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 …1086
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!”1087 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.”1088 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.1089 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.
Wilhelm opted to leave the country as quickly as possible, since his safety could no longer be guaranteed. The one concession he forced his ministers to agree to was that he would not sign the abdication until he was safely outside of Germany. One of the last letters he ever wrote on German soil was to Dona back in Potsdam.
If I am not allowed to stay in the midst of the remaining faithful [officers], then I must go with you to a neutral State, Holland or elsewhere, where merciful heaven may permit us to eat our bread—in exile. God’s hand lies heavily upon us! His Will be done! So, on Hindenburg’s advice, I am leaving the army, after fearful mental struggles. As God wills, auf Wiedersehen. My lasting gratitude for your faithful love—
Your deeply mortified husband.1090
In England, the queen was relieved to hear that Wilhelm was no longer in power. “Heard that William had abdicated & his son renounced his right to the Throne,” she wrote in her diary on November 9. “What a downfall, what retribution to the man who started this awful war.”1091 King George described Wilhelm’s abdication with added poignancy in his own journal.
We got the news that the German Emperor had abdicated, also the Crown Prince. “How are the mighty fallen.” He has been Emperor just over 30 years, he did great things for his country, but his ambition was so great that he wished to dominate the world and created his military machine for that object. No one man can dominate the world, it has been tried before, and now he has utterly ruined his Country and himself and I look upon him as the greatest criminal known for having plunged the world into this ghastly war with all it’s [sic] misery.1092
The day after George wrote this, Wilhelm implemented his decision and went into exile. Since it was imperative that he leave immediately, and since most of his family was back in Potsdam, he had no choice but to go without them. “My wife stays, and they want me to leave,” Wilhelm exclaimed to his aides. “It would look like fear.”1093 The emperor received assurances that because his wife was still widely respected, she would be protected from harm. At 4:30 a.m., Wilhelm and his entourage boarded his personal train. Their destination upon leaving Spa was the Netherlands, where Wilhelm’s cousin Queen Wilhelmina had invited him into exile. But once reports reached Spa that several of the rail crossings were now controlled by revolutionaries, the emperor was transferred to a black car, with the imperial insignia scratched off to avoid drawing attention. The atmosphere as Wilhelm departed Spa in the foggy dampness was highly charged, but the send-off was very formal without any fanfare; the German press printed only a short byline about his departure.
Once he reached the border, Wilhelm boarded a train again, bound for a nearby Dutch village. He saluted each of his generals, thanking them for their service. When he boarded the train, a message from Dona was there waiting for him. She reported “that she was in good spirits”—most likely a lie—and that her thoughts were with him. He spent most of the journey alone in his private coach, pacing up and down across the floor. Periodically, he stopped to stare at a photograph hanging on the wall that depicted him having tea with Queen Victoria at Osborne House. In England, King George V wrote in his diary, “William arrived in Holland yesterday. Today has indeed been a wonderful day, the greatest in the history of this Country.”1094 Crown Prince Willy arrived in the Netherlands two days later. It was equally imperative that he get out of Germany as quickly as possible, since his behavior over the years had made him universally hated by his people. Instead of joining his father, with whom he had always had a difficult relationship, Willy found a home on Wieringen Island in North Holland. Empress Zita was hardly surprised by the outcome and later remarked, “The emperor Charles was not surprised … including the choice of Holland, though, to put it mildly, it wasn’t considered exactly an inspiring example. But as we always knew that he was under the thumbs of his generals, this, after all, seemed the natural end. They had just packed him off.”1095
With the German emperor’s abdication and exile in November 1918, the Allies accepted the unconditional surrender of the Central powers. The end of the war saw the fall of the eagles, as Europe’s imperial powers were known. Tsarist Russia fell to the Bolsheviks in 1917, followed a year later by imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary. Of Europe’s imperial monarchs, only King George V and Queen Mary remained on the throne. Nicholas and Alexandra were dead, Wilhelm went into exile while Dona lingered on in Potsdam, and Zita and Charles had driven off into the night, leaving Vienna forever.
When it came to Great Britain, however, November 1918 was a time unparalleled in the nation’s history. Despite their casualties between 1914 and 1918—which included 750,000 killed from Great Britain alone, as well as another 200,000 from across the empire—one historian noted that the country “had triumphed through the long years of attrition, and her monarchy, alone of the major monarchies which ruled Europe before the war, had emerged not only intact but thriving.”1096 November 11, 1918, was declared Armistice Day. The king, the queen, and the Prince of Wales appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. The scene that unfolded was awe inspiring. A crowd numbering more than one hundred thousand had gathered in the great round courtyard beyond the palace gates, cheering on the royal family and holding up their portraits. In the center, rising above everyone, was the Queen Victoria monument that had been dedicated by George and Wilhelm seven years earlier. Accompanying the king and queen that day was David Lloyd George, Britain’s long-suffering, redoubtable prime minister, who shrunk into the balcony’s doorway so as not to pull attention away from the royal family. Queen
Mary wrote simply in her diary of that day, “dull first, rain in the afternoon.” But even she could not help but describe the joy at seeing the end of “this ghastly war,” and considered Armistice Day “the greatest day in the world’s history.”1097 In a speech at the Palace of Westminster, the king declared, “May goodwill and concord at home strengthen our influence for concord abroad. May the morning star of peace, which is now rising over a war-worn world, be here and everywhere the herald of a better day, in which the storms of strife shall have died down and the rays of an enduring peace be shed upon all nations.”1098
The news of the armistice may have brought a feeling of relief that was “indescribably intense,” but it was bittersweet for George and Mary. Their German relatives, many of whom they had been close with before the war, were now suffering in defeat. Mary’s cousin the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz—Aunt Augusta’s grandson—committed suicide by shooting himself in February. “Uncle Willie,” the king of Württemberg, abdicated on November 30. So too did George’s cousin the Duke of Coburg. This tiny, central German dukedom had been the ancestral home for the entire British royal family. The young duke’s life “was a tragic example of the royal family’s divided loyalties during the war. As an Eton schoolboy of fifteen, having inherited his father’s title upon his early death, Queen Victoria had insisted the boy, who had never been out of Britain, be sent to Germany to prepare for his reign in his duchy. Now, he was persona non grata in both countries.”1099
Exuberant crowds in London danced around bonfires until the small hours of the morning. In the week that followed, the king and queen rode throughout the city in an open carriage five times. A photograph taken of Mary en route to an armistice celebration with her husband and Queen Alexandra shows her beaming with a wide, toothy smile that radiated warmth and exuberance. Everywhere the royal couple went, they were met with crowds exploding with enthusiastic patriotism for king and country. The Times reported “the wonderful popularity with Londoners—as we are convinced, with the whole country—of THEIR MAJESTIES the KING and QUEEN … this signal outburst of loyal feeling is born of the conviction that the CROWN, well-worn, is the symbol and safeguard of unity, not only here in England, but in the free dominions overseas, and in India.”1100 Mary wrote to her son Harry, “It has been very wonderful and gratifying that after all these 4 years of ghastly warfare the people did crowd here to us the moment they knew the war was practically over.”1101 It is uncertain whether even Queen Victoria was as popular as George and Mary were at the end of the First World War.
In the days following the signing of the armistice, a subdued, gravely ill Dona was alone at the Neues Palais, save for a few faithful retainers. She was joined by some family members a few days later, including several of her sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. The day that Emperor Wilhelm fled Germany, the empress sent a letter to her daughter, Sissy, who had taken refuge with her in-laws at their private estate at Gmunden in Austria.
I’m still here in our old home, but for how long? With me I have some of my boys, some daughters-in-law and grandchildren and their love does me good. I worry so much about beloved Papa! He is so alone in his misfortune and I am not with him to help him bear it, he who has always wanted and done his best for the Fatherland. May God grant that I should be reunited with him once more.… God grant that we shall see each other again.1102
The New York Times reported that “Wilhelm II’s wife, Auguste Viktoria, and the former Crown Princess Cecilie and her children have remained at the New Palace in Potsdam under the protection of the local soldiers and workers’ council. Auguste Viktoria has expressed her thanks to the council for her family’s protection.”1103
The end of the war brought speculation over Dona’s fate. Those loyal to the monarchy suggested she remain in Germany. Since there were no immediate threats against her life, and since most of the German people still held her in high regard, many hoped that, by remaining in the country, she could serve as a rallying point for monarchists. The most ardent royal supporters even hoped that her presence would pave the way for an eventual restoration of the monarchy. But when asked about what course of action she would take, the empress was unequivocal: she would join her husband in exile. The newly formed Council of People’s Commissars granted her permission to travel safely to the Netherlands now that her husband had promised to abdicate. For Dona, “there was never any choice in this matter. For one thing, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands wished her to join William to give his stay in Holland a more private character.” On a deeper, more personal level, “she could not have born [sic] the thought of being separated from William at a time when he needed her more than ever.”1104 As soon as the decision was made to go into exile, Dona frantically began packing as many belongings as she could take with her. The idea of common thieves appropriating her personal treasures almost overwhelmed her, prompting her to pack everything from clothes and jewels to cutlery and knickknacks. Her daughters-in-law offered the stoical empress support, but she demurred, choosing instead to be left alone. Even the presence of her eldest grandchild, Prince Wilhelm, failed to cheer her up.
The tide of events in Germany shifted drastically at the end of November, as Marxist Communists began fighting with the more moderate republicans for control of the government. Berlin and its environs became war zones, making it imperative for Dona to leave soon. Violence against the monarchy was escalating. Two attempts were made on the life of Wilhelm’s brother Henry and Wilhelm’s nephews. In Potsdam, small bands of rioters barged into the Neues Palais. The small detachment of bodyguards that Wilhelm had left to protect Dona was unable to adequately defend the palace. The empress was unharmed, but everyone’s nerves were sufficiently jolted. Eitel-Fritz finally persuaded his mother to relocate to his home, the more secure Villa Ingenheim, in southwest Potsdam. Within hours of vacating the Neues Palais, crowds broke in and ransacked the ground floor. Thieves made off with antiques, furniture, and clothes, including one of Dona’s nightgowns. But Ingenheim proved just as vulnerable as the palace. The guards assigned by Eitel-Fritz to protect her openly supported the revolution by wearing red cockades in their hats. But unlike many of the guards who abandoned Tsarina Alexandra at Tsarskoe Selo to join the revolution, those at Ingenheim still did their best to protect Augusta Victoria.
On the first night she spent at her son’s home, a group of bibulous sailors broke into the building and easily overpowered the guards. While the sailors tore room after room apart looking for Dona’s diaries and letters, she was questioned by their officer. The empress faced bravely them, showing great strength during her interrogation, despite still being very ill. When the officer suggested she would be more comfortable if she sat down, she defiantly retorted, “I am accustomed to sit down only when I feel like it.”1105 Dona’s courage lasted through the hours of questioning. In the end, it was by the “sheer force of her character she had subdued them, and afterwards she had been left in peace.”1106
At the Villa Ingenheim, Dona remained in almost total seclusion under the protection of the small handful of guards who were still committed to her safety. The terrifying ordeal involving the drunken sailors further undermined her poor health. Suffering from continual heart pain and fatigue brought on by stress, she spent long hours in bed. The only thing that eased her suffering was the presence of her sons Eitel-Fritz, Oscar, Auwi, and their wives and children, along with Crown Princess Cecilie and her family. Missing from the family group now gathered at Ingenheim were Crown Prince Willy, who was by that time settled on Wieringen Island, and Prince Adalbert, who was in Kiel. When the revolution began, Adalbert fled to his personal yacht, which was manned by a crew still loyal to him. His wife, Adelaide, and their daughter attempted to reach Kiel but were blocked by revolutionaries. They found safety near Munich, taking refuge with the Bavarian royal family; husband and wife were eventually reunited and made their way safely to Switzerland.
At the end of November, the time had come for Dona to leave German
y and join her husband in exile in the Netherlands. The night before her departure, she packed as many things as she could, including a few jewels, clothes, and personal items. Most of her crown jewels had been spirited away with Wilhelm’s cousin the queen of Sweden, who was in Carlsruhe at the time. Before dawn on the cold, wintry morning of November 27, 1918, Augusta Victoria, wearing a long black dress and a matching hat that partially covered her face, left Potsdam. Accompanying the empress was a small group comprised of her ever-faithful friend Countess Mathilde Keller, her beloved dachshund Topsy, and one or two attendants. Noticeably absent from the traveling party were Dona’s daughters-in-law, most of whom chose to stay in Germany, and most of whom now chose to live separately from their husbands. With the exceptions of Oscar’s wife, Countess Ina, and Adalbert’s wife, Princess Adelaide, whom those princes had married for love, all four of her sons’ wives were forced to endure unfaithful, bigoted husbands who had shown time and again that their military careers were more important to them than their marriages. Crown Prince Willy proved to be a particularly brutal husband who hit Cecilie on more than one occasion. When Willy became too insufferable, Cecilie fled abroad, usually with the emperor’s consent, while Dona cared for her young grandchildren.
Upon leaving Ingenheim, Dona was driven by Cecilie to the Charlottenburg station—the same train station where, thirty years before, she and Wilhelm experienced a very different scene. Back then, during the howling winter, the couple had met Wilhelm’s parents upon their return from San Remo when they had just ascended the throne, making the young couple the new crown prince and princess of Germany. This time, the emotional scene that took place was very different. There were no imperial officials, no crowds paying their respects. The Berlin of November 1918 was a far cry from the Berlin of 1888. Absent were outbursts of loyalty to the monarchy or the military on parade in imperial livery. City life hardly seemed to notice the passing into shadow of the empress or her family. On the platform of the station, Dona and Cecilie shared a last, tearful embrace. The only other people there were gray-coated soldiers returning from the front lines, none of whom acknowledged Dona. The only light that illuminated the platform was from the train conductor’s lantern. Cecilie noted that, despite the pain of her departure, Dona maintained “the placidity of her temperament.”1107
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