The Life of Princess Adelaide “Adi” of Saxe-Meiningen

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Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen, German Emperor Wilhelm II, German Empire, House of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, House of Hohenzollern, Prince Adalbert of Prussia, Princess Adelaide "Adi" of Saxe-Meiningen, Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld., Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom

Princess Adelaide “Adi” of Saxe-Meiningen (August 16, 1891 – April 25, 1971), later Princess Adalbert of Prussia, was a daughter of Prince Friedrich Johann of Saxe-Meiningen and his wife Countess Adelaide of Lippe-Biesterfeld.

Family

Adelaide (original German: Adelheid). Adelaide’s father, Prince Friedrich Johann was a younger son of Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen by his second wife Feodora of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. She had five siblings, including Prince Georg a prisoner of war killed during World War II, and Prince Bernard.

Adelaide’s mother, also named Adelaide, was the eldest child of Ernst, Count of Lippe-Biesterfeld, who was the Regent of the principality of Lippe for seven years (1897–1904).

Princess Adelaide had family connections with both the British Royal Family and the Prussian Royal Family. Princess Adelaide and her husband Prince Aldalbert of Prussia were third cousins.

Adelaide and her husband Adalbert were both descendants of Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.

I will address Princess Adelaide’s descent first. She was a great-great granddaughter of Princess Victoria through Princess Victoria’s first marriage to Prince Emich Charles of Leiningen.

Princess Victoria and Prince Emich Charles had a daughter, Princess Feodora, who married Prince Ernst I of Hohenlohe-Langenburg and they in turn had a daughter, also named Princess Feodora, who married Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen. Thier son, Prince Friedrich Johann, was the father of Princess Adelaide.

Now I will address Prince Adalbert’s descent from Princess Victoria.

Prince Adalbert of Prussia was also a great-great grandson of Princess Victoria Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld through both her first and second marriages.

Through Victoria’s first marriage to Prince Emich Charles of Leiningen they had a daughter Princess Feodora as mentioned above. And as previously mentioned Princess Feodora married Prince Ernst I of Hohenlohe-Langenburg and they in turn had a daughter, also named Princess Feodora.

Princess Feodora also had a sister, Princess Adelaide, who married Duke Friedrich VIII of Schleswig-Holstein and they in turn had a daughter Princess Augusta Victoria who married Emperor Wilhelm II; who are Prince Aldalbert’s parents.

Empress Augusta Victoria was not only Princess Adelaide’s mother-in-law, she was her father’s first cousin… therefore she was Adelaide’s first cousin once removed.

Prince Aldalbert was a descendant of Princess Victoria through her second marriage with, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent; and from this union came Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, Princess Victoria, the Princess Royal, was married to Emperor Friedrich III and they were the parents of Aldalbert’s father, Emperor Wilhelm II.

Marriage

On August 3, 1914, at the beginning of World War I, Adelaide married Prince Adalbert of Prussia at Wilhelmshaven, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. He was the third son of German Emperor William II. Adelaide’s father would die within a month, on August 23, 1914. Less than a month after their marriage, Prince Adalbert was reported to have been killed in battle in Brussels. This was only a rumor however, and the prince had been unharmed. In March 1915, he was promoted to Captain in the navy and Major in the army.

She and Prince Adalbert had three children:

1. Princess Victoria Marina of Prussia (stillborn, September 4, 1915) she died soon after birth, although Adelaide was reported to have been in “satisfactory condition”.
2. Princess Victoria Marina of Prussia (September 11, 1917 – January 21, 1981) she married Kirby Patterson (July 24, 1907– June 4, 1984) on September 26, 1947.
3. Prince Wilhelm Victor of Prussia (February 15, 1919 – February 7, 1989), he married at Donaueschingen on July 20, 1944 Marie Antoinette, Countess of Hoyos (June 27, 1920 – March 1, 2004). They had two children, five grandchildren and one great-grandson.

Later life

After Emperor William II abdicated in 1918 at the end of World War I, Prince Adalbert sought refuge on his yacht, which had been maintained by a loyal crew. Princess Adelaide and their children soon attempted to follow, travelling by train from Kiel. They were delayed however, and eventually came to be staying in southern Bavaria with Prince Henry of Bavaria (a grandson of Ludwig III of Bavaria) and his wife. She and Prince Adalbert were later reunited.

Princess Adelaide died on April 25, 1971 in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland. Her husband had died 23 years earlier, on September 22, 1948 at the same location.

Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz: 2nd Wife of German Emperor Wilhelm II

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German Emperor Friedrich III, German Emperor Wilhelm II, Huis Doorn, King of Prussia, Prince Charles Franz of Prussia, Prince Joachim of Prussia, Prince Johann of Schönaich-Carolath, Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath, Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom, Princess Victoria, Princess Victoria of Prussia, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom

Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz (December 17, 1887 – August 7, 1947) was the second wife of German Emperor Wilhelm II. They were married in 1922, four years after he abdicated as German Emperor and King of Prussia. He was her second husband; her first husband, Prince Johann of Schönaich-Carolath, had died in 1920.

Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz

They were the parents of five children.

Princess Hermine was born in Greiz as the fifth child and fourth daughter of Heinrich XXII, Prince Reuss of Greiz (March 28, 1846 – April 19, 1902), and Princess Ida of Schaumburg-Lippe (July 28, 1852 – September 28, 1891), daughter of Adolf I, Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe and Princess Hermine of Waldeck and Pyrmont (1827–1910).

Princess Hermine’s mother, Princess Ida of Schaumburg-Lippe, had a brother, Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe (1859–1917), who was married Princess Victoria of Prussia, daughter of German Emperor Friedrich III, and Victoria, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom eldest daughter of Queen Victoria.

This means that Princess Victoria of Prussia was Princess Hermine’s aunt by marriage and Princess Victoria was the sister of German Emperor Wilhelm II, Princess Hermine’s second husband.

Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz

Princess Hermine’s father was the ruler of the Principality of Reuss-Greiz, a state of the German Empire, in what is present-day Thuringia. Princess Hermine’s disabled elder brother became Heinrich XXIV, Prince Reuss of Greiz in 1902.

First marriage

Princess Hermine was married on January 7, 1907 in Greiz to Prince Johann of Schönaich-Carolath (September 11, 1873 – April 7, 1920).

Second Marriage

German Emperor Wilhelm II in Exile

In January 1922, a son of Princess Hermine sent birthday wishes to the exiled German Emperor Wilhelm II, who then invited the boy and his mother to Huis Doorn. Wilhelm found Hermine very attractive, and greatly enjoyed her company. The two had much in common, both being recently widowed: Hermine just over a year and a half before and Wilhelm only nine months prior.

By early 1922, Wilhelm was determined to marry Hermine. Despite grumblings from Wilhelm’s monarchist supporters and the objections of his children, 63-year-old Wilhelm and 34-year-old Hermine married on November 5, 1922 in Doorn.

Wilhelm’s physician, Alfred Haehner, suspected that Hermine had married the former kaiser only in the belief that she would become an Empress and that she had become increasingly bitter as it became apparent that would not be the case.

Hermine with Wilhelm II and her daughter Henriette in Doorn, 1931

Shortly before the couple’s first wedding anniversary, Haehner recorded how Hermine had told him how “inconsiderately [Wilhelm] behaved towards her” and how Wilhelm’s face showed “a strong dislike” for his wife.

Hermine’s first husband had also been older than she was, by fourteen years. Wilhelm and Hermine were fourth cousins once removed through mutual descent from Ludwig IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt and fifth cousins through common descent from King George II of Great Britain.

In 1927, Hermine wrote An Empress in Exile: My Days in Doorn, an account of her life until then. She cared for the property management of Huis Doorn and by establishing her own relief organization, she stayed in contact with monarchist and nationalist circles in the Weimar Republic.

Hermine and Wilhelm II

Hermine also shared her husband’s anti-Semitism. She remained a constant companion to the aging emperor until his death in 1941. They had no children.

Later life

Following the death of Wilhelm, Hermine returned to Germany to live on her first husband’s estate in Saabor, Lower Silesia. During the Vistula–Oder Offensive of early 1945, she fled from the advancing Red Army to her sister’s estate in Rossla, Thuringia.

After the end of the Second World War, she was held under house arrest at Frankfurt on the Oder, in the Soviet occupation zone, and later imprisoned in the Paulinenhof Internment Camp.

On August 7, 1947, aged 59, she died suddenly of a heart attack in a small flat in Frankfurt, while under guard by the Red Army occupation forces. She was buried in the Antique Temple of Sanssouci Park, Potsdam, in what would become East Germany. Some years earlier, it was the resting place of several other members of the Imperial family, including Wilhelm’s first wife, Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein.

Hermine and Wilhelm II

Prince Charles Franz of Prussia married a daughter of Hermine from her first marriage.

Prince Charles Franz of Prussia was the son of Prince Joachim of Prussia and Princess Marie Auguste of Anhalt.

Prince Joachim of Prussia was the youngest son and sixth child of Wilhelm II, German Emperor, by his first wife, Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein. He committed suicide at age 29.

On October 5, 1940, Charles Franz of Prussia married Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath. She was a daughter of Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz, who had been the second wife of Charles Franz’s grandfather Emperor Wilhelm II since 1922 (Henriette was thus Emperor Wilhelm’s stepdaughter).

The wedding was at Wilhelm II’s private residence in Huis Doorn without much ceremony, he and Hermine attended the ceremony, as did a few other guests. The Mayor of Doorn performed the ceremony.

The eldest son of Charles Franz of Prussia and Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath is Prince Franz Wilhelm of Prussia (born September 3, 1943), he married the claimant to the Russian throne, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, of Russia. Their child is Grand Duke George Mikhailovich of Russia, Prince of Prussia, born March 13, 1981 in Spain.