Princess Sophia of Prussia was
the third daughter and seventh child of Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia, the
future German Emperor Frederick III, and Victoria, Princess Royal of the U.K.,
the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria. Born Sophia Dorothea Ulrike Alice, she
came into the world on June 14, 1870 at the Neues Palais in Potsdam, Germany.
Her surviving older siblings included: the future Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany,
Princess Charlotte, Prince Henry, and Princess Viktoria (two of her older
brothers, Sigismund and Waldemar, would die young). She had one younger sibling
– a sister named Princess Margaret.
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Sophie of Prussia (1887) |
Nicknamed “Sossy” by her family, Sophie
grew up in the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin and the Neues Palais. While her
relations (and those of her closest sisters in age, Viktoria and Margaret) with
her parents were good, her three surviving older siblings – Wilhelm, Charlotte,
and Henry – were estranged from their family. Sophie’s mother, Princess
Victoria, had raised her first three children in a strict, critical, and
unforgiving manner but with her younger children, she abandoned her tough
parenting style to become more loving and relaxed. This caused a schism not
just between the three eldest royal children and their parents but their
siblings as well. Sophie was close with her sisters Viktoria and Margaret, but
all three girls were distant from their older brothers and sister. As a result of their mother’s favoritism
towards her three younger daughters, she pushed her native English culture and lifestyle
into their upbringing. Sophie and her sisters loved England and visited their
grandmother, Queen Victoria, quite often (while the three younger sisters were
close to their maternal grandmother, they were largely ignored by their
paternal grandparents, who favored their older siblings…. family relations in
the royal Prussian family were quite a mess, to say to least).
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Princess Sophie and Crown Prince Constantine of Greece (1888) |
It was Sophie’s fondness for England, as
well as her constant trips there with her mother that caused her to meet her
husband. In the summer of 1887 during her grandmother’s Golden Jubilee, Sophie
decided to stay a bit longer in her grandmother’s home after the public
celebrations. Here, she met Crown Prince Constantine of Greece, who she knew as
“Tino”, and over the course of the next few months, the two grew quite close to
each other. Queen Victoria was rather pleased with her granddaughter’s
relationship and although Constantine was not known to be very intelligent,
Queen Victoria wrote that, “a good heart and a good character… go far beyond
cleverness”. However, Sophie’s blooming romance was
shattered by the tragic early demise of her father in June of 1888, Frederick
III, just three months after he became the Emperor of Germany. During this
time, Sophie and her two closest sisters remained supportive of their grieving
mother but the grim atmosphere of the Dowager Empress’s home prompted Sophie to
continue her relationship with Crown Prince Constantine and eventually agree to
marry him. The couple (who were both third cousins
and second cousins once removed through two different ancestors) wed on October
27, 1889 in Athens, Greece. Sophie was nineteen at the time while Constantine
was twenty-one. At the Greek Orthodox ceremony, Sophie wore “a rich robe, with
a train of white satin carried by three ladies, and [wore] orange blossoms in
her hair”. Though the couple was happy together, the match was not well
accepted by some members of their family. Sophie’s mother wanted her daughter to
be happy but she was also fearful of sending her treasured child so far away to
a country she viewed as underdeveloped and volatile. Sophie’s sister-in-law,
Empress Augusta Victoria, told Sophie (who was converting from her Evangelical
faith to the Greek Orthodox religion of her husband) that if she went through
with the marriage, she would be banned from Germany and would be sent to Hell.
Sophie promptly declared to her meddlesome sister-in-law that her personal
affairs, especially her religious beliefs, were none of her business. The heavily
pregnant Augusta Victoria became so hysterical over the whole matter that she
gave birth three weeks prematurely to a son, Prince Joachim. Her husband,
Wilhelm II, even told his mother that if his son had died, Sophie would have
been the cause.
The Crown Prince of Greece and his new
Crown Princess resided in Tatoi, Athens, where Sophie quickly gave birth to
their first child, a son named Prince George, in July of 1890. Sophie and
Constantine had six children in total, three sons and three daughters. The age
gap between the eldest and youngest child was a surprising twenty-three years:
- George II, King of Greece (1890-1947)
married: Princess Elisabeth of Romania – no issue
- Alexander I, King of Greece
(1893-1920) married: Aspasia Manos – had issue
- Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark
(1896-1982) married: Carol II, King of Romania – had issue
- Paul I, King of Greece
(1901-1964) married: Princess Frederika of Hanover – had issue
- Princess Irene of Greece and Denmark
(1904-1974) married: Prince Aimone, 4th Duke of Aosta – had issue
- Princess Katherine of Greece and Denmark
(1913-2007) married: Major Sir Richard Brandram – had issue
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Sophie, Queen of the Hellenes, and her husband, Constantine I of Greece, with their first five children (1913) |
As Crown Princess, Sophie made various
efforts to integrate herself into her new, Greek society. The practical and
energetic Prussian princess learned the Greek language and, as she and her
husband shared a green thumb, she was interested in arboriculture and pushed
for reforestation efforts. Like her mother, she focused especially on areas
centered on medical support, such as hospitals, as well as social welfare
organizations. She was also dedicated to improving education as well as
employment prospects for women through the endorsement of arts and crafts. However,
despite her active role in the Greek monarchy, she was not very popular with
the people due to her aloof and formal personality (which was the result of her
reserved and strict Prussian/British upbringing). Sophie’s world changed drastically on
March 18, 1913, when Constantine’s father, King George I, was assassinated in
the middle of the Balkan Wars. Constantine ascended to the throne with the
forty-two year old Sophie by his side as Queen Consort. All eyes were on
Constantine during his early reign, as the people were hopeful that an old
prophecy, which stated that during Constantine’s rule, Constantinople would
fall to the Greeks and Greece would become great once more, would come true. At
first, Constantine and the royal family’s popularity soared when Greece
achieved success in the Balkan Wars, which concluded five months after
Constantine took the throne. However, things began to fall apart for Sophie and
her husband once World War I began a year later in August of 1914.
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Sophie, Queen of the Hellenes (1913) |
At first, Greece declared neutrality when
war broke out, despite Sophie’s ties to Germany. Constantine wanted to be
neutral for the good of his people, but in doing so, he deliberately ignored
the treaty Greece had recently made with Serbia in 1913, which said that Greece
would aid Serbia if it were attacked by Bulgaria once again. When Serbia was
attacked and Constantine maintained neutrality, the King clashed with his hostile,
firmly anti-monarchist, and pro-Allied Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos.
The Prime Minister got a majority of the people to support him against the
King, as well as other Allied nations who desperately wanted Greece to join the
fray. To do so, they began spreading propaganda saying that Constantine was
pro-German and, since his wife’s brother was the Kaiser, they were secretly
supportive of Germany’s cause. While it is possible that Constantine was
sympathetic towards Germany, Sophie was actually pro-English throughout the
war. The propaganda and the Prime Minister’s
efforts to turn the people against the monarchy eventually succeeded. In July
of 1916, a group of Greeks opposed to the King set fire to the forest around
the royal family’s home at Tatoi, which burned for two days and destroyed not
just the entire royal residence but most of the forest as well. Luckily, the
whole family managed to escape (Sophie ran over a mile with her three year-old
daughter, Katherine, in her arms) although there were many injuries and sixteen
people were killed. By the end of the year, the conflict between the monarchy
and the people only grew worse when Anglo-French powers began using warships to
bombard Athens and Greece was on the brink of civil war. The country was in
such turmoil that on June 11, 1917, Constantine was forced to abdicate the
throne and was replaced by his second son, Alexander, in lieu of the eldest,
George (the government suspected George of being pro-German like his father
since he had military training in Germany prior to the outbreak of the war).
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Sophie, Queen of the Hellenes with her first grandchild, Princess Alexandra (1921) |
Sophie and her family left for Switzerland
in exile while the twenty-three year old Alexander, who was barred from
communicating with his family, remained behind as a puppet king with the Prime
Minister pulling the strings. This new rule proved to be unsuccessful in fixing
the divided nation and by 1919, a year after World War I ceased, Greece was at
war with Turkey. In the middle of the conflict, known as the Greco-Turkish War,
Alexander unexpectedly died of septicemia from a monkey bite in October of 1920
at the age of twenty-seven. Although Sophie asked to see her son during his
illness, the government refused and Alexander died without seeing his family
for the last time.The Prime Minister needed a new king so
Sophie’s third son, Paul, was asked to take the throne but he declined. The
government’s power, and Venizelos’s, had crumbled at this point and as a
result, the people wanted Constantine to return to the throne. Constantine was enthusiastically
welcomed back to his kingdom in December of 1920 but his second reign was even
shorter than his first. Less than two years after Constantine had the crown
placed on his head for the second time, the Greco-Turkish War ended in Greece’s
crushing defeat on October 11, 1922. Popular opinion became so negative that
Constantine (who was exhausted and ill at this point) had to abdicate once
again and return to exile. He died just a few months later on January 11, 1923
in Palermo, Italy at the age of fifty-four. The cause of death was a brain
hemorrhage. His widowed and grieving wife was banned from ever returning to
Greece.
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Sophie, Queen of the Hellenes (1920's) |
Their first-born son, George, was finally
allowed to take the throne until 1925, when he too was forced to abdicate. His
throne was restored in 1936 and he reigned until his death in 1947, after which
his younger brother, Paul, became King. Poor Sophie, who possessed a sympathetic
nature, tried to reconcile with her brother, the former Kaiser, and constantly
communicated with her extended family during her later years. Unable to return
to Greece, she settled in Florence, but she never really recovered from the
loss of her husband and second son. She became ill with cancer and, despite an
operation she had in Frankfurt to improve her condition, she died there on
January 13, 1932 at the age of sixty-one. She was buried alongside her husband
in the Greek Orthodox Church in Florence but after the monarchy was restored in
1936, King George II moved his parents’ remains to the Royal Cemetery at Tatoi
Palace. As a result of the turmoil in Greece in
the first half of the twentieth century, all three of Sophie and Constantine’s sons
sat on the Greek throne. Since their eldest two died without male issue, the third,
Paul, got the crown and was succeeded by his son, Constantine II. He is also
the father of the former Queen Consort of Spain, SofĂa. Sophie’s eldest
daughter, Helen, married King Carol II of Romania, who she wed and divorced
prior to his accession, but their son, King Michael I, reigned as the last
Romanian monarch before he was forced to abdicate in 1947. Sophie’s second
daughter, Irene, married Prince Aimone, Duke of Aosta and Spoleto, as well as
the designated king of Croatia under the name Tomislav II, though he never took
the throne. Sophie’s youngest child, Katherine, was her only issue without the
title of King or Queen, as she married a British commoner.
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