the undisputed Landesmutter.

  The household Dona picked for herself was entirely made up of Evangelical Lutherans, all from high-ranking aristocratic families, none of whom could have the slightest blemish against their reputations. In this regard, the empress followed in Queen Victoria’s footsteps, who had similarly conservative opinions on who was worthy of serving on her personal staff. Like most ladies-in-waiting, the women Dona surrounded herself with mimicked their mistress—though in this case, they tended to be more ridiculous exaggerations. Prudish bordering on bigoted, hypersensitive, and tending to be melodramatic, these women became Dona’s closest friends. The countesses Mathilde Keller, Claire von Gersdorff, and Therese von Brockdorff never left Dona’s side. Along with her, they became known—sometimes derisively by Wilhelm’s entourage—as the “Hallelujah Aunts” for their obsessive devotion to Protestantism; Vicky referred to them as “a blessed set of donkeys.”435 Dona’s critics accused her ladies-in-waiting of being as “conservative, agrarian and strictly evangelical” as she was. Wilhelm took special delight in tormenting the countesses, especially Claire von Gersdorff, whom he described as “naively silly.” Not everyone reproached the Hallelujah Aunts, though. The countesses were constantly out and about working on behalf of one charity or another. Their piety also helped protect the immediate royal family and the court from many of the scandals that befell other Hohenzollerns. Karl Treutler, one of Germany’s ambassadors, admitted, “They did innumerable good works, and if they were perhaps not very young, not very elegant, not overly intelligent, and not very modern, this was all compensated for in that they gave their all in the service of their mistress and shielded the Court from any not quite correct note.”436

  Like Tsarina Alexandra and the Duchess of Cornwall, Augusta Victoria’s sense of moral propriety was in keeping with the standards of the Victorian era. The empress did not tolerate impropriety, and she would not easily forgive those who had sinned against the strict code of etiquette that enveloped the Hohenzollern court. One witness described her as having a “great aversion to divorced women” in particular. When Count Paul von Hatzfeldt, the German ambassador to London, divorced and remarried in 1895, the empress refused an audience with his second wife. Writing to one of his close friends, Wilhelm said he regretted “that nothing could be done in this matter. The Kaiserin had refused in such decided terms to receive the Countess that it was useless to make any further attempt.” He later admitted, “in these questions I cannot give orders to the Kaiserin. It is her domain. I cannot command her to receive someone who has made herself unacceptable to society.”437 A member of the German court later observed that “William II. never interferes with anything his wife has decided concerning her household and its management, and accepts all her arrangements with absolute submission.”438

  Prussian court life had not always been so closeted. The winter social season of 1893/94 was considered one of the country’s most lavish. Prince Philip zu Eulenburg recalled a fashionable concert given in the opulent Marble Hall of the Neues Palais. In a letter to his mother, he described Dona as wearing “a gown of blue velvet combined with yellow muslin, large diamond and sapphire jewellery” though despite her grand outfit, he thought she was “not very well dressed.”439 By most contemporary accounts, 1893/94 was an anomaly during the Wilhelmine era. For the most part, Prussian court life was never spectacular. Like Great Britain, Germany relied heavily on its aristocratic families spread throughout the empire, but they rarely appeared in Berlin or Potsdam. Most of them hated the Hohenzollerns and resented their hegemonic role in German affairs. Tradition stated that court entertainments were strictly the province of the empress, but as the first lady of the land, Dona brought German high society to something of a halt. She never learned at Dolzig or Primkenau how to properly entertain or throw fashionable parties. Wilhelm II’s constant traveling abroad meant foreign visitors were seldom seen in Berlin. Dignitaries were also a rarity, since most of them loathed the emperor and were harshly scrutinized by the empress. Her attitudes toward moral propriety meant she almost never agreed to hold audiences with men without her husband there. This pallid court life “was partly due to the rigidity of the court, and partly to the novelty of Berlin as a national capital: many of the grander German families still kept away, and the Junkers who lodged in hotels for the short season were provincial bumpkins who hardly lent any glamour to the occasion.”440

  The aristocrats scattered throughout Germany’s federal states may have viewed the empress as a rural prude, but the German population at large continued to see her as a paragon of virtue. Motivated by her own upbringing, Dona was very active in promoting charitable causes. She received dozens of petitions every day from people or organizations “begging” for her help. According to one witness, the empress read every letter that was “addressed to her, and never misses making inquiries as to the truth of the tales of distress brought to her notice.”441 She was deeply interested in the welfare of the poor and sick. In 1884, she became the matron of the Elizabeth Children’s Hospital in Berlin, where she frequently visited the patients. She was actively involved with the Berlin City Mission. Feeling that the mission was not broad enough to help all those in need, she founded the Aid Society of the Evangelical Church in 1888, which became the Protestant Women’s Mission in 1897. The advocacy for young women was a cause that was especially dear to the empress’s heart. In an era when the rights of women were few, Dona showed great forward thinking when she founded the Elberfeld House of Refuge, designed to care for neglected infants and young girls at risk.

  With the help of her ladies-in-waiting, Augusta Victoria succeeded in making the etiquette at the Prussian court rigidly strict. The atmosphere was so restrictive that the “latest American dances were outlawed and it was hard even to smoke, eat or drink.” Everything from the polka to the two-step was forbidden. At a ball given for the Prince and Princess of Wales, a nasty verbal exchange broke out between two of Dona’s sons—most likely Eitel-Fritz and Willy—and the band, which had been ordered by the emperor not to play any modern songs, since it was his firm belief that court balls were not held for personal pleasure but for lessons in personal diplomacy. Matters of etiquette went so far that Dona even forbade her sister Calma and her daughters from learning to ride bicycles, a sport that the empress decried as “indecent.”442

  In some ways, the etiquette was even more rigid than in the famous courts of Spain or Austria. The court rules became so inflexible that at formal functions involving a meal, “the emperor and empress were served first and everyone had to yield up their plates when they finished. Those who had been served last often hardly touched their food.” The children, “who were seated the farthest away from the royal pair, were left hungry, and had to cultivate good relations with the servants below-stairs in order to fill their bellies.”443 The rules that governed the Prussian court kept the members of the various households in an imperial prison, which was dominated by an intolerable list of small, arbitrary rules that were designed to inculcate complete adherence to the emperor and empress. Even the personal lives of courtiers were regulated. They could not use public transportation or even wear glasses, since it was forbidden to view any member of the royal family through spectacles. Staff attached directly to the households of the emperor or empress “were reminded of their position in the hierarchy. They were graded and classified by colour-coded passes; these decided, among other things, which room they stood in at balls and how large a Christmas present they rec
eived from the imperial couple.”444

  Day-to-day activities in Dona’s household were uncomplicated. Most evenings were spent with Wilhelm going off to an innumerable military review, diplomatic meeting, or official function, while Dona oversaw affairs at the palace. These meetings were usually insufferable for the old generals in Wilhelm’s entourage, who were forced to stand in his presence for hours on end. If no important events were happening, the emperor and empress might sit down for tea. Wilhelm would read reports while his wife sat near the fire, knitting clothes for the poor. But even Wilhelm, who enjoyed state functions where he was the center of attention, chafed from time to time under his wife’s strictures. Late one evening, Dona asked him, “Are you not going to go to bed at all?” The emperor shot back sharply, “Well, what else could I do, it is so incredibly dull here.”445 To break up the tedium of court life, Wilhelm continued to spend much of the year traveling abroad. Between the months of June and October, he usually only spent twelve days in Potsdam. In his first eighteen months as emperor, he visited Saint Petersburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Vienna, Rome, London, Monza, Athens, and Constantinople. One of his biographers went a step further and asserted that “Wilhelm spent less than half his reign in Berlin and Potsdam.”446 This did not mean that Dona was always stranded at home. In March 1905, she traveled alone to Italy on a state visit to King Victor Emmanuel III and Queen Helen. It was highly successful. Ten thousand spectators stood in the pouring rain to greet the empress when she arrived at the harbor of Civitavecchia, almost fifty miles northwest of Rome. She later told the king “she was very happy to be in Italy.”447

  Life at the Prussian court received a severe interruption in the summer of 1901. At 6:00 p.m. on August 5, the Empress Frederick died at her home, Friedrichshof, after an excruciating battle with spinal cancer. She was surrounded by her three youngest daughters—Sophie, Mossy, and Moretta—who had been at her side for months; Wilhelm, Dona, and Crown Prince Willy joined them only twelve hours before the end, but it gave Vicky the chance to speak to them one last time. During her final months, Wilhelm had written to Edward VII of Vicky being “weak” and feeling “absolutely miserable.… We are all fearfully pained by what we see & hear.… Poor mother’s simply in a horrible state of suffering & discomfort.”448 For twenty years, Dona had hardly known a week without the presence, whether in letter or in person, of her formidable mother-in-law. Theirs had been an initially cordial but never peaceful relationship. They had endured rocky patches, especially once Wilhelm ascended the throne. But by the time of Vicky’s death, Dona—already in her forties and comfortable in her role as German empress and queen of Prussia—had come to empathize with the woman who had held her own against so many attacks from Wilhelm II. In the weeks before the end, Dona became a more frequent face at Friedrichshof, usually arriving in her carriage with her children. For Wilhelm, the death of his mother was a profound loss but not enough to change him for the better. In a repeat episode of Frederick III’s death, Wilhelm had Friedrichshof torn apart by his soldiers, looking for anything to incriminate his mother. But always one step ahead of her son, Vicky had her papers spirited away to England during Edward VII’s last visit by his private secretary Sir Frederick Ponsonby. Even in death, the Empress Frederick refused to concede defeat to her flawed, immoral son.

  As Russia marched into the twentieth century, Alexandra Feodorovna was overcome with anxiety. After nearly a decade of marriage, she had still not delivered a son. In June 1901, she gave birth to a fourth daughter, Anastasia Nicholaievna, whose name came from an old Russian word meaning resurrection. “What a disappointment!” said Nicholas II’s sister Xenia when she received the news from her mother. “A fourth girl! They have named her Anastasia.”449 In six years, Alexandra had produced four daughters: Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia, but the all-important male heir was still something she could only dream of since her miscarriage. The internal struggle Alexandra was waging played itself out around the world. In England, the Daily Mail ran a boldly underlined headline at Anastasia’s birth: ILLUMINATIONS, BUT DISAPPOINTMENT. The newspaper noted, “There is much rejoicing, although there is a popular undercurrent of disappointment, as a son had been most keenly hoped for.”450

  Alexandra became obsessed with having a son. Part of this could be traced back to 1900, when the tsar fell dangerously ill with typhus and almost died. Without any sons, the throne would have passed to Nicholas’s brother Michael. Alexandra’s obsession was not only political, it was deeply personal too. She blamed herself for the lack of an heir. Thanks to modern science, “we know that it is the father who determines the sex of a child by passing on his Y or X chromosome, but at the time, a mother felt responsible if she produced only girls.”451 Alexandra believed there must have been some divine reason she had not been blessed with a son. Perhaps she had done something wrong? Her desperation, mixed with a growing mysticism that had been born out of her devotion to the Orthodox faith, fostered by her pious sister Ella, left her prey to two eccentric spiritualists. They were the royal sisters Stana and Militza. The daughters of King Nicholas I of Montenegro, the two sisters had married into the extended Romanov clan as part of an arrangement between the king and the tsar. Militza was the wife of Grand Duke Peter Nicholaievich, and Stana married the Duke of Leuchtenberg, a distant cousin of the tsar. They grew up in the southern Balkans, where the exotic Orthodox faith collided with Muslim Turkey’s rule. Often given to strange, almost occultist practices, Stana and Militza traveled in several fringe Orthodox circles that were known primarily for their belief in holy men, individuals chosen directly by God to be His emissaries. The sisters often held strange spiritual gatherings at their homes in Znamensky or Sergeevsky, leading to their being called the Black Sisters. It was at these gatherings that they introduced Alexandra to a string of unsuccessful—and ultimately fraudulent—“holy men.” One in particular, Philippe Vachot, assured Alexandra he could secure God’s direct intervention on her behalf for a son. The dowager empress believed Vachot was a fraud after receiving reports about him from the Russian police. She was furious with Stana and Militza for drawing Nicholas and Alexandra into their circle. “It is more Alicky who is under this horrid man’s influence than Nicky,” the Duchess of Cornwall told her husband. “Aunt Minny is in despair.”452

  Vachot was only exposed as a charlatan after a humiliating episode. For months, it appeared that Alexandra was pregnant again. Her waistline was increasing, she had a healthy glow as any expectant mother normally does, but her stomach did not take on the wholesome roundness that so often accompanies pregnancy. Then one night in August, she appeared to go into labor, except there was no child in her womb. The truth was revealed: medicinal herbs Vachot had given her to encourage conception actually made her anemic. The swelling in her abdomen and change in her physical condition was a result of amenorrhea. “At last a natural way out of this unfortunate situation has been found,” wrote Grand Duchess Xenia. “She is in bed—as a precaution, as there can sometimes be bleeding in such cases. Thank God so far she is in good health.”453 Enemies of the tsar and tsarina claimed that Alexandra had actually given birth to a fifth daughter. According to the theories, Nicholas was supposedly so ashamed that he had the child smuggled out of Russia to spare the monarchy further embarrassment.

  Alexandra’s mystic obsession with having a son and the subsequent damage it was doing to the Russian monarchy attracted the attention of many, including the German government. Prince Henry VII of Reuss, whose niece Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna (“Miechen”) had married into the Romanovs, recounted the unsettling situation in Russia to Chancellor von Bülow.

  All that I have managed to gather has left a very disturbing impression … certain influences, which can only be described as pernicious, are beginning to make themselves felt. These influences … with a very dubious admixture of mysticism, emanate from the Montenegrin princesses … wielded so decisive a power over the reigning Tsarina that even the Dowager Empress cannot combat it.… The Ru
ssian people sense corruption and the Little Father’s [Nicholas II] prestige suffers accordingly. All this is being carefully used by the Nihilists to undermine Imperial prestige still further. Revolution, to-day, has changed its tactics. The mot d’ordre is no longer to assassinate a sovereign, but to discredit dynastic infallibility with the people. At the top there is utter ignorance of this danger … Everybody else is ignored. No one who tells the truth can get a hearing, but is jealously watched and pushed aside.454

  Her obsession with having a son was not the only matter that caused Alexandra anxiety in 1901. Less than a year after Queen Victoria’s death, the unbelievable news broke that her brother the Grand Duke of Hesse and his wife, Ducky, were divorcing. Ducky announced to her family almost immediately after Queen Victoria’s funeral that she would not be returning to Darmstadt.

  The revelation sent shockwaves rippling through royal courts. Until the early twentieth century, divorce was a scandalous affair, and despite ubiquitous unhappy royal marriages, it was a practice wholly unheard of amongst proper upper-class society. But for Ernie and Ducky—who had been forced together by Queen Victoria—divorce was the only answer. They were maddeningly unhappy together, and their tiny court in Darmstadt was tainted with one scandal after another. “I do not think they were at all happy together,” May’s husband wrote to Nicholas II, “but I never thought it would come to this; I am very sorry as I like them both. You and I, thank God, are both so happy with our wives and children, that we can’t understand this sort of thing.”455 Empress Augusta Victoria was aghast at the idea, blaming the divorce on a lack of morality within Ducky’s family. “The last time I saw her,” Princess Antoine Radziwill wrote to a friend, Dona “spoke to me with great severity about the duchess of Coburg [Ducky’s mother], who, according to her, must have raised her daughters very badly.” In Saint Petersburg, Nicholas II was at a loss for words. “Can you imagine,” he wrote to his mother, “getting divorced, yes, actually divorced!… In a case like this even the loss of a dear person is better than the general disgrace of a divorce.”456