Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz (34 page)

At the same time Fritz wanted to leave the mark of a new era in some way by granting a general reprieve for certain political refugees and offenders, but Bismarck and the ministers brushed this aside on the grounds that it would be harmful for Germany’s reputation. Fritz could hardly force his wishes through against a mass of threatened resignations, but in the end they conceded by allowing him to grant a much-curtailed amnesty.

However such threats of clashes were nothing to Vicky’s trials. There were many Liberals and close friends who understood and sympathized with her, but they were in almost as precarious a position as she was. Some were guided less by loyalty than by the instinct of self-preservation, such as General Hugo von Winterfeld, formerly a trusted friend; their closest allies were watched carefully and had to be extremely circumspect in their contacts with the Emperor and Empress. Dr Ludwig Bamberger, Deputy Leader of the
Freisinnige
, was one of the most reliable of their advisers, but such was the state of intrigue in which they were surrounded that he and his sovereigns could only communicate by means of letters discreetly delivered to each other by the widowed Baroness Stockmar.

Vicky’s devotion to Fritz was mercilessly attacked. Because he could not speak she had to be with him almost constantly, especially when receiving visitors, and as she always pointed out to them how well he was looking, it was asserted that she wished to convey the impression his life and therefore his reign under her influence would be a long one. Herbert Bismarck maintained that the Kaiser was a mere living vegetable, his mind completely gone, while others whispered that he was dead and the Empress was concealing the fact in a bid for power. Prince Hohenlohe remarked that if every rumour he heard was true, it would take a royal commission to protect the Emperor against the Empress.
¹⁵

If official government circles scorned Fritz and hated Vicky, their attempts to poison the peoples’ minds bore little fruit. At the end of March the weather was fine enough for him to go outside, and the heartfelt reception which greeted them as they drove from Charlottenburg to Berlin in an open carriage one sunny day was reminiscent of that which had been accorded them on their arrival in the city after their wedding thirty years earlier.

Bismarck was quick to endeavour to secure his position by means of two bills that had been passed by the
Reichstag
but were not ready for the dying Kaiser Wilhelm’s signature and thus kept in abeyance for his successor. One was an extension of the antisocialist law, aimed at expelling the Social Democrats; the second was a constitutional amendment changing the period between elections from three years to five, thus retaining the current pro-Bismarck coalition in the Reichstag for two more years. Most of the liberals thought these had been drafted with the express intention of forestalling the Emperor’s liberalizing intentions and passed with undue haste. Bismarck had been used to Kaiser Wilhelm rubberstamping bills with barely a glance, and when Emperor Friedrich requested time to consider them properly before committing himself he threatened to resign if His Majesty withheld his signature. He told the Empress that her husband had no right to refuse to sign, and was exceeding his prerogatives. If he relinquished office it would create a constitutional crisis, and he could not answer for the consequences for Germany in the next reign. No further warning was necessary. An unfettered Kaiser Wilhelm II was the last thing any of them wanted, and Vicky gave in; if her husband’s signature was required according to the constitution, she conceded, it would be given immediately.

That same day Bismarck obtained the sovereign’s signature to an order authorizing Crown Prince Wilhelm to sign certain bills of less importance for his father. Since Kaiser Wilhelm’s death over five hundred documents had accumulated, many of them for small matters such as army promotions and appointments. Vicky offered to do these herself, but while Bismarck raised no objection to her face he disparaged the idea behind her back, saying that Hohenzollern Prussia and the German Empire could not allow themselves to be led by a woman. To him it was one step away from her trying to have herself appointed Regent, which court gossips suggested was her intention. Only when Bertie, in Berlin for the funeral, advised her that it would be unwise to press the issue, did she acquiesce in favour of her son.

There were signs of a new bond between father and son at the start of the reign. Though Fritz had been so depressed by their increasing estrangement during the previous ten years or so, in these last weeks he held out an olive branch. He showed Willy plans and elevations for a projected rebuilding of Berlin Cathedral, drawn up by the architect Herr Raschdorff, and asked him to see that these were carried out after his death.

However Willy felt that attempts were being made to prevent him from trying to visit his father, and in his memoirs years later claimed that spies were posted to give notice of his arrival at the palace, so he would be greeted with the news that His Majesty was asleep and the Empress had gone out for a walk. It was clear, he maintained, that he was being prevented from talking to his father without witnesses being present. One day he successfully slipped in by the back stairs into his father’s bedroom with the connivance of a sympathetic valet, and his father said he ought to visit him more often. When Willy explained why he had not, Fritz ‘was greatly astonished and described this barring-out as senseless; he said that my presence was welcome to him at any time.’ On his next visit he saw various unknown faces watching from the doctors’ room, and he locked the door. On leaving he expressed his indignation to his father’s gentlemen, and was told that they were in no position to get rid of journalists under Dr Mackenzie’s protection.
¹⁶
While Willy had every sympathy for his father, he made no secret of his bitterness towards his mother at this time. He told Bismarck, and others, that she hated him more than anything else on earth.

At Bismarck’s birthday dinner on 1 April Willy made a speech comparing the state of Germany to a regiment whose general had been killed and whose second-in-command lay badly wounded, therefore the soldiers should flock to the standard of their junior lieutenant. When Fritz read a report in the papers the following day, he wrote to his son expressing sorrow that his first public speech as Crown Prince showed unequivocally ‘that you regard my state of health as a hindrance to the exercise of my duties’, and asking him to ‘avoid making any similar speeches in the future.’
¹⁷
Willy claimed that the newspapers had misrepresented his speech and a corrected version was duly published. Fritz sent him a note stating that as he had been falsely reported, his own remarks no longer applied and he was happy to regard the matter as closed.

In another matter the Empress was determined to have her way, though the odds were against her. Shortly before Christmas 1887 Sandro, now living in Austria, had written to her that, in view of the unfavourable circumstances surrounding the ‘attempted betrothal’ between him and her daughter Victoria, he must ask her ‘to help to bring this situation to an end’.
¹⁸
Yet she thought he feared the reactions of Kaiser Wilhelm and Bismarck, and was prepared to wait.

Now that Fritz was Emperor, she still hoped that Moretta and Sandro would soon be married. Sandro wrote to his brother Henry in England, asking him to make the situation clear to Queen Victoria so she could prevail on Vicky to face the facts. The Queen duly warned her daughter not to contemplate such a match without Wilhelm’s acquiescence, as it would bring misery on the young couple and place Moretta in ‘an impossible and humiliating position’.
¹⁹
Bismarck warned the Empress that Prince Alexander had fallen in love with Johanna Loisinger, an opera singer at Darmstadt where he had been living as a private citizen since leaving Bulgaria, but as it was the first she had heard of it she dismissed it as malicious gossip. If only Queen Victoria, who had almost certainly known about the affair from Henry for some time, had told Vicky at once, the issue might have passed into history there and then – and all of them would have been spared much bitterness. But Vicky, worn out by the strain of the last few months, seeing her plans frustrated and persecuted at every turn, had become obsessed with the idea that Moretta would he heartbroken if she did not have her Sandro. Unwisely she tried to expedite the betrothal, even if it meant a secret marriage, flight from Germany for her daughter and new son-in-law, and a commission for him in the Austro-Hungarian army. She asked Radolinski to make the necessary arrangements, but as he considered his loyalties were first and foremost to the Prussian state he promptly informed Crown Prince Wilhelm, whose loathing for Sandro still knew no bounds, and all plans were immediately halted.

Fritz still opposed the marriage of his daughter to an ex-sovereign prince. He knew that after his death, Kaiser Wilhelm and Bismarck would exact revenge on them both, and on his wife for promoting it. Moreover with no money, no country, and no future, Alexander would not be able to keep a wife brought up in an imperial family, and he himself did not have the funds to provide a settlement for them. That there was a difference of opinion between the desperate Empress and the dying Emperor there can be little doubt, though Waldersee’s allusion to ‘a frightful scene between the Emperor and Empress’
²⁰
and colourful descriptions by Radolinski and Crown Prince Wilhelm of the Emperor rending his clothes, tearing his hair, ripping the bandages from his throat, stamping his foot, pointing at the door and trying to shout ‘Leave me alone!’ in his hollow whisper,
²¹
must be regarded with scepticism.
^*
For Fritz and Vicky to indulge in such histrionics in private, let alone in front of a third party, sounds too much like court gossip to be credible.

After consulting Vicky, Fritz invited Sandro to Berlin with the intention of discussing the marriage and bestowing on him some military command, probably that of the Brigade of Guards. According to Moretta, her father gave her his consent personally; ‘I believe he planned to bring about the marriage then and there’.
²²
At this point Bismarck told the Kaiser firmly that such a move would embitter Russo-German relations, and if the invitation went ahead then he would resign at once. Fritz therefore had no option but to cancel Sandro’s visit.

As a private citizen Alexander of Battenberg had no direct political standing, save as a possible future threat to the Tsar’s peace of mind. He was still popular in Bulgaria, where an active group of Russophobe politicians, as well as those who disliked his effeminate successor Prince Ferdinand of Coburg, wanted him back. If Alexander did marry his Hohenzollern princess, his position would be firmer and subsequent demands for his reinstatement would grow louder. Outside the family few people knew about Johanna Loisinger, and those who had heard him voice his intention of never returning to Bulgaria shrugged it off as the wild talk of a man who would soon forget, unaware how much his ordeals had permanently undermined his health.

Whatever Sandro’s future, Bismarck protested that Tsar Alexander III of Russia would lose all confidence in his relations with Germany if the marriage went through, and even a visit by Prince Alexander of Battenberg to Berlin would be interpreted as a hostile demonstration. However when Lothar von Schweinitz, German Ambassador in St Petersburg, tried to ascertain the Tsar’s feelings on the issue, a message came back that the latter said he had never been so satisfied with Russo-German relations as he was at Emperor Friedrich III’s accession and proclamation. Nikolai Giers, the Russian Minister, added that if Alexander did come to Berlin, they would regret it but ‘we would be convinced that neither the Emperor nor the Chancellor would change their policy of friendship towards Russia.’ Taken aback, Bismarck consoled himself by muttering to the press about threats of a war with Russia that could only be to Britain’s advantage. His final objection was an extraordinary belief that the Battenberg marriage was part of a plot by the Empress to make Prince Alexander German Chancellor. Though he would have been well suited to a position in the army, nobody would have thought of promoting him to the Chancellorship, an office for which he was certainly not qualified. Somehow Bismarck fancied his personal power to be in danger, and saw ghosts.
²³
A suggestion that Alexander might have been considered as
Statthalter
of Alsace-Lorraine was never taken seriously.

Once Bismarck had won his victory by insisting on the cancellation of Sandro’s visit, he told Vicky that the marriage might be possible one day; all he required at this stage was a postponement. Aware of her financial worries, he offered to obtain the release of nine million marks from Kaiser Wilhelm’s estate for her husband to dispose of as he wished; it would give him a chance to provide for his wife and daughters, and for their dowries on marriage. The parsimonious late Kaiser had kept his son and daughter-in-law in a position of complete financial dependence throughout his reign and refused to provide for his three younger granddaughters, threatening to disinherit Moretta completely if she married Sandro. In his will he had left his widow three million marks, his son one million, a similar amount to Wilhelm and Dona, a considerable amount of landed property and all his silver to Henry, and the rest to the Crown Treasury. To his daughter-in-law and her daughters he had given nothing.

That Fritz might die before he had a chance to settle his father’s inheritance and make provision properly weighed heavily on his mind. In a later audience, the Chancellor advised the Empress to invest her share of the money abroad on receipt. On 12 April the Kaiser presented her with a certificate for one million marks and their four daughters certificates for two million marks each. Having disposed of one pressing problem, she decided she would ask Fritz to insert a clause in his will instructing Wilhelm II to acquiesce in the marriage of Moretta and Sandro after his death. It was a forlorn hope.