My latest article: Three Dutch queens

When Queen Beatrix abdicates on 30 April, the Netherlands will get its first male head of state in 123 years. In the April issue of the British monthly magazine Majesty (Vol. 34, No. 4), which goes on sale in Britain today, I write about the unique historical phenomenon of three successive women in what is usually a male role: Queen Wilhelmina, who reigned from 1890 to 1948, Queen Juliana, who reigned from 1948 till 1980, and Queen Beatrix, whose reign of 33 years brings the unbroken line of female kings to an end.
Also just out is the Danish Historisk Tidsskrift, vol. 112, no. 2, to which I have contributed a review of Gerd Steinwascher’s book Die Oldenburger. Die Geschichte einer europäischen Dynastie, which relates the history of all the branches of that vast dynasty descending from a small German county.

New books: Carl XIV Johan in German

Although he certainly cannot compete with the estimated 300,000 books written about his rival Napoléon I, Carl XIV Johan has certainly been the subject of more biographies than most Scandinavian monarchies – possibly Carl XII is the only exception.
But few of the many biographies of Carl Johan are entirely satisfactory, which to a certain extent can probably be explained by the fact that his life was so rich and full of changes that it is nearly impossible to get it all into a book.
Several biographers have chosen to focus entirely or almost exclusively on the French part of Carl Johan’s life and his military career and to this day Torvald T:son Höjer’s three volumes published between 1939 and 1960 remain the most complete biography.
In this bicentenary year the German historian Jörg-Peter Findeisen has joined the ranks of Carl Johan’s biographers with the book Jean Baptiste Bernadotte. Revolutionsgeneral, Marschall Napoleons, König von Schweden und Norwegen, published by Casimir Katz Verlag in May.
Findeisen does not have particularly many new things to say, but this should perhaps not really be expected. Nevertheless his book has the potential for becoming a standard work as he succeeds in what has eluded many previous authors – to write a good and rather complete biography of Carl XIV Johan in one volume.
Findeisen, who formerly taught modern history at the University of Jena and is a honorary professor of the University of Sundsvall, bases most of his book on Höjer’s monumental work and the German translation of the Frenchman Gabriel Girod de l’Ain’s biography of Carl Johan. This seems a safe choice as Höjer and Girod de l’Ain are among Carl Johan’s most reliable biographers.
Findeisen has even adopted Höjer’s disposition of the chapters and there is hardly a page without at least one reference to Höjer or Girod de l’Ain. This and the fact that Findeisen has not done any original research make the book appear somewhat un-independent and it is occasionally unclear what are his own views and interpretations and what are those of others.
It is also a bit odd that someone who has made so much use of Gabriel Girod de l’Ain’s biography of Carl Johan states that there is no serious biography of Queen Desideria and thereby shows himself to be unaware of the fact that there is such a biography by none other than Gabriel Girod de l’Ain (who was a great-great-grandson of one of the Queen’s sisters).
There are some factual mistakes, such as Severin Løvenskiold becoming Prime Minister “in Christiania” rather than in Stockholm in 1828 and the odd claim that Stockholm was the capital of “the double monarchy” (there was no such thing as both Norway and Sweden were independent states with their own capital). Findeisen also gives the wrong date of death for Carl Johan, but all in all he seems to be on safe ground and avoids most of the oft-repeated (by both Swedish, Norwegian and foreign writers) misconceptions about the Swedish-Norwegian union.
The result is one of the most reliable and complete biographies of Carl XIV Johan in one volume and one could be tempted to suggest that Bonniers and Schibsted, the publishers who have published the tabloid journalist Herman Lindqvist’s sad excuse for a book on Carl Johan in Sweden and Norway, should have this book translated and published as some sort of atonement.

New books: The House of Wittelsbach

Of the many German dynasties the Wittelsbachs must count among the most fascinating and attractive. The Wittelsbachs ruled Bavaria as dukes, electors and kings for 738 years and also produced a number of other monarchs, including two emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, three Swedish kings and one queen regnant, a Greek king, 22 Palatine electors and a king of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The strong and powerful position of this dynasty can also be read out of the fact that at one stage the Wittelsbachs held four out of the nine electoral hats of the Holy Roman Empire.
But it all ended in madness and revolution. Although one of the oldest and generally considered one of the most popular dynasties, the Bavarian monarchy was the first to be swept away in the revolutions which engulfed Germany in the autumn of 1918, an unexpected development which modern historians tend to ascribe to the gradual weakening of the Bavarian monarchy which began with the abdication of Ludwig I in 1848 and continued with the drama surrounding Ludwig II’s mysterious death in 1886 and the disregard for the principles of hereditary monarchy shown by Prince Regent Ludwig when he seized the throne from his insane cousin King Otto in 1913.
This dynasty has now been accorded its own volume in Verlag C. H. Beck’s series of short books on the history of nearly every conceivable subject. Die Wittelsbacher. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart is written by Hans-Michael Körner, professor of history at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.
How to sum up the history of 738 years of rule in little more than a hundred pages? The author chooses to begin with what followed the end, namely the fate of the Wittelsbachs after 1918. Few of the former royal families enjoy such a high standing in the Federal Republic of Germany as the Wittelsbachs, which Körner to a great extent ascribes to the conduct of ex-Crown Prince Rupprecht – the respect enjoyed by this prince was perhaps best symbolised by the Social Democrat Minister President Wilhelm Hoegner arranging for the royal crown of Bavaria to be brought out of the Treasury and placed on the coffin when the former Crown Prince died in 1955.
The family can with certainty be traced to the 11th century, but the real starting point of the story is 16 September 1180. On that date Palatine Count Otto of Wittelsbach was given the Duchy of Bavaria, which was made hereditary in 1208 and to which Duke Ludwig I added the Palatine county by the Rhine in 1214. In 1253 the Wittelsbach lands were divided between Otto II’s two sons (Ludwig II and Heinrich XIII) and throughout the centuries numerous other divisions of territories followed.
This makes the history of the Wittelsbach dynasty fairly complicated and intricate. Thus the author cannot possibly go into great detail as he takes the story through the centuries, but must restrict himself to the major developments and some of the most significant and interesting personalities.
It was only towards the end of the 18th century that all the Wittelsbach lands were again reunited. The death of Elector Max III Joseph in 1777 saw the end of the senior branch, the Ludovician, and transferred the electoral dignity to Karl Theodor of the Neuburg-Sulzbach line of the Rudolfian branch. 22 years later his death at the age of 75, leaving a 23-year-old widow who readily admitted that her late husband was not the father of the child she was expecting, meant that the Birkenfeld-Zweibrücken line was left as the only extant branch of the house of Wittelsbach. In 1806 Napoléon I raised Elector Max IV Joseph to the status of King of Bavaria.
The author seems to have his heart more into it as we approach modern times and this might perhaps be explained by the fact that he is also the author of Geschichte des Königreichs Bayern, which was published when Bavaria celebrated the bicentenary of the kingdom in 2006 (apparently no-one bothered to spoil the party by pointing out that the kingdom came to an end 88 years earlier). From Max I Joseph onwards to Ludwig III the personalities come more alive and we learn more about not only their personalities, but also their politics. Körner sees the end of the monarchy in 1918 in light of “an authority crisis of the system” coupled with the prolonged state of war.
This book will serve both as a summary of the history of the Wittelsbachs, but also as an introduction to one of the most interesting dynasties ever to sit on a throne. Given the limited length of the book, Hans-Michael Körner has succeeded very well in giving an insightful overview of the house that ruled Bavaria for more than seven centuries.

Book news: More Bernadotte books in 2010

I recently wrote about some of the royalty-related books expected in 2010 and here are some additions to that list.
It seems the upcoming wedding of Crown Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling in June has caused every tabloid journalist in Sweden to write a book about the bride-to-be. First out was Jenny Alexandersson (then of Svensk Damtidning, now Aftonbladet) with her book on the engagement, followed by Herman Lindqvist’s hagiography. As mentioned Johan T. Lindwall of Expressen will release Victoria – Prinsessan privat in March and now I hear that Catarina Hurtig, author of the gossipy Uppdrag: prinsessa (2006) is writing HKH Victoria – Ett personligt porträtt, due to be published by Norstedts in May.
On a more serious note Norstedts will also mark the bicentenary of the Bernadotte dynasty by publishing the anthology En dynasti blir till – Medier, myter och makt kring Karl XIV Johan och familjen Bernadotte, edited by Mats Ekedahl, which is a result of the research project “The Making of a Dynasty” and which will explore the means whereby the Bernadottes succeeded in establishing their dynasty in Sweden between 1810 and 1860. According to Norstedt’s catalogue the book will be out on 10 June.
As a French Marshal and government administrator Carl XIV Johan spent several years posted in Hamburg and Hanover and a number of biographies of him have been published in Germany over the years. Another is expected in May, when Katz Casimir Verlag will publish Professor Jörg-Peter Findeisen’s Jean Baptiste Bernadotte. Revolutionsgeneral, Marschall Napoleons und Schwedens König.

New books: Bernadottes and Romanovs

A book on the Bernadottes and the Romanovs in itself sounds like a good idea. It was the then Crown Prince Carl Johan’s alliance with Emperor Aleksandr I in 1812 which ultimately brought about the union with Norway and which greatly helped secure his position as an upstart monarch. Russia remained a key ally throughout most of Carl XIV Johan’s reign, until his son, Oscar I, broke with his father’s pro-Russian policy by concluding the November Treaty with Britain and France in 1855.
But as the subtitle indicates, the scope of Gunna Wendt’s new book Die Bernadottes und die Romanoffs. Europäische Dynastien auf der Mainau (published by Verlag Huber in Frauenfeld), is narrower than so.
At the centre of her story stands a marital rather than a martial alliance – in fact the only such alliance concluded between the Bernadottes and the Romanovs. In 1908 Prince Wilhelm of Sweden, the second son of King Gustaf V and Queen Victoria, was married off to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia, a granddaughter of Emperor Aleksandr II. It was arguably the grandest match the Bernadottes ever made as well as the most disastrous. Princess Maria ran away after five years and divorce followed in 1914. Maria wrote about the marriage with great bitterness in her memoirs, while Wilhelm passed the whole thing over in his.
The fruit of the marriage was an only son, Prince Lennart, who, having lost his royal title by marrying a commoner in 1932, became known as the multi-talented Lennart Bernadotte and lived to a great age – he died on Mainau five years ago this month, aged 95.
This book has been written in connection with the exhibition “100 Jahre Lennart Bernadotte – Zurück zu den Wurzeln”, which was held at Mainau this year to celebrate his centenary. The author, who has earlier written a biography of Lennart Bernadotte’s second wife, Sonja, cooperated with her, Lennart’s cousin Prince Michel Romanoff and the French author Jacques Ferrand, in preparing the exhibition, but sadly all of them, except Wendt, died before its opening.
The book begins with a chapter on Carl XIV Johan. It is obviously based mostly on Fritz Corsing’s 1946 biography, but it is well written and Wendt offers some interesting perspectives on the founder of the Bernadotte dynasty.
After this we hear quite little about the Bernadottes and comparatively more about the Romanovs, as the author charts the life story of Lennart Bernadotte and some of his Russian relatives – his great-grandfather Aleksandr II, his maternal grandfather Grand Duke Pavel Aleksandrovich, his mother Maria Pavlovna and his uncle Grand Duke Dimitry Pavlovich, as well as Grand Duke Pavel’s three children from his second, morganatic marriage. One of them, Princess Irina Paley, was the mother of Prince Michel Romanoff, a first cousin who came to be a close friend of Lennart Bernadotte.
What many of those persons had in common was that their lives turned out quite differently from what they had expected. Grand Duke Pavel was banished from Russia because of his morganatic marriage, but was allowed to return at the outbreak of World War I, only to be executed by the Bolsheviks because of “the sins of his family” in 1919. Grand Duke Dimitry escaped this fate by having been banished from St Petersburg because of his involvement in the murder of Rasputin.
Lennart Bernadotte himself was thrown out of the royal family and had to make his own living by the use of his many talents. And his mother, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, refused to live in a loveless marriage with Prince Wilhelm and became one of the Russian royals who best succeeded in creating a new existence for herself following the revolution. It must however be said that Gunna Wendt puts somewhat too much faith in Maria Pavlovna’s memoirs, particularly when it comes to her version of her marriage and divorce.
The Bernadottes have produced more interesting and talented characters than most royal dynasties, yet they remain in the shadow of Lennart Bernadotte’s closest Russian relatives throughout this book. The relations between the two dynasties would also be worth a study, but is mostly bypassed by Wendt.
All in all this is an easily read and mostly correct book, but some significant voids make it less interesting than it might have been.

Nobel Prize in Literature to Herta Müller

Peter Englund, the Secretary of the Swedish Academy, today announced that the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2009 has been awarded to Herta Müller. Müller is Romanian by birth, but belongs to the German minority of that country and has lived in Germany since fleeing the Communist dictatorship in 1987.

Press release: http://www.svenskaakademien.se/press_en.html

This year four women have been awarded Nobel Prizes, which is a record. The Nobel Peace Prize, the most prestigious of the Nobel prizes, indeed reckoned by some to be the most prestigious award in the world, will be announced at 11 a.m. tomorrow.