Everything about Princess Margaret Of Prussia totally explained
Princess Margaret of Prussia (
Margarethe Beatrice Feodora) (
April 22,
1872 -
January 22,
1954) was a daughter of
Frederick III, German Emperor and
Princess Victoria of the United Kingdom. She married
Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse. In 1926 they became
Landgrave and Landgravine of Hesse. She lost three sons in the two World Wars.
Early life
Princess Margaret of Prussia was the last of the eight children of
Frederick III, German Emperor, then heir of the German Empire and his wife,
Victoria, Princess Royal,
Queen Victoria's eldest daughter. Born on
April 22,
1872 in the
Hohenzollern's
New Palace in
Potsdam, by the time the infant was christened, her head was covered with short hair like moss, from which she acquired her nickname "Mossy". She was named Margarethe Beatrice Feodora, and
Margaret, the Crown Princess of Italy, was her godmother.
Princess Margaret grew up amid great privilege and formality.
Together with her sisters,
Princess Viktoria and
Princess Sophie, Margaret was deeply attached to her parents, forming an antagonist group to that of her eldest siblings,
William II,
Princess Charlotte and
Prince Heinrich. She remained close to her mother after the death of her father. Margaret was widely regarded as the most popular of
Kaiser Wilhelm II's sisters, and she maintained good relations with a wide array of family members.
She was a first cousin of both
King George V of England and
Tsarina Alexandra of Russia, all grandchildren of
Queen Victoria.
Marriage
Princess Margaret had fallen for Prince
Max of Baden.
He didn't reciprocate her affections and therefore she moved on to her second choice, Max's close friend,
Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse, future head of the Hesse-Cassel dynasty and future elected
king of Finland.
They were married on
January 25,
1893 at the Hohenzollern Stadtschloss in
Berlin on the anniversary of her parents' wedding.
At the time of the wedding Prince Frederick Charles wasn't the head of the
House of Hesse-Cassel.
The position was held by his older and virtually blind brother Landgrave Alexander Friederich, who relinquished it in the mid-1920s in order to enter an unequal marriage.
Prince Frederick Charles, as was his title when he married, was addressed as his Highness, while Princess Margaret warranted Royal Highness. This disparity came to an end in 1925 when Frederick Charles became Landgrave of
Hesse and head of the house of Hesse-Cassel.
They were distant relatives, his mother having also been a Prussian princess. The marriage was very happy. Princess Margaret had a strong personality; she'd always seem more secure and grounded than her husband.
The couple's main residence during the early years of marriage was Schloss Rumpenheim. In 1901, Princess Margaret inherited
Schloss Friedrichshof at the death of her mother.
It was highly unconventional for a husband to reside in his wife's home. However, Margaret was committed to maintain the house of her mother which entailed a great expense and the family moved to Friedrichshof.
In 1918, Margaret's husband accepted the offer of the throne of newly-independent
Finland, but due to German misfortunes in
World War I, soon renounced it. She would have become the Queen of Finland. Her predecessor as Queen-Consort of Finland was her first cousin,
Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia (who was also Grand Duchess Consort of Finland).
Children
Landgravine Margaret and her husband Frederick Charles of Hesse had six children, including two sets of twins:
Family tragedies
Margaret's elder sons, Friedrich Wilhelm and Maximilian, were killed in action during
World War I. Prince Maximilian, Princess Margaret's second and favorite son, was serving near
Aisne when he was seriously wounded by machine gun fire in October 1914. He died soon afterward and his body was secretly buried in the village of Caestre by the local people, who learned he was the
Kaiser's nephew. The priest refused to identify the grave until the Germans had left Belgium and a compensation was paid. Max's younger brother Wolfgang appealed for help to the British authorities, and eventually, after an enquiry was made, Maximilian's body was returned to his family. Princess Margaret's oldest son, Friedrich Wilhelm died on September 12 1916 at Kara Orman in
Romania. He was killed in close fighting; his throat was slit by an enemy bayonet.
Two other sons, Philipp and Christoph embraced Nazism, mostly hoping that Hitler would one day restore Monarchy in Germany. Philipp married Princess
Mafalda, daughter of
King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy.
Due to his close relations with the King of Italy, Philipp was appointed in 1939 to
Hitler's personal staff, since he could be an useful channel of communications between
Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy. When he realized the reality of Nazism, he tried to resign, but he wasn't able to do so. He used his position and his money to provide passports for Jews and help them to escape to
Holland. Publicly he continued with his duties and occasionally he made private missions in Italy for Hitler. When Italy capitulated, he personally informed Hitler. Hitler's revenge recoiled on Philipp, who was arrested in a concentration camp for political prisoners. Mafalda was taken to
Buchenwald, where she died of a hemorrhage caused by the amputation of her arm. Landgravine Margaret's fifth son, Christoph, was a staunch supporter of the German war effort, but after the
Battle of Stalingrad, he became frustrated by the limitations placed on his own role in the conflict, and increasingly critical of the German leadership. The Nazi regime turned against his family and he was planning to leave the Nazi party when, in 1943, he died on a plane crash. He was married to
Princess Sophie of Greece, a sister of
Prince Philip,
Queen Elizabeth II's husband. Landgravine Margaret also lost one of her daughters-in-law during the war, Wolfgang's wife, Princess Marie Alexandra when she and seven other women who were aid workers were killed in a bomb attack on
Frankfurt on 29-30 January 1944.
The cellar in which they'd taken refuge collapsed under the weight of the building, rendering Marie Alexandra scarcely recognizable.
Landgravine Margaret, very much the matriarch, was at the center of her large and dynamic family. During and after
World War II, she took care of many of her grandchildren and tried to preserve a center at Friedrichshof as their parents faced various tribulations.
Last years
Landgravine Margaret had difficult years after 1945; they were compounded by the theft from Friedrichshof in November 1945 of the family jewellery, valued at over 2 million pounds. After World War II, Friedrichshof was used as an officer's club by the military authorities during the American occupation. Princess Margaret's son Wolfgang, fearing for the jewels, had buried them in a subcellar of the castle. On November 5 1945 the manager of the club, Captain Kathleen Nash, discovered the jewels and together with her future husband, Colonel Jack Durant, and Major David Watson, stole the treasure and took the jewels out of Germany. In early 1946 Princess Margaret discovered the theft when the family wanted to use the jewels for the wedding of
Princess Sophia who was preparing to remarry. Princess Sophia and Landgravine Margaret denounced it to the Frankfurt authorities; the culprits were imprisoned but not until August 1951; the Hesse family received what had been recovered, only 10 percent of what had been stolen.
Landgravine Margaret, the last surviving child of
Emperor Frederick III, died in
Kronberg on January 22 1954, 22 years after her husband. She was 81 years old.
Notes
Bibliography
Pakula, Hannah, An Uncommon Woman, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1995, ISBN 0684842165
Petropoulos, Jonathan, Royals and the Reich, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006, ISBN 0195161335
Ancestry
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