Empress Augusta Victoria of Germany: An “Inordinately Vain” Lady?

Empress Augusta Victoria, with her daughter, Victoria Luise. Image from Wikimedia Commons

On October 22, 1858, Empress Augusta Victoria of Germany was born at Dolzig Castle, the eldest daughter of Frederick VIII, future Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg and Princess Adelheid of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, a great-niece of Queen Victoria. Augusta Victoria was christened  Auguste Viktoria Friederike Luise Feodora Jenny and, by marriage to Kaiser Wilhelm II, she would be the last  last German empress and queen of Prussia.

Of the Kaiserin's characteristics, Henry William Fischer wrote:

"She is inordinately vain. She has no sympathy for the people; she is an idolater of wealth and a tyrant of the poor. She hates Americans; she tyranizes over her servants - and she believes the Hohenzollerns (her children), were ordained by God to rule the world with an iron hand. But, like every German wife, she feared her husband and bowed to his will.... Her majesty is peevish, unjust and petty in the treatment of her retinue, the very best reason why the royal household in the Neues Palais or Schloss is aas little free from vexation and even domestic brawls as other institutions of the kind, be they extensive or small, in Berlin, Potsdram or anywhere in the Fatherland for that matter."

Even her own sister-in-law, Charlotte, Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen, quipped: "Donna is the most arrogant and pretentious princess on any throne in Christendom."

 

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