Hermine — the forgotten Empress

Introduction.

Hermine, Princess Reuss-Greiz, is the German Empress whom time has forgotten. True she was not Empress during the period when Germany was a monarchy. Her marriage to Kaiser Wilhelm II took place in the period when he was in exile at Doorn in the Netherlands, so technically she was not Empress. However, following the precedent that a wife takes the rank of her husband, she was given the courtesy of royal treatment. Wilhelm was anointed at his coronation; whilst his crown could be taken away, this dedication could not be removed. Clearly she felt as committed to total duty as did he.

Begrabnis

There is a video on YouTube, showing the funeral of Kaiser Wilhelm II in occupied Holland,

in June 1941. Empress Hermine, heavily veiled, follows the flag draped coffin, leaning on the arm of a German officer. The funeral, with a German guard of honour, which had previous guarded his home, Huis Doorn, apparently infuriated Hitler. He, a survivor of the Great War, scorned his ex emperor, whom he blamed personally for the humiliating defeat inflicted on Germany. Wilhelm, despite his initial pleasure at the success of the German army, in turn came to distrust Hitler and his regime. Kristallnacht, the series of planned attacks against Jewish communities in November 1938, caused Wilhelm to declare that, ‘For the first time I am ashamed to be a German.’

Yet Hitler had formulated plans for a splendid funeral for the late Kaiser, but under his own terms. Despite his fury at the general who had sanctioned the funeral guard of honour, the Fuhrer had decided on a State Funeral in Berlin. It was felt that the late Kaiser was a German symbol, and that a splendid funeral would, as it were, anoint Hitler and his Reich as the legitimate successors of the German Empire. This may seem a strange ambition for a man who said that he pitied Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist Duce, for having to always be one step below or behind the King of Italy.

In the YouTube video it is Hermine who draws the eye. Except for one brief frame at the beginning of the video, where she is clearly visible, it is impossible to see her face because of her heavy veils, so one can only guess at her emotions as she follows the coffin of her husband of 19 years. Was she sad? Was she relieved? Was she indifferent? According to some sources the couple were truly devoted to each other. Others say that within a few years both realised that they had made a terrible mistake and were stifled. The only solution to that was death. Who can say what the truth is in any relationship? Perhaps one should simply accept what Empress Hermine herself said in her autobiography; that they were a totally devoted and ever loving couple.

The beginning

Her Serene Highness Princess Hermine Reuss-Greiz was born on December 17th 1887 to Prince Heinrich XXII, Prince Reuss and his wife, Princess Ida of Schaumburg-Lippe. She was their fifth child and fourth daughter. Naturally the parents were hoping for a son. Her brother, Henry, who became the last reigning prince of Reuss in 1902, was physically and mentally disabled as the result of a childhood eye operation, to correct a squint. Reuss was a principality in what is now Thuringia.

Hermine’s mother died at Schleiz on September 28th 1891, shortly after the birth of another daughter, Ida. She was 39. When Hermine was 14 her father died. Henry became distraught and threw himself at his father’s corpse, in floods of tears. These continued unabated for hours, until quietened with a sedative.

In 1903 Hermine attended a wedding at Buckeburg, residence of her guardian, her mother’s brother, Prince George of Schaumburg-Lippe. It was here that the young girl was presented to the Kaiser for the first time. Some time after that, Hermine was devastated once again by the death of her sister Caroline in 1905. At this time the Princess Louise of Prussia, daughter of Kaiser Wilhelm I and his consort Augusta of Saxe — Weimar — Eisenach, and Louise’s husband Grand Duke Frederick I of Baden invited Hermine to live with them. They were the epitome of kindness and generosity the the heartbroken girl.

Princess Louise was the product of an unhappy marriage. Augusta bore a son, Frederick, seven years before the birth of Louise. When Louise was born she declared that her duty to the House of Hohenzollern was complete. Whilst Louise and her mother had a distant relationship, that with her father was the opposite. He ignored his son and doted on Louise; he could frequently be found playing with her on the floor of the nursery.

First marriage.

The days of childhood ended for Hermine on January 7th 1907 when, at Greiz, she married

Prince Johann George Ludwig Ferdinand August von Schoenaich-Carolath, a man somewhat older than his bride, having been born in 1873. He was a lieutenant colonel in a Guards regiment stationed in Berlin. Their summer residence was Castle Saabor in Silesia. The couple had five children, the first, a boy, was born in 1907. One boy, Hans, was killed in 1943, fighting against Russia. A daughter, Henriette, married Prinz Karl Franz of Prussia in 1940. He was grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II so, by this marriage, Hermine became step-grandmother to her own daughter. Unfortunately this marriage ended in divorce in 1946.

On January 8th 1908 Hermine met the Kaiser once again, sitting on his right at a luncheon in the Royal Palace in Berlin. No longer a shy girl, she chatted freely with him about a recent visit she had made to Italy. It was at that luncheon that Prince Johann showed the first signs of suffering from consumption, an ashen pallor and disassociation from what what going on around him. The next morning he collapsed with a haemorrhage of the lungs. The Kaiser immediately gave him a year’s leave of absence from his posting. There were times when he felt well and was able to enjoy being at Castle Saabor. At other times he was wheelchair bound or confined to a sanatorium. At the outbreak of the Great War he tried to rejoin his regiment, the Second Dragoon Guards; naturally this was not possible. Instead he served with the militia in Breslau from 1914 until 1917. Food was in very short supply at this period. Hermine, more or less confined to a small apartment in that city, became ill with a gastric disorder, brought about by the very poor quality of the bread that was available. The disorder remained with her for the remainder of her life.

By the end of the war, Prince Johann was the economic controller for the German army occupying Romania. During this time they managed to meet when he was called to conferences in Berlin. Hermine had her own war work, running a hospital at Castle Saabor for nine months. It was eventually compelled to close when it became impossible to source sufficient food.

Having survived the Great War and the German revolution, which swept its monarchy away, the Prince and Princess of Schoenaich-Carolath travelled from sanatorium to sanatorium in the hope of finding a cure. They took the brave decision to leave their children at Castle Saabor, in the care of their father’s mother. During part of August 1919 the children were allowed to stay at a hotel near the current sanatorium, but their father’s condition was considered too dangerous to their own health for them to be in anything like close contact with him. For the last eight months of his life he was bedridden, ravaged by coughs, sleeplessness and mental collapse. Finally, in 1920, Prince Johann died, at home in Castle Saabor. That was just one year and four days before the wife of the Kaiser, Augusta Victoria, died.

Kaiser Wihelm II.

Wilhelm, born on January 27th 1859, seems to have been a complex character, with a cruel temper and emotional problems, caused perhaps by his left arm being six inches shorter than his right — the result of a terrible forceps delivery for his breech birth. This resulted in Erb’s palsy, a potentially painful condition because the nerves in the upper arm have been damaged. As he grew older his head started to to be pulled down to one side, presumably as his body tried to compensate for the disability. Doctors recommended an operation to sever a tendon, and the fitting of a body brace to force his head up again. His mother, Victoria, eldest child of Queen Victoria, blamed herself for his condition — she had suffered a bad fall when four months pregnant, and was determined that the disability would be overcome. William tried to avoid the operation, but was made to undergo it. His mother said that he was very quiet during it, but much distressed after. One can only guess the pain the poor boy had suffered. As a future Emperor of Germany it was essential that Wilhelm rode well, so from the age of eight constant riding lessons began. He fell off many times; his tears and entreaties were ignored and eventually he became a proficient horseman. Later, in official photographs, he was shown holding white gloves, or with both hands resting on the hilt of his sword, making it appear that both arms were equal. The disability was apparent at state dinners, where either a footman or guest had to cut his food for him. For more informal dining he had a combined knife/fork.

Wilhelm idolised and loved his father, Crown Prince Frederick, who had been a heroic soldier during the German unification wars. He loved Great Britain, the home of his mother and grandmother, Queen Victoria, hated its world domination, envied it and wanted to be British, at the same time as longing to surpass the British. Crown Prince Frederick was at heart a liberal, who hoped, when he finally became Kaiser, to implement a policy of democracy and social change. Wilhelm believed in autocracy, views that he learned from his tutors, and this alienated him from his parents, whom he believed were putting the interests of Britain before those of Germany.

Kaiser Wilhelm I died on March 9th 1888, aged 80. He had been a dogmatic military man, who even used the threat of abdication to thwart attempts at reforms; for example, in 1862 he opposed parliament’s proposed changes to the army funding by his threat to abdicate. Had he done so, obviously Frederick would have taken his place and, by using his influence Germany would have become more liberal than it had ever been, or would be until after the First World War. Father (and mother) and son were frequently at loggerheads over Frederick’s liberal attitude. Such was the degree of opposition that Frederick suffered from his family that he and his wife were frequently in England where his mother in law, Queen Victoria, held him in such high esteem that he was allowed to be her representative at UK official events. This state of affairs lasted the 27 years that Frederick was Crown Prince of Germany except for a brief period in 1878 when, following an attempted assassination, King Wilhelm was incapacitated.

Frederick III and Empress Victoria were the great, enlightened monarchs that Germany lost. Confirmed social reformers, their reign should have been a pinnacle of sensible democratic modernisation, creating a monarchy that was, like its British counterpart, a force for good in the lives of its subjects and thus, as our monarch is today, loved and respected by those subjects. It was not to be. Their plans were to liberalise German government, moving away from an over-powerful Chancellor, answerable only to to the Emperor, to a cabinet based government, with ministers being responsible to the parliament for their actions. Frederick described the German system of government as ‘ingeniously contrived chaos.’ Opposed to any possible reforms that would curb the power of the Chancellor was the long tenured, deeply conservative Chancellor Otto von Bismarck; a man who proposed that the unification of the independent German princely states into one confederation should, if necessary, take place using military force — the policy of blood and iron. Frederick insisted that unification should be based on ‘moral conquests.’ Fearing for his own position and that of his party, von Bismarck did all he could to keep Frederick out of any position of influence, even spreading untrue stories about him, to make him unpopular with his future subjects. Frederick’s official duties were largely confined to attending ceremonial military and social events. He did serve with distinction several times during Germany’s wars with France and Denmark, but was essentially a man of peace, declaring to two French journalists, ‘I do not like war gentlemen. If I should reign I should never make it.’

Frederick was still only 56, but his reign, which would undoubtedly heralded a new era of enlightened government, was to be tragically cut short. A heavy smoker, Frederick had been diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. He was horrified, saying, ‘To think I should have such a horrid, disgusting disease. I had so hoped to have been of use to my country.’ One of his doctors advised that he should have his larynx totally removed whilst another counselled against; no patient had ever survived such an operation and this was not just any patient. Frederick’s British doctor, Sir Morrell Mackenzie recommended a tracheotomy and to this he agreed. To facilitate breathing a cannula was fitted into his throat on 8th March 1888; he never spoke again. A further misery was caused by the German doctor bungling the operation, sticking his fingers into Frederick’s throat, causing an abscess that was never cured. A month later he became Kaiser. Clearly he was a dying man, but he still found the strength to perform his duties, including welcoming his mother-in-law. He drafted an edict which would restrict the royal power and that of the chancellor. This was never implemented because on June 15th , just 99 days after becoming Kaiser, Frederick died. Wilhelm immediately had his mother’s home surrounded by soldiers, whilst a search was made for papers which would prove hers, and her husband’s complicity in promoting the cause of Great Britain. There were none.

The new Kaiser, 29 years old, was a totally different man to his father. A firm believer in militarism, supporter of Bismarck and totally opposed to the liberal views held by his parents, Wilhelm was never going to be a champion of peaceful democracy. Any liberal legislation brought in during his father’s all too brief reign was abandoned although there was one thought shared by father and son, that the office of Chancellor gave its holder too much power. Bismarck, the man who tried to undermine Frederick and his wife Victoria’s position found himself begging the dowager empress to use her influence with her son to save him. She told him that she had none as Bismarck himself had destroyed it. It is unlikely that she would have used it if she had.

First marriage

Wilhelm’s first love, as a young man, was his cousin Princess Elizabeth of Hesse-Darmstadt. Unfortunately for him (and as it turned out, for her,) she declined his proposal and married into the Russian Royal Family. She was horribly murdered by Bolsheviks during the Russian revolution. He became engaged to Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, who was born on October 22nd 1858, and they married on February 27th 1881. They were a devoted couple for 40 years, producing six sons and one daughter.

Augusta Victoria Frederike Luise Feodora Jenny of Schleswig-Holstein (known to her family as Dona) was the daughter of Duke Frederick VIII and his wife, Princess Adelheid of Hohenloe-Langenburg. On marriage, Wilhelm’s mother hoped that her relationship with her son would be improved. It was not, and her relationship with her daughter in law remained at best polite. The relationship between the two women was not helped by Augusta Victoria being made head of the German Red Cross, with no charitable or nursing experience (or, so it is said, inclination.) The situation became worse, with Augusta being deliberately unkind to her mother-in-law. For example, she told her that hers and Wilhelm’s daughter Viktoria, was not named after her grandmother, and many other pinpricks. Wilhelm’s frequent tours changed this as Augusta became lonely, and sought the company of her mother-in-law; the two could often be seen out riding together and, when Victoria was dying of spinal cancer in 1900, Augusta was with her, even when she died.

Augusta had bad relationships with her sisters in law. Princess Sophie married the Crown Prince of Greece, intending to convert to the Greek Orthodox faith. Dona informed her that such a move would be unacceptable to Wilhelm, that she would be banned from entering Germany ever again and that she would go to Hell. Sophie told Augusta to mind her own business, at which the empress became hysterical and gave birth to her son Joachim prematurely. This led to both parents believing the boy was delicate, with Wilhelm declaring that if the baby died, Sophie would be guilty of his murder. (Joachim committed suicide in 1920, unable to face his life without imperial trappings and titles. His wife had also recently divorced him.)

The German monarchy was swept away by revolution in 1918, with the Kaiser forced into exile in Holland. Unlike its Russian counterpart, the German revolution started at the top of society and filtered downwards. The Kaiser’s abdication became a foregone conclusion; so much so that it was being reported in London two days before he knew of it himself. There were those critics who declared that, rather than face exile from his homeland, Wilhelm should have committed suicide or gone to a war front and been killed leading his armies. This, he declared, ‘would have been merely another way of committing suicide, without accepting responsibility for the deed. Even had I desired to choose this path, you know that even the rear of a modern battlefield is riddled for kilometres with shell holes, that it takes miles before anyone can reach the front lines. I might have broken my leg in a shell hole, but I could could not possibly have established contact with the enemy. Moreover, the Armistice was being negotiated. I might have dragged some troops after me in the silly attempt to fight after fighting was over; perhaps we would have been lucky enough to have been killed, but such an act would have been theatrical claptrap. A king has no right to send his men to death to assuage personal vanity. It would have meant the sacrifice of valuable lives, merely to provide me with a spectacular exit. The attempt would have ended in a preposterous mess, completing the step from the sublime to the ridiculous.’ Wilhelm tried to negotiate terms whereby he would remain as king of Prussia but this was refused.

Augusta too found life hard to bear after the German revolution and Wilhelm’s abdication and exile. She also was devastated by Joachim’s death, and died herself on April 11th 1921. One of her last wishes was that Wilhelm should remarry after her death. She said to her friend and Mistress of the Robes, Countess Brockdorff, ‘I am very sick. I fear I may not be permitted to remain at the side of the Kaiser much longer. The thought of leaving him alone tortures me. It is dreadful. Will you, my dearest friend, see to it that he marries again soon after I close my eyes?’ Wilhelm was allowed to accompany her body as far as the Dutch/German border, but not back to Germany, where she was buried in the Antique Temple at the Sanssoucci Park in Potsdam. She was mourned in Germany, where her husband had been reviled. Now, in his great loss, once again the German people were sympathetic to their former Kaiser. Such was the show of sympathy that some sources say he could, had he tried, have regained the throne. Wilhelm, whilst appreciative of the sympathy expressed said, ‘Feeling that my people have wronged me, I would not return to the throne unless my people asked for me.’ The British Prime Minister David Lloyd George said of him, ‘To my mind he is the first gentleman of Europe.’ This from a man who had, at the end of the war, called for Wilhelm to be hanged!

The road to a second marriage

Early in 1922 a small boy, with his mother’s consent, wrote a letter to the Kaiser. He said, ‘Dear Kaiser. I am only a little boy, but I want to fight for you when I am a man. I am sorry because you are so terribly lonely. Easter is coming. Mama will give us cake and coloured eggs. But I would gladly give up the cake and the eggs, if only I could bring you back. There are many little boys like me who love you.’ He signed it ‘George William, Prince of Schoenaich-Carolath.’

About a week later the child received a reply. The Kaiser had written himself to thank the boy, and sent him a photograph. There was also a letter for the boy’s mother, Hermine, inviting her and her children to visit Wilhelm at Huis Doorn. This was exciting, thrilling, but disconcerting. Rumours flew that since his wife’s death the Kaiser had become a terrifying religious maniac, a man unhinged by grief. Could Hermine expose her young family to such mental disturbance? Whilst not believing it, nevertheless she decided to accept the invitation for herself alone.

The journey to Doorn started on June 7th 1922. The train journey took 18 hours. She arrived at the nearest station, Amersfoort, to be met by the Kaiser’s representative, General von Dommes, a former Hussars commander and now one of the Masters of the Household. Hermine recognised the chauffeur who was another faithful servant, having been with the Kaiser for about 20 years. Another of her recollections was the particular sound of the horn that the Kaiser’s car had in his days of power. It was a distinctive sound that caused other road users to get out of the way. As Hermine put it, ‘the chauffeur conducted his imperial master, like Moses leading the children of Israel through the Red Sea.’ Now the car had a normal horn. The days of imperial glory were gone.

The Kaiser met her on the steps of Huis Doorn, their first meeting since 1913. He kissed her hand, spoke kindly to her maid, and led them into the house. After dinner they all retired for the night. Next morning the Kaiser, roses in hand, awaited Hermine, to walk her around the garden before breakfast. They then fed his ducks. This was the pattern for the days she spent at Huis Doorn.

Several days later, the general asked for a word with her. ‘What has Your Highness done to His Majesty?’ he wanted to know. Hermine initially thought that she had committed some hideous breach of protocol; the general’s next words were not reassuring. ‘The arrival of Your Highness has completely upset the Emperor’s routine.’ However, it was upset in a good way. His Majesty now was spending all his time with Hermine, and his staff could get no meetings with their master except over dinner. The general continued, ‘His Majesty’s secretaries have an unexpected vacation. The Emperor has not written a letter in three days. Even his daily task in the garden has come to an end. No trees are felled. No wood is sawed. The Emperor always delighted in pouring huge buckets of water upon his favourite plants, with the assistance of two or three gentlemen. Even this diversion has ceased to interest him.’ Hermine was assured that this had never happened with any previous visitors. She was also told that no visitor had ever fed the ducks before, it was, ‘the one little pleasure he reserves for himself.’ The general then said, ‘ Since Your Highness is here the black clouds have disappeared from His Majesty’s forehead. You have restored his human contacts. There is a new light in his eyes, new hope in his carriage. Permit me to thank you for all you have done for my august master.’

That afternoon, at tea, Hermine was, to use her own word, thunderstruck’ when Wilhelm suddenly asked her to marry him. Hermine says in her autobiography that she and the Kaiser had ‘learned to understand each other perfectly,’ and that they had ‘developed an extraordinary sense of intimacy and of kinship.’ She was stunned but pleased. Wilhelm had been her hero since she was a young girl; now her idol wanted her to be his wife. She made no answer, and the Kaiser seemed sad. Hermine reassured him that her silence was merely a struggle to find the right words to say, to express her profound gratitude. She said that she could never leave her children, and that Huis Doorn had insufficient room for them and any guests. The Kaiser had the perfect answer; there were outbuildings that could be converted.

Still she resisted. ‘Your Majesty, I fear I cannot make you happy. I yield to none in my admiration of the late Empress, but I am a different sort of woman. I am Hermine, not Augusta Victoria. Your Majesty will look in me for the qualities that endeared the Empress Augusta Victoria to you, and you will find me wanting. For 40 years the Empress was Your Majesty’s daily companion. Those 40 years of marital felicity constitute a handicap that no successor can overcome.’ To which Wilhelm replied, ‘I don’t want you to share my exile unless I know that you reciprocate my affection. I want your love, not your compassion. Don’t say no! Think it over. Much is at stake for both of us. Don’t decide without serious reflection.’

For three days she deliberated. In those days she realised that the Kaiser’s affection for her was reciprocated. So she said yes, but on terms of her own. They were that her three youngest children should live at Huis Doorn, and that her two eldest boys should spend school holidays with them. Wilhelm agreed. Then she wanted to be able to spend 16 weeks a year in Germany, to keep her own family contacts intact. This was agreed. The final stipulation was that Hermine wanted no courtiers or ladies in waiting. To this also the Kaiser agreed.

The next step was to tell people the good news. The first to know was the Kaiser’s eldest son, the Crown Prince, who arrived shortly after the couple had made their decision. Unlike many potential step-children he was immediately supportive and promised that his wife would also be so. This pleased the Kaiser greatly, and it was the Crown Prince who accompanied Hermine to the station when she returned to Germany to tell her own family. He, like his father, was forbidden to cross the border into their homeland. Some sources insist that the Kaiser’s other children were unhappy that their father was to remarry, but one has to believe Hermine when she says they were not. She was, after all, present!

First of her family to know was Hermine’s youngest sister Ida, who with her husband was thrilled by the news. Then on to Castle Saabor to tell the children that they were to have a most distinguished step-father. They were happy that their mother was happy, and bombarded her with endless questions. Hermine was to return to Doorn in November.

News of the engagement filtered through to the people of Germany. Some saw the engagement as an opportunity to vilify the Kaiser and end the popularity that he had been enjoying since the death of the Empress. Hate was directed at the Kaiser and Hermine, it was seen as an abomination that they should so dishonour the dead Empress’s memory! Little did they know that the marriage was the last wish of Her Late Majesty. All over Europe tongues were wagging in wicked media articles. The couple received anonymous poison pen letters. Reporters followed Hermine wherever she went, trying to find something with which to discredit her. There was even one reporter who tried to land an aircraft at Huis Doorn to get an ‘exclusive!’

Fortunately there were loyal supporters for them. Countess Brockdorff reminded the Kaiser that he was carrying out Victoria Augusta’s last wishes. The Kaiser did not allow this information to be made public until 1927. Hermine’s family were supportive.

Hermine departed from Castle Saabor on November 4th early in the morning, arriving at Doorn in the late evening. The wedding was to take place the next day.

Wedding day

Few guests were invited to the wedding, just family and the closest friends. Huis Doorn was so small that none of the guests were able to stay there, most staying in the two small local inns, which were a short walk away from the house. Reporters thronged the village, helping its economy, and making it, for that short time, the centre of interest. The story had spread that the Kaiser’s eldest soon disapproved of the marriage, so he made sure that his attendance was publicised. The Kaiser’s brother and three of his sons attended, and his beloved daughter, but only Hermine’s daughter Henrietta attended from the bride’s family, to save the children from the barrage of publicity. One of her sisters attended;the others were unable to travel due to difficulty in obtaining passports. However, her cousin, Prince Henry XXVII of the junior branch of the House of Reuss was there, in place of Hermine’s disabled brother.

Flowers arrived from Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and her mother, and the Kaiser’s Dutch friend, Count Bentinck and his brother attended. Also present were the Minister of the Queen’s Cabinet, the local governor and mayor and a number of other officials and the members of the Kaiser’s household. The mayor of Doorn conducted the civil ceremony, whilst the former Royal Court Chaplain Dr. Vogel, had travelled down from Potsdam to marry his former master.

So now began Hermine’s life in exile. She took on the economical management of the Huis Doorn estate, as well as, from a distance, Castle Saabor. As if that wasn’t enough, she set up a charitable foundation which she managed herself. She also kept in contact with monarchist organisations in Germany. She was a strong character, and a loyal, loving and supportive wife to the Kaiser. Despite what some sources claim, theirs was a true, loving relationship. Rumours abound that she spent much time away from her husband. This is so, but the Kaiser had agreed to her doing so before they married, so he knew what to expect. There are also stories that his children would not visit Huis Doorn if she was there. This is contradicted by photographic evidence. In particular, it was said that Crown Princess Cecilie called her ‘that woman,’ and would have nothing to do with her. How then, are there in existence both formal and informal; photographs of them together? Hermine seems to have been accepted — and why not, her own family and that of her first husband were representatives of the highest aristocracy. Hermine never claimed the titles of Empress or Kaiserin for herself, styling herself as Princess. Some members of

so-called ‘smart’ society took to calling her the Question Mark Empress. For the record, Hermine and Wilhelm were related; fifth cousins through descent from King George II of Great Britain. In her own right Hermine was a direct descendant of William the Conqueror.

In 1927 she published her autobiography, An Empress in Exile. After its publication Time magazine wrote of her, ‘The present consort of Wilhelm II is a healthy, good-humoured woman with an easy stride, who does not take too seriously the pompous courtesy titles sometimes proclaimed at her approach by Netherlandic butlers in the vicinity of Doorn….Actually Princess Hermine is a strictly practical woman who stipulated in her marriage contract (1922) that she should be allowed every year a vacation away from the Netherlands — in Germany.’

Hermine’s strength shows in an incident during one of her visits to Berlin in 1927. The Hohenzollern’s had negotiated the return of some of the family assets with the government of the Weimar Republic. One of these properties was the Wilhelm 1st Palace on the Unter Den Linden, the great processional street running from Brandenburger Tor to the river and ultimately the Berliner Dom and Royal Palace. Hermine told the government that she would be taking up residence there. They informed her that, although she was, of course, entitled to do so, they could make no guarantees that she would be safe in so doing. Undeterred, she arrived with two Mercedes and moved into four rooms in the palace. Naturally there were no problems and she returned home safely.

The year 1929 saw Wilhelm celebrate his 70th birthday. Again Time magazine wrote an article, saying, ‘As the guests trooped in to dinner they found no place card laid for “the Empress Hermine,” present consort of Wilhelm II. His 70th birthday was to have been the occasion for the first general recognition of her rank by the entire House of Hohenzollern. Poor Hermine! On the night before she had been stricken with chicken pox.’

Hermine and the Third Reich.

The Nazi party’s rise to power in Germany from 1921 was the cause of concern for many, and of hope for some. Hermine gave her support to the party because she hoped that President Hindenburg, and then Chancellor Adolf Hitler, would restore Wilhelm to the throne, thus creating a symbol around which the whole country could rally and unify. The idea was that when the monarchy was safely established, Wilhelm would abdicate in favour of one of his grandsons. Hitler was, in fact, very much anti-monarchy. His only use for it would be as a tool to legitimate his rise to power, using the prestige of the ancient Hohenzollern monarchy to show him as its true and worthy successor. Did he perhaps see himself as the new Lohengrin or Parsifal? Wilhelm’s own view of Hitler and his comrades was utter disdain.

Many of the senior military figures in 1930s Germany were members of the Prussian nobility, the Junker class. These ‘young lords’ — the derivation of the word (although some were not so young,) were often loyal supporters of the Hohenzollern monarchy. Their loyalty may well be seen then as divided, between their loyalty to country and government on the one hand, and to the fount of nobility, the Kaiser, on the other. As mentioned earlier, Hitler supported neither the German or, indeed, any other monarchy, expressing sympathy for the other Fascist leader, Italy’s Benito Mussolini, Il Duce, for playing second fiddle to King Victor Emanuel III. This king, originally a Fascist sympathiser, turned against them. Fascist support, however, cost him his throne.

Hermine’s support for Hitler was the cause of embarrassment. In 1932, on her annual trip to Germany, she was asked by the Countess von Groeben if it was true that she and the Kaiser were giving Hitler financial support. It is recorded that Hermine just stood facing her ‘in embarrassed silence.’ Hermine’s 1933 visit to Germany is believed to have included a meeting with Hitler, to see if he was sympathetic to the restoration of the monarchy. Clearly, had such a meeting taken place, Hermine would know that he had no sympathy at all.

By the early 1930s the Nazi party was in undoubted control and imposing strict controls over Jewish and other groups. The infamous Burning of Un-German Books, orchestrated by the German Student Union, took place principally on Berlin’s Bebelplatz, between the Humboldt Library and State Opera House. On May 10th about 25,000 books on socialist, pacifist and themes were destroyed, including the works of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaser, Eric Kastner, Albert Einstein, H G Wells and many others. A crowd estimated at 40,000 gathered to watch, and heard Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda tell them, ‘The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path. The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you.’

In 1938, Kristallnacht, a concerted series of attacks on German and Austrian Jews on 9/10 November took place. It took its name from the amount of glass left around after attacks on about 1,000 synagogues, 7,000 Jewish businesses and many other buildings. Civilians and paramilitary groups were responsible, with the government and armed forces standing by and taking no action against them. The death toll was officially estimated at about 91; the true number may be as high as 2,000. There were also about 300 suicides attributed to the events of that terrible night. Thirty thousand Jews were imprisoned in one way and another. It was all of this that caused Wilhelm’s comment, ‘For the first time I am ashamed to be a German.’

War and the end

World War 2 began early in September 1939. Its causes and effects are beyond the scope of this chapter. By the summer of 1940 Germany had taken Holland. A detachment of soldiers was sent to Doorn, to ensure the safety of Wilhelm and Hermine. Or was it perhaps to ensure their compliance? Churchill had in fact offered them shelter in England. Wilhelm was too old and too unwell to consider this as a viable option. When Paris was taken Wilhelm, despite his dislike of Hitler, sent him a letter of congratulations.

Wilhelm’s end came on June 3rd 1941, when he died of a pulmonary embolus. It was Hitler’s plan to give Wilhelm a State Funeral in Berlin, emphasising the Third Reich as the successor to the Hohenzollerns. However, it was Wilhelm’s wishes that were respected, that he would never return to Germany until the monarchy was restored, and he was buried in a mausoleum at Huis Doorn. What was not respected however, was his wish that there should be no display of Nazi emblems.

Hermine alone again

Follwing Wilhelm’s death Hermine decided to return to Castle Saabor, dividing her time between there and occasional visits to Berlin. Here she was seen running for air raid shelters, just like any other citizen. Early in 1945 she was forced to leave Castle Saabor during the Vistula-Oder Offensive, a Russian attack on Germany that took them to within 43 miles of Berlin. Hermine managed to reach safety at her sister’s estate, Rossla, in Thuringia. However, the Russian advance was relentless, and by the end of the war Hermine was their prisoner, held initially in a displaced persons camp at Frankfurt-am-Oder in Brandenburg. She was moved into a heavily guarded small flat in Frankfurt-am-Oder, and it was there that she died suddenly, of a heart attack, on August 7th 1947. She was 59 years old. Her burial took place in the Antique Temple at Potsdam, where her predecessor, Empress Augusta Victoria, also lay.

Aftermath

There was something of a scandal after Hermine’s death when a number of pieces of her jewellery disappeared. The American army sent in its investigators, who managed to recover 31 pieces worth an estimated $5,000,000. The jewellery was recovered after Vera Herbst, described as ‘raven-haired and shapely,’ was arrested. She was a ‘friend’ of Hermine’s son, Prince Ferdinand von Schoenaich-Carolath, and was taken into custody after smuggling the jewels into Berlin. She was charged with suspicion of murder and theft. The murder was supposed to be that of Hermine! Herbst was questioned for 13 hours and eventually released after denying any involvement in Hermine’s death, although she did admit to carrying away her jewels. She claimed that Prince Ferdinand gave her some of the jewels, but some were destined for Hermine’s daughter Caroline, living in the American controlled sector of Berlin.