Book news: The soft power of royal heirs

In August last year I participated in a conference on the soft power of royal heirs at the University of St Andrews, and now Palgrave Macmillan has gathered the lectures given at this conference in a book titled Royal Heirs and the Uses of Soft Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Frank Lorenz Müller and Heidi Mehrkens and published earlier this month. I write about how the Bernadottes during the Swedish-Norwegian union of crowns tried to create a Norwegian identity for the heirs, particularly by the power of presence, education and the office of Viceroy, while Maria-Christina Marchi deals with Italy, Kristina Widestedt with Sweden, Erik Goldstein with the United States, Milinda Banerjee with the Bengal, Janet Ridley, Imke Polland and Edward Owens, with Britain, Alma Hannig with Austria-Hungary, Richard Meyer Forsting with Spain, Miriam Schneider with Greece, Jeroen Koch with the Netherlands and Frederik Frank Sterkenburgh with Prussia, and Frank Lorenz Müller, Monika Wienfort and Heidi Mehrkens provide more general overviews of the topic.

At the road's end: Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia (1939-2015), historian

A spokeswoman for the former royal house of Prussia has announced that the historian Prince Friedrich Wilhelm died yesterday, following a lengthy illness. The eldest uncle of the head of the dynasty was 76 years old.
The eldest son of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia and his wife, née Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna of Russia, Louis Ferdinand Friedrich Wilhelm Hubertus Michael Kyrill Prinz von Preussen was born on 9 February 1939. At that time his great-grandfather, ex-Emperor Wilhelm II, was still living in exile in the Netherlands, but the headship of the royal house eventually passed to Friedrich Wilhelm's father. As the eldest son, Friedrich Wilhelm was first in line to succeed to the headship, but he forfeited his rights when he made an unapproved marriage with the commoner Waltraut Freydag in 1967. As his next brother, Michael, who died last year, also lost his rights through marriage, the headship of the royal house passed to their nephew Prince Georg Friedrich, son of the third brother, who had been killed in an accident in 1977. The issue of inheritance caused a protracted legal battle.
Prince Friedrich Wilhelm studied at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and obtained a doctorate in history in 1971. He was however accused of having plagiarised a substantial part of his dissertation and was stripped of the doctorate in 1973. Eventually he obtained a new doctorate from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, this time on the topic of the Hohenzollern dynasty's relations to Nazism.
His first marriage was dissolved in 1971, and in 1976 he married Ehrengard von eden. That marraige was also dissolved in 2004, and later that year he married his third wife, Sibylle Kretschmer. He had one son from his first marriage and two sons and a daughter from the second.
For Prince Georg Friedrich, this is the second death in the family in little more than three weeks, following the death of his mother, Duchess Donata of Oldenburg, on 5 September.

Prussian “pretender” fathers twins

The office of Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia, head of the former royal house of Prussia, has announced that the Prince and his wife Sophie have become the parents of twin boys, who were born in Bremen yesterday. The eldest boy has received the name Carl Friedrich, while the younger has been named Louis Ferdinand, both names with deep roots in the history of the House of Hohenzollern.
Prince Georg Friedrich is the great-great-grandson of Wilhelm II, last German Emperor and King of Prussia, and head of the royal house since the death of his grandfather, Prince Louis Ferdinand, in 1994. Thus, if the German monarchies had survived World War I and subsequent upheavals, Prince Georg Friedrich would now have been German Emperor and King of Prussia. However, he makes no such claims. On 25 August 2011 he married Princess Sophie of Isenburg, daughter of the Prince of Isenburg.

New books: Royal anti-Nazis

The Palace and the Bunker: Royal Resistance to Hitler is the title of a very odd new book, written by Frank Millard and recently published by The History Press (apparently the successor to Sutton Publishing, which many of my readers are probably familiar with). Reading it one sometimes wonder if it is the author’s notes which have been published without having passed through the hands of an editor. The subject is very interesting, but the book is one of the weakest I have ever read.
According to the author’s foreword, it “is actually two books in one, each dependent on the other”. The first half deals with the rise of Nazism in Germany; the second is mostly four case studies of royal anti-Nazis. It seems quite obvious that the result would have been much more interesting and readable if the two parts had been worked into an entity where the two things were seen in relation to each other.
The author admits that he “came to the subject of the lead up to the Second World War with little prior knowledge”. While this may seems very surprising for a historian, it makes one realise why the first half of the book is taken up with what seems to be the author’s attempt to explain to himself what Nazism, eugenics, Social Darwinism et al was and how Nazi Germany and World War II came about.
The second part looks at the wartime stories of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, ex-Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, Prince Hubertus of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg and ex-Crown Prince Otto of Austria-Hungary and his Hohenberg cousins, before adding a chapter summarising what other royals did during the war.
As much as a book about royal resistance to Nazism this is a book about various ideas about monarchical restoration in Germany and Austria-Hungary, and indeed it seems to be the author’s idea that Nazism and World War II would not have happened if the monarchies had been restored in these countries.
The author seems to believe that those belonging to royal families are somehow bound to be good men (there is also an uncomfortable religious overtone which even leads Millard to pronounce god’s blessing over one of his subjects). “Princes are the products of, and are and [sic] susceptible to, the influences of their age like anyone else, but in some ways their position and upbringing equips them [with the ability] to see over the fence and consider what they are witnessing with a little more clarity, perspective and dispassion than most other people”. If this is true, one wonders how so many monarchies have nevertheless destroyed themselves? “Such men are born leaders”, Millard assures us, “brought up to serve their countries and, if denied their destiny, it naturally becomes their perceived duty to serve all humanity”. This is a gross generalisation and it would be easy to point out counter-examples.
Millard stares himself blind on monarchies, even claiming that “[t]he German resistance movement did not and could not exist in any cohesive form without the unifying element of monarchy represented by the modern, Left-leaning Prince Louis Ferdinand, who was preferred future head of state following the fall of Hitler and his regime”. He assures the readers that “[m]onarchy was a potential defence against Hitler before the war [and(?)] became a focus of national unity and identity for exiles and anti-Nazis in Europe during the conflict”. These are widely exaggerated ideas; to the best of my knowledge the restoration of the Hohenzollerns was never a central aim for the German anti-Nazi movement, nor was this movement dependent on the deposed dynasties for to be able to exist.
“Their quiet defiance must have played its part in undermining the pretended authority of the dictator”, the author likes to think. He goes on to list several reasons why Hitler would never have come to power if Germany had been a monarchy, including that Prince Louis Ferdinand would not have been personally inclined to appoint him chancellor and that Hitler could not have opposed or reversed the will of the people. But Millard fails to take into account that Nazism had massive popular support in Germany and that Hitler was democratically elected.
Concerning Austria, we learn that “[r]estoration of the monarchy, there also, promised national integrity and moderate government safe from the Nazi menace”. However, the author fails to make any convincing argument for why an Austrian monarchy would have prevented the Anschluss that the Austrian republic did not manage to prevent. “There could have been no takeover of Austria without a fight and a real risk of international condemnation and foreign involvement”, we learn, without the author explaining why the Austrians themselves, who generally welcomed the German takeover, and the world, who did nothing in response to it, would have reacted differently if Austria had been a monarchy rather than a republic. Indeed this seems to be little but fanciful fantasies and wishful thinking by the author.
“Democracy is not automatically representative and what is representative is not always democratic”, the author explains, “but sensibly there was general agreement among the princes featured in this book – and there is agreement among their heirs [!] – that democracy should be the principal element of government[,] guided, assisted and defended by other constitutional elements, such as the hereditary principle and the rule of law as enshrined constitutionally”.
But how does he imagine that individuals such an Emperor Otto or Emperor Louis Ferdinand would have managed to stop a mass movement like Nazism? And how is this fundamental democratic spirit reconcilable with the idea that Louis Ferdinand would have refused to appoint the winner of democratic elections chancellor? And what about Italy, one may ask? The existence of a monarchy did not exactly prevent the rise of Mussolini.
To make things worse, the book is not well written. Sometimes the author jumps back and forth in time in a way that makes it almost impossible to follow events, for instance making it seem as though King Carol II of Romania was deposed twice and leaving one wondering where Prince Napoléon had been before “his return to Switzerland”.
There are many and long quotes in this book, indeed it seems sometimes to consist of little but quotes, which gives the impression that the author does not feel confident enough to stand on his own feet. Not all of the quotes are very relevant or well-chosen. For instance, most of what he has to say about the British royal family during World War II deals with the relationship between King George VI and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt until 1941. Having said that King George wanted to be present during D Day, the author suddenly quotes a long and seemingly random passage from an article in a 2011 issue of Time magazine about the royal visit to the USA in 1939, all of it information which could have found many other places. The passage about Britain’s royal family suddenly ends with an unexpected list of some random royals from various countries and various ages who were awarded the Garter, which the author imagines “was a sign of diplomatic if not military alliance from its inception when applied to foreign heads of state”.
“There will, no doubt, be errors (all mine), but hopefully none of substance”, the author writes in the foreword, before going on to tell us that Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was married to her son-in-law Prince Bernhard, that King Haakon VII of Norway was the brother of his adversary King Gustaf V of Sweden, that Sovereign Prince Louis II of Monaco was the father of his grandson “Rainer” (indeed names tend to be misspelt throughout) and so on. When Marshal Antonescu shows disrespect towards “his sovereign”, King Mihai of Romania, he has suddenly become the “dictator of Hungary”.
One also wonders about the author’s choice of sources. There are two German books, one Czech book and a German book about the Hohenbergs listed in the bibliography; everything else is in English. The author says in the foreword that he has “used a lot of English and American sources because this book is aimed primarily at an English-speaking audience”. But surely that is no reason to leave out the relevant literature from other countries and I can hardly imagine that English-speaking readers would find any reason to object to the use of relevant sources even if originally written in a foreign language. Was there for instance nothing of interest or relevance about ex-Crown Prince Rupprecht to find in Dieter J. Weiß’s monumental political biography from 2007, so that the author had to try to piece together his story from what little has been written about him in English?
The overall impression is of a book written by an author whose insufficient knowledge of Nazi Germany and World War II coupled with his blind faith in monarchy make him fail to see the things he write about in their proper context and grossly exaggerate the importance of his subjects. As it is this book might as well not have been published.

A Prussian prince on the differences between reigning and non-reigning houses

A reader and I recently had an exchange on the differences between reigning and formerly reigning royal families and it might be interesting to note that Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia addresses some of these issues in a recent interview with Der Spiegel Geschichte.
The 72-year-old eldest grandson of the last German Crown Prince, a historian living in Berlin, was interviewed by Konstantin von Hammerstein and Michael Sontheimer for Der Spiegel Geschichte no 2 – 2011, which is in its entirety dedicated to the history of the House of Hohenzollern, like one of the issues of 2009 was dedicated to the Habsburgs. It is indeed a very interesting magazine, containing articles on many aspects of the history of the former royal family of Brandenburg and Prussia.
The Prince, whom the interviewers address with his legal name as “Mr Prinz von Preußen”, says that he feels just like any other citizen of Germany with the same rights and duties. He describes himself as “fully and completely” a republican. It “happens” that people address him as “Your Royal Highness”, he says, and “I let it happen”, but he points out that there is no such thing as noble titles after 1918 and that his surname is “Prinz von Preußen”. He considers it magnanimous “for a so-called revolution” that the former royal and noble families were allowed to incorporate their titles into their names, given that one could have taken the same road as Austria, which abolished all noble denominations altogether.
When in school after the war Prince Friedrich Wilhelm was not aware of what a family he actually belonged to, something which “mattered not the slightest at home”. He believes his parents had more than enough of other preoccupations than instilling into their children “that we belonged to the former imperial house”. This really only dawned upon him in senior high school, where his history teacher took it for granted that a Prince of Prussia should be especially knowledgeable about history. At this time he began asking his father questions about the family. The family did not mourn its former position, he says, but was “happy to have survived the war”.
When asked about his relations with the currently reigning royal families he points out that the future King Frederik IX of Denmark, the future Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and Princess Sibylla of Sweden were among his godparents and that he remains in touch with Queen Beatrix and Queen Margrethe, the latter being a godmother to his own son Friedrich Wilhelm. The interviewers ask about the House of Windsor and the Prince points out that this name only dates from 1917 and that the Windsors were “a German princely family” before that. “The relations to the Englishmen were naturally from that time always somewhat tense, but I have had several very friendly encounters with Prince Charles”, he says, adding that “I believe that wartime animosities do not matter anymore for Prince William’s generation”.
He speaks English with the Windsors and German with Queen Margrethe, but also French when he has been a guest of her and Prince Henrik. Do royal families separate strictly between reigning and formerly reigning families, the interviewers enquire. “No, the formerly reigning are treated as if they were still reigning”, he says. A reigning king is obviously better placed at table, but “the titles which one hardly knows here anymore are naturally prevalent at such events”. While the ex-King of Bulgaria will be styled “Majesty” on the cards only first names are used when speaking. The Queen of Britain “is Aunt Elizabeth to me”.
Among his own forebears he particularly admires Friedrich Wilhelm, “the Great Elector”, and is most critical of his great-grandfather, Emperor Wilhelm II, who “was a misfortune – for Germany and for our family. […] He did not wish for war and was no militarist, even if he changed uniforms ten times a day. But he made no serious attempts to avoid the war”.
The Prince also addresses topics such as equal or unequal marriages in his family, his relatives’ ties with the Nazis (which, I could add, he has also dealt with in his 1985 book “Gott helfe unserem Vaterland”. Das Haus Hohenzollern 1918-1945) and the current standing of European monarchies.
Among the other topics accorded articles in this interesting issue of Der Spiegel Geschichte are, apart from several Hohenzollern monarchs and of course Queen Luise, the origins of the dynasty, Friedrich II’s relations with Voltaire, the history paintings of Adolph Menzel, the Social Democratic Party and its leader August Bebel, the Hohenzollerns and their “unloved capital” Berlin, the Romanian branch of the dynasty, World War I, the reburial of Friedrich II, the scandalous Prince Ferfried of Hohenzollern, and the Prussian crown regalia, which have recently been the subject of an exhibition at Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin. All in all a highly recommendable issue of this magazine.

Prussian “royal” wedding to take place on 27 August

According to the Royal Travel Blog (external link) a spokeswoman for the former royal house of Prussia has confirmed that the wedding of Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia and Princess Sophie of Isenburg, whose engagement was announced on 21 January, will take place in Friedenskirche (the Church of Peace) in Potsdam on 27 August. 700 guests will be invited to the nuptials.
The photo shows the interior of the church, which is modelled on ancient churches and where King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, Queen Elisabeth, Emperor Friedrich III and Empress Victoria are buried.

Prussian “heir” engaged to Isenburg princess

Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia, the head of the former royal family of Prussia (which also held the rank as German emperors from 1871 till 1918), yesterday announced (external link) his engagement to Princess Sophie of Isenburg.
Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia, who lost his father when he was one year old, succeeded his grandfather Prince Louis Ferdinand (himself a grandson of the last German Emperor and King of Prussia) as head of the former royal house in 1994. His father was the third son of Prince Louis Ferdinand, but his elder brothers Friedrich Wilhelm and Michael were deemed to have forfeited their rights of succession by marrying unequally.
The princes Friedrich Wilhelm and Michael later filed an eventually unsuccesful lawsuit claiming that it was discriminatory and unconstitutional to bypass them. This means that Prince Georg Friedrich has been under a certain pressure to choose a spouse who could be considered his equal in royal status.
Although belonging to one of the lesser princely families of Germany, his fiancée meets these criteria as she is the daughter of the Prince (Fürst) of Isenburg, Franz Alexander, and his wife Christine, née Countess von Saurma and Baroness von und zu der Jeltsch.
The bride-to-be has two brothers - Alexander and Viktor - who are both unmarried, and two sisters - Katharina and Isabelle - who are married to Archduke Martin of Austria-Este and Carl, the Prince of Wied, respectively
The wedding is expected to take place in Potsdam before the end of this year. Potsdam, which is geographically next door to Berlin, is the capital of the state of Brandenburg. It was in Potsdam that the kings of Prussia had most of their palaces and the City Palace, which was destroyed during World War II, is currently being rebuilt to house the state parliament. Opposite it is the Church of St Nikolai, which might be an excellent setting for such a wedding.

What to see: The Antique Temple, Potsdam

Three years after leaving her home at the New Palace in Potsdam to join her husband, Wilhelm II, in exile in the Netherlands, the last German Empress, Auguste Viktoria, was repatriated to Germany to be buried in the Antique Temple in Potsdam’s Sanssouci Park. Other members of the imperial family have since also found their final resting place in the temple, but the Emperor himself is still missing.
The Antique Temple was built by Carl von Gontard in 1768 to house parts of King Friedrich II’s collection of antiques. It can be found behind some trees on the garden side of the New Palace and forms a pendant to the Temple of Friendship on the other side of the Main Alley.
King Friedrich Wilhelm III later moved his uncle’s collection to the then newly-completed Old Museum in Berlin. Several generations later Emperor Wilhelm II and Empress Auguste Viktoria decided to have the temple reconstructed as a future mausoleum for themselves, but work had not yet started when revolution swept away the German monarchies in 1918.
Great respect and affection was shown towards the former Empress when her body returned to Potsdam in 1921 to be laid to rest in the temple. There she was joined by her son Prince Joachim, who had committed suicide in 1920, and later by another son, Prince Eitel Friedrich, as well as Prince Wilhelm, the eldest son of ex-Crown Prince Wilhelm, who was killed in action during Nazi Germany’s invasion of France in 1940.
Ex-Emperor Wilhelm II himself died in exile in Doorn in 1941 and was laid to rest in a mausoleum in the park of the estate where he had spent the last two decades. That mausoleum has room for two sarcophagi and his second wife, Hermine, whom he married in 1922, had wanted to be buried with him. At the time of her death in Soviet captivity in Frankfurt am Oder 1947, it was deemed too complicated to have her remains transferred to the Netherlands and she was therefore also laid to rest in the Antique Temple.
Thus both Wilhelm II’s wives now rest in the Antique Temple. Wilhelm II has decreed that he too will eventually be buried there, but only when the monarchy has been reintroduced in Germany. It might in other words be a while before his body is repatriated.
Closed off and in a derelict state, the Antique Temple has meanwhile been covered in graffiti, including the words “Revolution!” carved into the façade.

What to see: The New Guard House (Neue Wache), Berlin

When King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia in 1815 returned to his capital Berlin at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, planning began for a new guard house to be built towards the eastern end of the main street Unter den Linden.
The New Guard House was built in the years 1817-1818 by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the most famous of Prussian architects. With this small building Schinkel, in the words of Gottfried Rieman, “developed his concept of an architecture of classicist magnificence, manifested, in the years to come, in all his major works”.
The guard house mixes a Roman castrum with a Greek temple, but was also conceived to be a monument to the Prussian victory over Napoléon. As such it was flanked by statues of some of the leading Prussian generals and a Victoria forms the centre point of the tympanum.
As the name implies, it was first used to house the guardsmen and thus it was there the changing of the guard took place in the days of the monarchy. Emperor Wilhelm I used to watch the ceremony from a window in Altes Palais, his mansion across the street, a habit which eventually became an obligation – Baedtker’s guide to Berlin stated that the Emperor could be seen in his window at that time and therefore he felt he could not disappoint the tourists.
Following the end of the monarchy, Heinrich Tressenow in 1931 turned Neue Wache into a memorial to soldiers killed in action. After WWII GDR made it a monument to the victims of fascism and militarism – the statues of the generals were accordingly removed.
Since 1993 Neue Wache is a memorial to all victims of war and tyranny. Under the oculus is Käthe Kollwitz’s sculpture “Mother with dead son”, inscribed “Den Opfern von Krieg und Gewaltherrschaft”.

What to see: Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

Tomorrow the Brandenburg Gate (Brandenburger Tor) will provide the scene for the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which will be attended by 1980s leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa and Miklós Németh and leaders of the 27 EU countries.
They will all join German Chancellor Angela Merkel in walking through the Brandenburg Gate – in itself a simple act, yet it was an impossibility for 28 years. The Wall used to run just in front of the Gate, which was also the backdrop for Ronald Reagan’s famous speech in 1987, where he urged Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”. Today the Brandenburg Gate is a symbol of a unified Germany and Europe, but most of all of freedom.
The Brandenburg Gate at Pariser Platz is the only survivor of Berlin’s fifteen city gates – as the name indicates it was the gate towards the province of Brandenburg. Berlin has expanded significantly since then and the Brandenburg Gate is now right in the middle of the city centre.
It was built by the architect Carl Gotthard Langhans between 1788 and 1791, but the sculptural decorations were not completed until 1795. With its Doric columns this neoclassical structure stood in marked contrast to the Baroque mansions which surrounded Pariser Platz at the end of the 18th century. By this design Langhans so to speak brought the neoclassical style to Berlin, a city on which that style came to have great influence.
The quadriga carrying the peace goddess Eirene was done by Johann Gottfried Schadow – the original no longer exists, but the current quadriga is an exact replica. The quadriga has been turned around 180 degrees several time to face either east or west and was even taken to Paris when Napoléon I occupied Berlin in 1806.
It returned eight years later. Originally a symbol of peace, it was thereafter considered a symbol of victory. Karl Friedrich Schinkel added a staff surmounted by the Prussian eagle and the iron crass surrounded by a laurel wreath to the goddess, thus transforming her from Eirene to Victoria.
The Brandenburg Gate has seen victory parades such as that taking place after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the Nazi take-over of 1933. In 1945 the red flag was hoisted above it by Soviet soldiers. The division of Berlin which followed left the area around Brandenburg Gate a wasteland, heavily guarded by East German border guards. On 9 November 1989 the world witnessed how thousands of Germans from both east and west climbed the wall in front of Brandenburg Gate. Today Pariser Platz is again a busy square thronged by tourists and flanked by buildings such as the French and US embassies.

€ 155 million for Prussian palaces

Berliner Morgenpost and Der Tagesspiegel last week reported on a deal having been reached which grants the Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens € 155 million for restoration works until 2017. The federal state will contribute € 77.5 million, the state of Berlin € 24.5 million and the state of Brandenburg € 53 million. The foundation, which is in charge of 150 buildings, including 30 palaces which attract 7 million visitors a year, annually receives € 32.2 million from the federation and the two states.
This huge special grant comes after the General Director of the Foundation, Hartmut Dorgerloh, last year warned that some of the palaces are in such a condition that cultural and historical values are in danger of being lost. Among the palaces which are in most need of repairs are Charlottenburg in Berlin and the New Palace and Babelsberg in Potsdam. The latter palace is pictured above shortly after it reopened to visitors in 2008, although the interior at the time still looked most of all like a construction site.

At the end of the road: The seven Louises

Princess Luise of Prussia died on 23 March this year, aged 91. Many will remember her from the Danish documentary series A Royal Family (2003), where she was the oldest royal interviewed.

Her death marks the end of an era in two ways: The Princess was the last surviving member of the Prussian royal house to be born before the end of the German monarchies in 1918 and she was also the last in a line of seven generations of mothers and daughters who were all given variations of the name Louise.
The first was the legendary Queen Luise of Prussia (1776-1810, née Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz), consort of King Friedrich Wilhelm III and best remembered as one of Napoléon I’s staunchest adversaries.
Her youngest daughter, Princess Luise of Prussia (1808-1870) married Prince Frederik of the Netherlands and their daughter Louise (1828-1871) became the consort of King Carl XV of Sweden and Norway. Their only daughter Louise (1851-1926) married King Frederik VIII of Denmark and was the mother of eight children.
The eldest daughter among them, Louise (1875-1906), married Prince Friedrich of Schaumburg-Lippe and showed some creativity in naming her eldest daughter Marie Louise (1897-1938). She married back into the Prussian royal house when she entered into matrimony with Prince Friedrich Sigismund of Prussia in 1916. Princess Luise (1917-2009) was their only daughter and had no daughter herself to carry on the Luise tradition.
Her Royal Highness Princess Luise Viktoria Margarete Antoinette Sieglinde Alexandrine Thyra Stephanie of Prussia was born in Berlin on 23 August 1917. In 1942 she married Hans Reinhold (1917-2002). They had one son, Manfred Reinhold, who was born in 1943, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1949 and the Princess never remarried.
In 1945 the Princess and her son had to flee westwards to escape the advancing Red Army. Eventually she was given an apartment at Bückeburg Castle, the ancestral seat of her mother’s family, where she lived for the rest of her life and where she died two weeks ago. Princess Luise’s last resting place will be in the park of Glienicke Palace on the outskirts of Berlin, which was the country house of her branch of the Prussian royal house from 1824 to 1918.

http://www.preussen.de/de/heute/aktuell/trauer_um_prinzessin_luise_von_pressen_%281917-2009%29.html

The picture shows a replica in Berlin’s Friedrichswerderkirche of Christian David Rauch’s statue of Queen Luise of Prussia on her tomb in the mausoleum in Charlottenburg Palace Park in Berlin.