Frederica of Hanover, Queen of the Hellenes. Conclusion

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Anne-Marie of Denmark, Frederica of Hanover, Frederik IX of Denmark, Greek Civil War, King Constantine II of the Hellenes, King Paul I of the Hellenes, Military Junta, Queen of the Hellenes

Queen consort

On April 1, 1947, George II died and Frederica’s husband ascended the throne as Paul I, with Frederica as Queen Consort p. A Communist insurgency in Northern Greece led to the Greek Civil War. The King and Queen toured Northern Greece under tight security to appeal for loyalty in the summer of 1947.

Queen Frederica was constantly attacked for her German ancestry. Left-wing politicians in Greece repeatedly used the fact that the German Emperor Wilhelm II was her grandfather, and that she had brothers who were members of the SS, as propaganda against her.

She was also criticized variously as “very Prussian” and “was a Nazi”. When she was in London representing her sick husband at the wedding of his first cousin Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark to King George VI’s elder daughter Princess Elizabeth in November 1947, Winston Churchill remarked on German Emperor Wilhelm II being her grandfather.

Queen Frederica had replied acknowledging the fact, but reminding him that she was also descended from Queen Victoria, and that her father would be the British king if the country had operated under the Salic Law (allowing only males to inherit the crown).

During the civil war, Queen Frederica set the Queen’s Camps or Child Cities a network of 53 camps around Greece where she would rescue children of members of DSE and former partisans.

The role of these Queen’s Camps is disputed as a means of propaganda by the monarchy through the educational program. There were allegations, generally by opposition or communist sources, which held that children were illegally adopted by American families while they were in the Queen’s Camps. Children were most likely provided with education and care.

The Greek Civil War ended in August 1949. The Sovereigns took this opportunity to strengthen the monarchy, they paid official visits to Marshal Josip Broz Tito in Belgrade, Presidents Luigi Einaudi of Italy in Rome, Theodor Heuss of West Germany, and Bechara El Khoury of Lebanon, Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari of India, King George VI of the United Kingdom, and the United States as guest of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

However, at home in Greece and abroad in the United Kingdom, Queen Frederica was targeted by the opposition, because as a girl she had belonged to the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls), a branch of the Hitler Youth group for young women; her supporters argued that evading membership in the group would be difficult under the existing political climate in Nazi Germany at the time.

Her November 16, 1953 appearance in Life as America’s guest was taken on one of the many state visits she paid around the world. Also that year she appeared on the cover of Time. On May 14, 1962 her eldest daughter Sofia married Prince Juan Carlos of Spain, (later King Juan Carlos I of Spain) in Athens.

Frederica has been described as “inherently undemocratic”. She was notorious for her numerous arbitrary and unconstitutional interventions in Greek politics and clashes with democratically elected governments.

She actively politicked against the election of Alexander Papagos. At home in Greece and abroad in the United Kingdom, she was targeted by the opposition. In 1963 while visiting London, rioting by Greek leftists demonstrating against the situation with the political prisoners of the Greek civil war, forced her to temporarily seek refuge in a stranger’s house. Her interference in politics was harshly criticized and possibly was a significant factor in the strengthening of republican sentiments.

Queen dowager

On March 6, 1964, King Paul died of cancer. When her son, now King Constantine II of the Hellenes, married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, daughter of King Frederik IX of Denmark and Princess Ingrid of Sweden, later that year on September 18, Queen Frederica stepped back from the majority of her public duties in favor of her daughter-in-law. She remained a figure of controversy and was accused in the press of being the éminence grise behind the throne.

She retired to the countryside where she lived an almost reclusive life. However, she continued to attend Royal events that were family-oriented, such as the baptisms of her grandchildren in both Spain and Greece.

Exile

King Constantine II’s clashes with the democratically elected Prime Minister George Papandreou Sr. were blamed by critics for causing the destabilisation that led to a military coup on April 21, 1967 and the rise of the regime of the colonels.

Faced with a difficult situation, King Constantine initially collaborated with the military dictatorship, swearing in their government under a royalist prime minister. Later that year he attempted a counter-coup in an attempt to restore democracy, whose failure forced him into exile. Following this, the junta appointed a regent to carry out the tasks of the exiled monarch.

In 1971, Frederica published an autobiography, A Measure of Understanding.

On June 1, 1973 the junta abolished the Greek Monarchy without the consent of the Greek people and then attempted to legitimize its actions through a 1973 plebiscite that was widely suspected of being rigged. The new head-of-state became President of Greece George Papadopoulos.

The dictatorship ended on July 24, 1974 and the pre-junta constitutional monarchy was never restored. A plebiscite was held on December 8, 1974 in which Constantine (who was able to campaign only from outside the country) freely admitted his past errors, promised to support democracy, and in particular, promised to keep his mother Frederica away from Greece and out of Greek politics. However, 69% of Greeks voted to make Greece a democratic republic.

Death

Frederica died on February 6, 1981 in exile in Madrid of heart failure, reportedly following eyelid surgery (blepharoplasty), although a biographer has claimed the surgery was cataract removal.

She was interred at Tatoi (the Royal family’s palace and burial ground in Greece). Her son and his family were allowed to attend the service but had to leave immediately afterwards.

April 18, 1917: Birth of Princess Frederica of Hanover, Queen of the Hellenes. Part I.

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Brunswick-Lüneburg, Ernst August of Brunswick, Frederica of Hanover, George II of the Hellenes, German Emperor Wilhelm II, Paul I of the Hellenes, Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, Queen of the Hellenes, Sofia of Spain, Titles Deprivation Act 1917, Victoria Louise of Prussia

Frederica of Hanover (18, April 1917 – February 6, 1981) was Queen consort of the Hellenes from 1947 until 1964 as the wife of King Paul, thereafter Queen mother during the reign of her son, King Constantine II.

Born Her Royal Highness Friederica, Princess of Hanover, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, and Princess of Brunswick-Lüneburg on April 18, 1917 in Blankenburg am Harz, in the German Duchy of Brunswick, she was the only daughter and third child of Ernst August, then reigning Duke of Brunswick, and his wife Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia, herself the only daughter of the German Emperor Wilhelm II.

Her Royal Highness Friederica, Princess of Hanover, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, and Princess of Brunswick-Lüneburg

Both her father and maternal grandfather abdicated their thrones in November 1918 following Germany’s defeat in World War I, and her paternal grandfather, Ernest Augustus, Crown Prince of Hanover, 3rd Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, was stripped of his British Royal Dukedom the following year, for having sided with Germany in World War I.

Her paternal grandfather, Ernest Augustus of Hanover and Duke of Cumberland was the most senior male-line descendant of George I, II, and III, the Duke of Cumberland of Great Britain and was the last Hanoverian Prince to hold a British royal title and the Order of the Garter.

Ernest Augustus, Crown Prince of Hanover, 3rd Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale

In 1914 the title of a Prince of Great Britain and Ireland was additionally granted to the members of the house by King George V. These peerages and titles however were suspended under the Titles Deprivation Act 1917.

However, the title Royal Prince of Great Britain and Ireland had been entered into the family’s German passports, together with the German titles, in 1914. After the German Revolution of 1918–19, with the abolishment of nobility’s privileges, titles officially became parts of the last name. So, curiously, the British prince’s title is still part of the family’s last name in their German passports, while it is no longer mentioned in their British documents.

On 29 August 1931, Ernst August, Duke of Brunswick, as head of the House of Hanover, declared the formal resumption, for himself and his dynastic descendants, of use of his former British princely title as a secondary title of pretense, which style, “Royal Prince of Great Britain and Ireland”, his grandson, the current head of the house, also called Ernst August, continues to claim.

Ernst August, Duke of Brunswick: Father

In 1934, Adolf Hitler, in his ambition to link the British and German royal houses, asked for Frederica’s parents to arrange for the marriage of their seventeen-year-old daughter to Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales.

In her memoirs, Frederica’s mother described that she and her husband were “shattered” and such a possibility “had never entered our minds”. Victoria Louise herself had once been considered as a potential bride for the very same person prior to her marriage. Moreover, the age difference was too great (the Prince of Wales was twenty-three years Frederica’s senior), and her parents were unwilling to “put any such pressure” on their daughter.

Victoria Louise of Prussia: Mother

To her family, she was known as Freddie.

Marriage

Prince Paul of Greece proposed to her during the summer of 1936, while he was in Berlin attending the 1936 Summer Olympics. Paul was a son of King Constantine I and Frederica’s great aunt Sophia of Prussia, sister of German Emperor Wilhelm II.

Accordingly, they were maternal first cousins once removed. They were also paternal second cousins as great-grandchildren of Christian IX of Denmark. Their engagement was announced officially on September 28, 1937, and Britain’s King George VI gave his consent pursuant to the Royal Marriages Act 1772 on December 26, 1937.

HM Queen Frederica of the Hellenes

They married in Athens on January 9, 1938. Frederica became Hereditary Princess of the Hellenes, her husband being heir presumptive to his childless elder brother, King George II.

During the early part of their marriage, they resided at a villa in Psychiko in the suburbs of Athens. Ten months after their marriage, their first child, the future Queen Sofia of Spain, was born on November 2, 1938. On June 2, 1940, Frederica gave birth to the future King Constantine II.

War and Exile

At the peak of World War II, in April 1941, the Greek Royal Family was evacuated to Crete in a Sunderland flying boat. Shortly afterwards, the German forces attacked Crete. Frederica and her family were evacuated again, setting up a government-in-exile office in London.

In exile, King George II and the rest of the Greek Royal Family settled in South Africa. Here Frederica’s last child, Princess Irene, was born on May 11, 1942. The South African leader, General Jan Smuts, served as her godfather. The family eventually settled in Egypt in February 1944.

After the war, the 1946 Greek referendum restored King George II to the throne. The Hereditary Prince and Princess returned to their villa in Psychiko.

December 13, 1967: Counter Coup in Greece Conducted by King Constantine II of the Hellenes

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Anne-Marie of Denmark, Colonels Coup, Constantine II of the Hellenes, Counter-coup Georgios Papandreou, Frederica of Hanover, Junta, King Pavlos of the Hellenes, Referendum

Constantine II (born June 2, 1940) reigned as the last King of the Hellenes, from March 6, 1964 until the abolition of the Greek monarchy on June 1, 1973.

Constantine is the only son of King Pavlos and Queen Frederica of Greece. Frederica was born a, Princess of Hanover, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, and Princess of Brunswick-Lüneburg on April 18, 1917 in Blankenburg am Harz, in the German Duchy of Brunswick, she was the only daughter and third child of Ernst August then reigning Duke of Brunswick, and his wife Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia, herself the only daughter of the German Emperor Wilhelm II.

Constantine acceded as King of the Hellenes in 1964 following the death of his father, King Pavlos. Later that year he married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark the youngest daughter of King Frederik IX of Denmark and his wife Ingrid of Sweden. She is the youngest sister of the reigning Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and first cousin of the reigning King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

Although the accession of the young monarch was initially regarded auspiciously, his reign saw political instability that culminated in the Colonels’ Coup of April 21, 1967.

On April 21, 1967, a group of colonels overthrew the caretaker government a month before scheduled elections which Georgios Papandreou’s Centre Union was favoured to win. The dictatorship was characterised by right-wing cultural policies, restrictions on civil liberties, and the imprisonment, torture, and exile of political opponents.

The coup left Constantine II, still as the head of state, but with little room to manoeuvre since he had no loyal military forces on which to rely. As a result, he reluctantly agreed to inaugurate the junta on the condition that it be made up largely of civilian ministers.

When the tanks came to the streets of Athens on April 21, the legitimate National Radical Union government, of which Rallis was a member, asked King Constantine II to immediately mobilise the state against the coup; he declined to do so, and swore in the dictators as the legitimate government of Greece.

The King, who had relented and decided to co-operate, claims to this day that he was isolated and did not know what else to do. He has since claimed that he was trying to gain time to organise a counter-coup and oust the Junta. He did organise such a counter-coup; however, the fact that the new government had a legal sanction, in that it had been appointed by the legitimate head of state, played an important role in the coup’s success.

The King was later to regret his decision bitterly. For many Greeks, it served to identify him indelibly with the coup and certainly played an important role in the final decision to abolish the monarchy, sanctioned by the 1974 referendum.

The only concession the King could achieve was to appoint a civilian as prime minister, rather than Spandidakis. Konstantinos Kollias, a former Attorney General of the Areios Pagos (supreme court), was chosen. He was a well-known royalist and had even been disciplined under the Papandreou government for meddling in the investigation of the murder of MP Gregoris Lambrakis.

Kollias was little more than a figurehead and real power rested with the army, and especially Papadopoulos, who emerged as the coup’s strong man and became Minister to the Presidency of the Government. Other coup members occupied key posts.

Up until then constitutional legitimacy had been preserved, since under the Greek Constitution the King could appoint whomever he wanted as prime minister, as long as Parliament endorsed the appointment with a vote of confidence or a general election was called. It was this government, sworn-in during the early evening hours of April 21, that formalised the coup. It adopted a “Constituent Act”, an amendment tantamount to a revolution, cancelling the elections and effectively abolishing the constitution, which would be replaced later.

In the meantime, the government was to rule by decree. Since traditionally such Constituent Acts did not need to be signed by the Crown, the King never signed it, permitting him to claim, years later, that he had never signed any document instituting the junta. Critics claim that Constantine II did nothing to prevent the government (and especially his chosen prime minister, Kollias) from legally instituting the authoritarian government to come. This same government published and enforced a decree, already proclaimed on radio as the coup was in progress, instituting military law. Constantine claimed he never signed that decree either.

From the outset, the relationship between Constantine and the colonels was an uneasy one. The colonels were not willing to share power, whereas the young king, like his father before him, was used to playing an active role in politics and would never consent to being a mere figurehead, especially in a military administration.

Although the colonels’ strong anti-communist, pro-NATO, and pro-Western views appealed to the United States, President Lyndon B. Johnson – in an attempt to avoid an international backlash – told Constantine that it would be best to replace the junta with a new government according to Paul Ioannidis in his book Destiny Prevails: My life with Aristóteles Onassis. Constantine took that as an encouragement to organize a counter-coup, although no direct help or involvement of the U.S. (or Britain) was forthcoming.

The King finally decided to launch his counter-coup on December 13, 1967. Since Athens was militarily in the hands of the colonels, Constantine decided to fly to the small northern city of Kavala, where he hoped to be among troops loyal only to him. The vague plan that Constantine and his advisors had conceived was to form a unit that would invade and take control over Thessaloniki, where an alternative administration would be installed. Constantine hoped that international recognition and internal pressure between the two governments would force the junta to resign, leaving the field clear for him to return triumphant to Athens.

In the early morning hours of December 13, the King boarded the royal plane, together with Queen Anne-Marie, their two baby children Princess Alexia and Crown Prince Pavlos, his mother Frederica, and his sister, Princess Irene. Constantine also took with him Prime Minister Kollias. At first, things seemed to be going according to plan.

Constantine was well received in Kavala, which was under the command of a general loyal to him. The Hellenic Air Force and Navy, both strongly royalist and not involved in the junta, immediately declared for him and mobilised. Another of Constantine’s generals effectively cut all communication between Athens and northern Greece.

However, Constantine’s plans were overly bureaucratic, naïvely supposing that orders from a commanding general would automatically be obeyed.
In the circumstances, middle-ranking pro-junta officers neutralised and arrested Constantine’s royalist generals and took command of their units, and subsequently put together a force to advance on Kavala to arrest the King.

The junta, not at all shaken by the loss of their figurehead premier, ridiculed Constantine by announcing that he was hiding “from village to village”.

Realising that the counter-coup had failed, Constantine fled Greece on board the royal plane, taking his family and the helpless Kollias with him. They landed in Rome early in the morning of December 14. Constantine remained in exile during the remainder of military rule.

Constantine remained (formally) the head of state in exile until the junta abolished the monarchy on June 1,1973. The 1973 Greek republic referendum on July 29, ratified the abolition. There were questions concerning the validity of this referendum and whether people were pressured to vote for a republic.

Therefore a fresh referendum was held after the restoration of democracy in 1974. This second referendum was held after the fall of the junta as the 1974 Greek republic referendum on December 8, 1974 and confirmed the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the Third Hellenic Republic. Constantine, who was not allowed to return to Greece to campaign, accepted the results of the plebiscite.

Death of King Pavlos of Greece

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Christian IX, Elizabeth II, Frederica of Hanover, Frederick III of Germany, King of the Hellenes, Kingdom of Denmark, Kingdom of Greece, Maximilian of Bavaria, Paul of Grreece, Prince Phillip, The Duke of Edinburgh

Pavlos was born at Tatoi Palace in Athens, the third son of King Constantine I of Greece and his wife, Princess Sophia of Prussia. He trained as an army officer at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst and later at the Hellenic Military Academy in Kypseli, Athens. Paul was an army officer cadet in the Coldstream Guards and Lieutenant with the Evzones.

From 1917 to 1920, Pavlos lived in exile with his father, Constantine I. From 1923 to 1935, he lived in exile again in England, this time with his brother, George II. He worked briefly in an aircraft factory under an alias, and through Viscount Tredegar.

On January 9, 1938, Pavlos married Princess Frederica of Hanover, his first cousin once removed through Friedrich III, German Emperor and Victoria, Princess Royal, and second cousin through Christian IX of Denmark, at Athens. They had three children:
* Sophia, Queen of Spain (born 1938).
* Constantine II, King of the Hellenes (born 1940).
* Princess Irene of Greece and Denmark (born 1942).

Pavlos returned to Greece in 1946. He succeeded to the throne in 1947, on the death of his childless elder brother, King George II, during the Greek Civil War (between Greek Communists and the non-communist Greek government). In 1947 he was unable to attend the wedding of his first cousin, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh to the future Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom as he was suffering from typhoid fever.

By 1949 the Civil War was effectively over, with the Communist insurgents ceasing the majority of their operations, and the task of rebuilding the shattered north of the country began

In the 1950s Greece recovered economically, and diplomatic and trade links were strengthened by Pavlos’ state visits abroad. He became the first Greek Monarch to visit a Turkish Head of State. However, links with Britain became strained over Cyprus, where the majority Greek population favored union with Greece, which Britain, as the colonial power, would not endorse. Eventually, Cyprus became an independent state in 1960.

In December 1959, Prince Maximillian of Bavaria presented King Otto’s coronation regalia to King Pavlos. It had been almost a century since they were last in Greece.

Meanwhile, republican sentiment was growing in Greece. Both Pavlos and Frederica attracted criticism for their interference in politics, frequent foreign travels, and the cost of maintaining the Royal Family. Pavlos responded by economising and donated his private estate at Polidendri to the State.

In 1959, he had an operation for a cataract, and in 1963 an emergency operation for appendicitis. In late February 1964, he underwent a further operation for stomach cancer, and died about a week later, March 6, 1964 in Athens. He was succeeded by his son, Constantine II.