Frederick II of Prussia

Louise Henriette of Nassau was Electress of Brandenburg as the first wife of Frederick William, the Great Elector, whom she married in 1646. A daughter of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, and Amalia of Solms-Braunfels, she was raised in the Dutch Republic and brought Netherlandish ideas of land drainage, agriculture and garden design to the sandy country around Berlin. The town of Oranienburg, where she rebuilt a country residence, is named after her family. She wrote hymns in the German Reformed tradition, several of which stayed in use long after her death. Of her children, Frederick I survived to become the first King in Prussia, making her the ancestress of the Prussian royal line. She died in 1667 at the age of thirty nine.

Frederick William II was King of Prussia from 1786 until 1797, succeeding his uncle Frederick the Great, who had no children. Born in Berlin in 1744, the son of Prince Augustus William and Luise Amalie of Brunswick-Wolfenbuettel, he relaxed his uncle's austere regime, ended the state monopolies on coffee and tobacco, and spent generously on music and architecture. The Brandenburg Gate was built in his reign, and he was a competent cellist to whom Ludwig van Beethoven dedicated the two cello sonatas of his Opus 5. In policy he was less successful, intervening against revolutionary France, accepting the separate peace of Basel in 1795, and taking part in the Second and Third Partitions of Poland. His eldest son succeeded him as Frederick William III.

Frederick William III was King of Prussia from 1797 until 1840, through the years of Prussia's collapse before Napoleon and its recovery. Born at Potsdam in 1770, he married Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1793, and the couple became unusually popular. His attempt at neutrality ended in the catastrophic defeats at Jena and Auerstedt in 1806 and the Treaty of Tilsit, after which he backed the reforms of Stein, Hardenberg, Scharnhorst and Humboldt that rebuilt the Prussian state, army and university system. He joined the alliance that defeated Napoleon between 1813 and 1815 and gained the Rhineland at the Congress of Vienna. In 1817 he merged the Lutheran and Reformed congregations into the Prussian Union of churches. Two of his sons, Frederick William IV and Wilhelm I, succeeded him in turn.

Frederick William IV was King of Prussia from 1840 until 1861, the eldest son of Frederick William III and Queen Louise. Born in Berlin in 1795, he was a gifted draughtsman with a passion for architecture who worked closely with Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Friedrich August Stueler on the building of Potsdam and Berlin, and who pressed for the completion of Cologne Cathedral. Romantic and conservative by temperament, he was overtaken by the revolution of 1848: he conceded a constitution but refused the imperial crown offered to him by the Frankfurt Parliament in 1849, calling it a crown from the gutter. From 1857 he was unable to govern, and his brother Wilhelm acted as regent before succeeding him. His marriage to Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria was childless.

Wilhelm I was King of Prussia from 1861 and the first German Emperor from 1871 until his death in 1888. Born in Berlin in 1797, the second son of Frederick William III and Queen Louise, he fought in the campaigns against Napoleon, commanded the troops that put down the Baden rising of 1849, and became regent in 1858 for his incapacitated brother Frederick William IV. As king he resolved a constitutional crisis over army reform by appointing Otto von Bismarck minister president in 1862, and under Bismarck's direction Prussia defeated Denmark, Austria and France in turn. He was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on 18 January 1871, accepting with reluctance a title he felt diminished the Prussian crown. With Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach he was the father of Frederick III.

Frederick III was German Emperor and King of Prussia for ninety nine days in 1888, the shortest reign in the history of his house. Born at Potsdam in 1831, the only son of Wilhelm I and Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, he studied at Bonn, commanded armies with distinction at Koeniggraetz in 1866 and at Woerth and Sedan in 1870, and was created crown prince of the new empire in 1871. With his wife Victoria, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria, he favoured liberal parliamentary government on the British model, which set him at odds with Otto von Bismarck throughout his father's long reign. He was already seriously unwell when he finally succeeded in March 1888, and he died at Potsdam in June, leaving the throne to his eldest son, Wilhelm II.

Wilhelm II was the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, reigning from 1888 until his abdication in 1918. Born in Berlin in 1859, the eldest son of Frederick III and Victoria, Princess Royal, he was a grandson of both Wilhelm I and Queen Victoria. He dismissed Otto von Bismarck in 1890 and pursued a personal and assertive foreign policy, building a battle fleet that antagonised Britain and backing Austria-Hungary in the crisis of July 1914. His impulsive speeches and interviews repeatedly embarrassed his own governments, and by the later years of the First World War real authority had passed to the army command. He abdicated in November 1918 and spent the rest of his life at Doorn in the Netherlands, where he died in 1941. With Augusta Victoria he had six sons and one daughter.

Sophia of Prussia was Queen of the Hellenes as the wife of Constantine I of Greece, and a younger daughter of Frederick III and Victoria, Princess Royal. Born at Potsdam in 1870, she married the Greek crown prince in 1889, and her conversion to Greek Orthodoxy caused a lasting breach with her brother Wilhelm II. Her husband's reign was dominated by the National Schism with Eleftherios Venizelos and by the Greek defeat in Asia Minor, and the royal family was driven into exile twice, in 1917 and again in 1922. She worked for hospitals, nursing, soup kitchens and forestry projects in Greece. Three of her sons, George II, Alexander and Paul, became kings of the Hellenes, and her daughter Helen was Queen Mother of Romania. She died at Frankfurt in 1932.

Prince Eitel Friedrich of Prussia was the second son of Wilhelm II and Augusta Victoria. Born at Potsdam in 1883, he was brought up for the army and commanded the First Regiment of Foot Guards in the First World War, serving on both the Western and Eastern fronts and receiving the order Pour le Merite. In 1906 he married Duchess Sophie Charlotte of Oldenburg; the marriage produced no children and was dissolved in 1926. After the fall of the monarchy he held office in veterans' organisations, including the Stahlhelm league of former front line soldiers, and he lived at Potsdam, in the Villa Ingenheim, where he died in 1942.

Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia, known in the family as Auwi, was the fourth son of Wilhelm II and Augusta Victoria. Born at Potsdam in 1887, he studied law and took a doctorate at Strasbourg, then served in staff appointments during the First World War. In 1908 he married Princess Alexandra Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gluecksburg; their son Alexander Ferdinand was born in 1912 and the marriage was dissolved in 1920. He joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and became a senior SA officer and a Prussian state councillor, campaigning for the party in the belief that it would restore the monarchy. He was interned after the Second World War and tried before a denazification court, and he died at Stuttgart in 1949.

Prince Hubertus of Prussia was the third son of Crown Prince Wilhelm and Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Born at Potsdam in 1909, he trained in agriculture and served as a Luftwaffe officer until 1943, when the regime dismissed members of the former ruling houses from the armed forces. He married Princess Maria Anna von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg in 1941 and, after that marriage ended, Princess Magdalene Reuss of Koestritz in 1943. Looking for a new life once the family's Silesian estates were lost, he emigrated to South West Africa, where he took up farming near Windhoek. He died there in 1950 at the age of forty, leaving one daughter.