Letters of the Empress Frederick
Edited by the . New York: Macmillan Co. 1929 Svo, xix + 474 pp. Illus. $8.50.
HALLAM remarked many years ago that ‘the materials of . . . history must always be derived in great measure from biographical collections, those especially which intermix a certain portion of criticism with mere facts.’ The Letters of the Em press Frederick are such a collection, and while their publication will probably not alter fundamentally the verdict of responsible historians regarding the tragic figure who wrote them, they will at least serve to discredit the slyly malicious insinuations and journalistic gossip which only too frequently form the chief stock in trade of so many of our ’ultrasmart,’impressionistic biographers.
The nineteenth century saw more than its share of royal tragedies, and, if not so dramatic as some of the others, the pathetic life of Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter is perhaps the most human and, consequently, the most appealing. The fact that her greatest happiness came from the rare love and sympathy which existed between her and her unfortunate husband only throws into sharper relief the Tragedy of her relations with her eldest son and the people of her adopted land.
The court of Prussia in l858 was already beginning to seethe with the issues and intrigues which preceded the political unification of Germany under the iron hand of Bismarck. By her marriage to the Crown Prince, Frederick William, the Princess Royal of England, at the age of eighteen, was carried to an alien and unsympathetic land and forced to play an important part in a movement to which by temperament and conviction she was fundamentally opposed. Her English manners, the liberal political views implanted in her keen mind by her father, her dominating will and an uncontrollable desire to ’speak her mind on any topic, above all, her passionate attachment to her native land — these qualities were ill suited to the rôle she was expected to assume in a country where Kinder, Kirche, and Küche were the only topics on which women were allowed the right to an opinion. The very fact that she was English prejudiced most Prussians against her at the start; that she openly retained her love for England and her admiration for English institutions throughout the years of her sojourn in Germany made her unpopularity inevitable; and her interest in public affairs, coupled with the liberality of her ideas, made her a very real danger in the eyes of Bismarck and of all those who, perforce, accepted his domination. England, the living negation of Bismarck’s ideal for the State, must not be allowed to interfere in German affairs through the wife of the heir to the Prussian throne. As Bismarck himself expressed it, ‘If the Princess can leave the Englishwoman at home and become a Prussian, then she may be a blessing to the country. She did her best, but it was the one thing she could not do — the English point of view was too much a part of her being to be east aside even at the behest of the all-powerful Chancellor. Her son, the former kaiser, remarked that ’she was always most German in England and most English in Germany,’and this is probably the literal truth. And that she was frequently somewhat tactless in expressing her opinions can hardly be denied. But she was a delightfully human, warm-hearted woman, a loving wife, and a devoted if sometimes exacting mother; she had much of her own mother’s shrewd penetration and sagacity, but apparently little of her father’s patient caution. Considering her own temperament and the conditions in Germany at that time, it was inevitable that she should be regarded with hostility and suspicion by the government and by the mass of the people.
There is much food for speculation in the perusal of such letters as these; fresh light is thrown upon the upbringing of the last of the Hohenzollern rulers as well as upon his character, upon the great Bismarck and his domestic policy, upon the vexed question of the famous Ems dispatch and other aspects of the European situation during the stirring years of the second half of the last century. Not the least interesting of the questions raised by these letters is this; what would have been the effect on the future of Germany if the Empress Frederick and her husband, who shared so many of her liberal ideas, had been vouchsafed a long period of power instead of the ninety-eight days’ reign which was terminated by the death of Frederick on June 15, 1888? Sir Frederick Ponsonby obviously feels that Germany might have been saved from the ‘disasters that eventually overwhelmed her if she had paid more attention to the wise counsel of the former Princess Royal of England. But probably Bismarck had done his work too well — the great game had to be played out to the end along the lines he had laid down.
EDWARD ALLEN WHITNEY