For the queen consort of Spain sometimes known as Sophia of Greece and Denmark, see tabby Sofía of Spain Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark ( greek : Σοφία, romanized : Sofía ; 26 June 1914 – 24 November 2001 ) was by birth a greek and Danish princess equally well as Princess of Hesse-Kassel and Princess of Hanover through her consecutive marriages to Prince Christoph of Hesse and Prince George William of Hanover. The elder sister of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh of the United Kingdom, she was for a time linked to the Nazi regimen. The fourth of five children of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, Sophie spent a felicitous childhood. Her early years, however, were affected by the First World War ( 1914–1918 ) and the Greco-Turkish War ( 1919–1922 ). For the young princess and her relatives, these conflicts had dramatic consequences and led to their exile in Switzerland ( between 1917 and 1920 ), and then in France ( from 1922 to 1936 ). During their exile, Sophie and her class depended on the generosity of their foreign relatives, in particular Marie Bonaparte ( who offered them adjustment in Saint-Cloud ) and Lady Edwina Mountbatten ( who supported them financially ).
At the end of the 1920s, Sophie fell in love with one of her aloof cousins, Prince Christoph of Hesse. Around the lapp time, her mother was struck by a mental health crisis which led to her restriction in a swiss psychiatric hospital between 1930 and 1933. Married in December 1930, Sophie moved to Berlin with her husband. She then gave give birth to five children : Christina ( 1933–2011 ), Dorothea ( 1934–2002 ), Karl ( 1937–2022 ), Rainer ( behave 1939 ) and Clarissa of Hesse ( bear 1944 ). close to the Nazi circles, in which her husband and several of her in-law were involved from 1930, Sophie joined the National Socialist Women ‘s League in 1938. Deceived by Adolf Hitler, whom she saw as a minor and charming homo, the princess got close to Emmy Sonnemann, who became her acquaintance and later married Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief Hermann Göring in April 1935. Attached to Nazism, Sophie and her in-law consequently served as unofficial intermediaries between the Nazi government and the european dynasties to which they were related. Under these conditions, the sociable status of Christoph and Sophie continued to improve and they moved into a boastfully house located in Dahlem, in 1936. The outbreak of the Second World War, however, forced the couple to separate. An mho officeholder since 1932, Christoph joined the Luftwaffe, which led him to versatile european theaters of operation. For her part, Sophie moved with her children to her mother-in-law at Friedrichshof Castle in Kronberg im Taunus. The Führer ‘s growing distrust of the german gentry ( from 1942 ) and the treachery of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy ( in 1943 ) led the Nazi regimen to turn against the House of Hesse-Kassel. Princess Mafalda, daughter of the italian sovereign and sister-in-law of Sophie, was frankincense imprisoned in Buchenwald, where she was seriously wounded and died shortly after, while her husband, Philipp, Landgrave of Hesse, was confined in Flossenbürg until the victory of the Allies. At the lapp fourth dimension, Christoph was found dead in mysterious circumstances, leaving Sophie about alone with her four children and a one-fifth one under way a good as the children of Philipp and Mafalda. The tragic events made Sophie realize the truthful nature of Hitler ‘s regimen and turn against Nazism. The defeat of Germany and its occupation by the Allies brought newfangled difficulties in the liveliness of Sophie, who found herself in a precarious fiscal situation due to the larceny of her jewelry by american english soldiers in 1946 and the sequestration of the property of her beginning husband until 1953. After living for several months in Wolfsgarten, she started a relationship with another one of her cousins, Prince George William of Hanover, whom she married in 1946. She had three more children by her second husband : Welf Ernst ( 1947–1981 ), Georg ( have a bun in the oven 1949 ) and Friederike of Hanover ( bear 1954 ). The couple then moved to Salem, where George William worked as director of Schule Schloss Salem ( 1948–1959 ), before settling in Schliersee ( from 1959 ). Excluded from the 1947 marry of her buddy Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark to Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom ( by and by Queen Elizabeth II ) because of her past links to the Nazi government, Sophie was reintegrated into the royal circles in the early 1950s and attended major events of the gentry afterwards. She however led a discreet and retire life, spending her time through reading, listening to music and garden. The last of the Duke of Edinburgh ‘s sisters to die, she died in a retirement family in Schliersee in 2001, after losing one of her sons in 1981 and a grandson in 1994 .
biography [edit ]
childhood [edit ]
First World War and exile in Switzerland [edit ]
The fourth daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, Sophie was born on 26 June 1914 at Mon Repos, a palace in Corfu that her parents inherited after the assassination of King George I in 1913. Nicknamed “ bantam ” by her family, the princess grew up within a unite family, together with her elder sisters Margarita ( 1905–1981 ), Theodora ( 1906–1969 ), and Cecilie ( 1911–1937 ). With their mother, Sophie and her sisters communicated in English, but they besides used French, German, and Greek in the presence of their relatives and governesses. Sophie ‘s early childhood was marked by the instability that the Kingdom of Greece experienced due to the First World War. The conflict divided her family into opposing branches, and Greece finally set aside its neutrality due to the Triple Entente. Sophie and her sisters were in the imperial palace of Athens when it was bombarded by the french Navy during the battle in the capital on 1 December 1916. In June 1917, King Constantine I, Sophie ‘s uncle, was last deposed and driven out of Greece by the Allies, who replaced him on the enthrone by his second son, the young Alexander. Fifteen days by and by, Sophie ‘s family was in sour forced into exile and had to leave Mon Repos in arrange to remove the possibility of the new monarch being influenced by those close to him. Forced to reside in German-speaking Switzerland, the small group first gear stayed in a hotel in St. Moritz, before settling in Lucerne, where they lived with doubt about their future. Homesickness caused by expatriate was not the only reference of anguish for the family, however. With the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, respective of Sophie ‘s relatives were murdered in Russia. soon after these events, the Grand Ducal class of Hesse, to which Sophie was closely relate through her mother, was overthrown along with all the early german dynasties during the winter of 1918–1919. At the begin of 1919, Sophie however had the joy of reuniting with her paternal grandma, the Dowager Queen Olga, spared by the Bolsheviks thanks to the diplomatic intervention of the Danes. In the months that followed, Sophie attended a family reunion with her parental grandparents, and met her aunt Louise and uncle Louis. For Sophie, who now formed a duet with her third-eldest sister Cecilie, expatriate was not only synonymous with gloominess ; it was besides an opportunity for retentive class reunions and walks in the mountains .
abbreviated return to Greece [edit ]
On 2 October 1920, King Alexander, cousin of Sophie, was bitten by a domestic tamper during a walk in Tatoi. ailing cared for, he contracted sepsis, which prevailed on 25 October, without any penis of his family being allowed to come to his bedside. The death of the autonomous caused a crimson institutional crisis in Greece. Already stuck, since 1919, in a new war against Turkey, Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos lost the 1920 Greek legislative election. Humiliated, he retired abroad while a referendum reinstalled Constantine I on the throne .
prince Andrew was received triumphantly in Athens on 23 November 1920, and his wife and four daughters joined him a few days late. Sophie then returned to live in Corfu with her family. At the like clock, Princess Alice found out that she was meaning again. On 10 June 1921, the family welcomed Philip ( 1921–2021 ), the future Duke of Edinburgh. The rejoice that surrounded this parentage, however, was obscured by the absence of Prince Andrew, who joined the greek forces in Asia Minor during the Occupation of Smyrna. Despite worries about the war, Sophie and her siblings enjoyed animation at Mon Repos, where they received a visit from their maternal grandma and their aunt Louise in the spring of 1922. In the parking lot near the palace, built on an ancient cemetery, the princesses devoted themselves to archeology and discovered some pottery, bronze pieces and bones. During this period, Sophie and her sisters besides participated, for the first time, in a number of great social events. In March 1921, the princesses attended in Athens the wedding of their cousin Helen to Crown Prince Carol of Romania. In July 1922, they went to the United Kingdom to be bridesmaids at the wedding of their uncle Louis Mountbatten to the affluent heiress Edwina Ashley. however, the military defeat of Greece against Turkey and the political agitation that it caused disrupted the life sentence of Sophie and her kin. In September 1922, Constantine I abdicated in favor of his eldest son, George II. A calendar month belated, Prince Andrew was arrested before being tried by a military court, which declared him creditworthy for the get the better of of the Sakarya. Saved from murder by the intervention of foreign chancelleries, the prince was condemned to banishment and cashiering. After a brief period in Corfu, the prince and his relatives hurriedly left Greece aboard HMS Calypso in early December 1922 .
Exile in France [edit ]
After a travel of several weeks, which led them successively to Italy, France and the United Kingdom, Sophie, her parents and her siblings settled in Saint-Cloud in 1923. Settled in a house adjoining that of Princess Marie Bonaparte, the kin depended for seven years on her generosity, and two early aunts of Sophie : first Princess Anastasia and then Lady Louis Mountbatten. Marie Bonaparte financed the studies of her nieces and nephew, while Lady Mountbatten got into the habit of offering her nieces her “ used ” clothes. In fact, Sophie ‘s parents had little income and the children were the regular witnesses to their money problems and their difficulty in maintaining a family. Deprived of their greek nationality after the announcement of the Second Hellenic Republic in March 1924, Sophie and her family received danish passports from their cousin King Christian X. In Saint-Cloud, the belittled group spent a relatively simple life. Sophie and her siblings continued their studies in private institutions, and, during their loose time, their don took them regularly to Paris or to the Bois de Boulogne. He besides spent long hours playing tennis with them. Every Sunday, the class was received for lunch by Princess Marie Bonaparte and Prince George of Greece and Denmark. Sophie and her class besides regularly met Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark and his wife Elena Vladimirovna of Russia, who had besides chosen France to spend their prison term in exile with their daughters. ultimately, they much saw their cousin Princess Margaret of Denmark, who settled in the Paris region after her marriage to Prince René of Bourbon-Parma. Sophie and her relatives made frequent stays afield, and in detail in the United Kingdom. In 1923, the princess was invited to London to be a bridesmaid at the marry of her aunt Louise Mountbatten to the future Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden. She returned to England in 1925 for the funeral of her great-aunt, Queen Alexandra. In 1926, she went to Italy for the funeral of her paternal grandma, Queen Olga. A few weeks late, she returned to spend the summer in Great Britain, with her maternal grandma, the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven .
Young adulthood [edit ]
First marriage and reconcile in Germany [edit ]
In 1927, Sophie met one of her distant cousins, Prince Philipp of Hesse-Kassel. soon after, she met two of his brothers, the twins Christoph and Richard of Hesse-Kassel at the manor of Hemmelmark, the home of her great-aunt Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine. Despite her being 13 years their junior, the two german princes soon attempted to woo her and it was Christoph who managed to grab her attention. Their romance finally ended in an engagement, which was officially celebrated when Sophie turned 16, in 1930. Around the lapp prison term, Cecilie, Sophie ‘s favored sister, became engaged to another member of the House of Hesse, Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse. The happiness of the princess was however clouded by the situation of her mother, whose mental health deteriorated precipitously after the celebration of her argent wedding anniversary with Prince Andrew, in 1928. Struck by a mental health crisis, the princess convinced herself that she possessed healing powers and that she was receiving divine messages about likely husbands for her daughters. She then took herself for a saint and soon declared herself the bride of Jesus. Distraught by the position, Prince Andrew ultimately made the decision to place his wife in a bedlam. He took advantage of his family ‘s stay in Darmstadt, on the juncture of the celebration for Cecilie ‘s official engagement in April 1930, to send Alice to a psychiatric hospital located in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland. In the absence of their beget, Sophie and Cecilie made their marriage preparations together. The two princesses therefore went to London, in the spring of 1930, in regulate to obtain raw clothes. shortly after, they returned to Paris to put together their trousseau and buy their marriage dresses. The nuptials of Sophie and Christoph were celebrated in Kronberg im Taunus on 15 December 1930. They were married in two religious ceremonies, with the Orthodox one accommodate at Friedrichshof Castle and the Lutheran one at a church in the city. A few weeks later, on 2 February 1931, Cecilie and Georg Donatus married in the presence of their class at the Neue Palais in Darmstadt. With their honeymoon over, Sophie and Christoph moved into an apartment in Berlin ‘s Schöneberg quarter. After working for a retentive time in the Maybach car factory in Friedrichshafen, the prince had just been hired as a broker by the Victoria insurance company. While the princess moved to Germany to start a family, Greece went through a disruptive political period, marked by numerous coups d’état. Confronted with permanent instability, the population gradually lost confidence in the institutions of the Hellenic Republic and King George II ( Sophie ‘s cousin ) was finally reinstalled on the toilet in November 1935 .
kin liveliness and attachment to Nazism [edit ]
In October 1930, Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia, son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, introduced his cousin Christoph to the politician Hermann Göring, and it did not take long for the two to form a closer relationship. [ N 1 ] Under the influence of Göring, the prince and his wife then met Adolf Hitler, who deceived them with his spell and his apparent modesty. [ 94 ] Under these conditions, Christoph promptly joined the Nazi Party, first secretly in 1931, and then publicly in 1933. He besides joined the SS in February 1932. however, in his family, Christoph was not an exceptional case. His older brother Philipp had become a penis of the Nazi Party in 1930. subsequently, their respective twins, Princes Wolfgang and Richard of Hesse-Kassel, joined the party in 1932. last, their parents, Frederick Charles, Landgrave of Hesse and Princess Margaret, followed the exercise of their sons in May 1938. Unlike her sisters Cecilie and Margarita, who joined the Nazi Party at the lapp meter as their husbands in 1937, Sophie never became a member of the Nazi Party. Like her sister-in-law, Princess Mafalda and Princess Marie Alexandra, she however joined the National Socialist Women ‘s League in 1938. In fact, Sophie had long shown enthusiasm vis-à-vis the new order that was established in Germany in the 1930s. Linked to the elect of the Hitler regimen, the princess frankincense maintained friendly relations with Emmy Sonnemann, and was one of the guests of honor at the time of her marriage in April 1935 to Hermann Göring, who notably had Adolf Hitler as a spectator. From a fiscal degree of view, the coming to ability of Adolf Hitler importantly improved the situation of Christoph and Sophie. In 1933, the prince was appointed personal adviser to State Secretary to the prussian State Ministry Paul Körner. Two years late, Göring placed Christoph in charge of the Forschungsamt, an intelligence service creditworthy for spying on the telecommunications of Nazi Germany. Under these conditions, Sophie and her husband left their old apartment for a new one in 1933, before moving into a large crimson brick villa located in Dahlem in 1936. [ N 2 ] At the same time as these events, Sophie and Christoph ‘s family grew larger with the consecutive births of Christina ( 1933–2011 ), Dorothea ( 1934–2002 ), Karl ( 1937–2022 ), and Rainer of Hesse ( have a bun in the oven 1939 ). The parentage of their eldest son was besides an opportunity for the couple to underline their hold for Nazism, since the child received, among his names, that of Adolf, in tribute to the Führer. Sophie besides continued to worry about the fortune of her mother Alice, whom she visited respective times during the latter ‘s confinement in Kreuzlingen between 1930 and 1933. Sophie besides happily attended the weddings of her two eldest sisters, Margarita and Theodora, to german princes Gottfried, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg and Berthold, Margrave of Baden in 1931. She was besides present at the funeral of her sister Cecilie and her family, who were killed in a plane crash in 1937. Sophie and Christoph besides maintained their ties to their alien relatives. The princess made respective trips to the United Kingdom, and besides stayed in Italy ( 1936 ) and Yugoslavia ( 1939 ). According to historian Jonathan Petropoulos, the visits were an opportunity for the couple to carry out, for the benefit of the Nazi Germany, a parallel statesmanship with their european cousins, such as Prince Paul of Yugoslavia and his wife Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark .
second World War and the death of Prince Christoph [edit ]
While Adolf Hitler imposed an increasingly totalitarian grip on german club, Christoph warned Sophie about the want to beware of prying ears and never to speak politics with people early than her sisters and cousins. even though he probably moved away from the SS from 1934, the prince however remained a stem patron of the Nazi regimen. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, he ad lib enlisted in the Luftwaffe, while retaining his mail as conductor of the Forschungsamt. Sophie and her four children then left Berlin to settle in Friedrichshof, near her conserve ‘s parents the Landgrave and the Landgravine of Hesse. then began a close correspondence between the couple, which testified to the love that Sophie and her conserve had for each other. soon after Sophie moved to Kronberg im Taunus on 28 May 1940, her father-in-law died in Wilhelmshöhe, making his eldest surviving son Philipp the new lead of the House of Hesse-Kassel. At the same time, most of Europe fell under Nazi rule and Sophie ‘s parents found themselves isolated army for the liberation of rwanda from their children. After the invasion of France, Prince Andrew was stuck on the french Riviera in June 1940. For her depart, Princess Alice chose to stay in Athens despite the occupation of Greece and the departure into exile of other members of the Greek royal family in April 1941. This did not prevent Sophie from continuing to support the Nazi regimen, as illustrated by the continuance of her visits to Emmy and Hermann Göring. Things gradually changed from 1942, when the Nazi authorities began to distance themselves from the german nobility. In January and October 1943, Princes Wolfgang and Richard of Hesse-Kassel were successively dismissed from the army, without being threatened by the Nazi government. In April, the Führer placed Landgrave Philipp under family apprehension, before having him confined in the Flossenbürg camp after Italy ‘s surrender to the Allies on 8 September 1943. A few days former, on 22 September, it was Philipp ‘s wife, Mafalda ‘s turn to be arrested. After two weeks of question, Mafalda, who was the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, was imprisoned in Buchenwald, where she died on 27 August 1944, after being seriously wounded following an forward pass bombardment. At the lapp time, searches were carried out by Obergruppenführer Josias, Hereditary Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont, in the residences of Philipp and his mother. All these events led Sophie to open her eyes completely to the true nature of the Nazi government. The tragedies of the House of Hesse-Kassel did not end there, however. On 7 October 1943, Prince Christoph died under cryptic circumstances [ N 3 ] during a flat crash in the Apennine Mountains, near Forlì. A few months late, Princess Marie Alexandra of Baden ( wife of Wolfgang ) perished buried during an air-raid on Frankfurt am Main on 29–30 January 1944. Widowed and fraught with her fifth child ( Princess Clarissa, who was born on 6 February 1944 ), Sophie therefore found herself in a precarious situation, with her mother-in-law, Landgravine Margaret as her independent support. Tired and emaciated, the princess was now responsible for bringing up her children on her own, while besides taking care of Philipp and Mafalda ‘s four children. As Christoph ‘s death was not made public by the Nazi regimen, Sophie published a simple end notice for her husband in the Völkischer Beobachter on 18 October 1943. A few weeks former, in November 1943, the princess and her mother-in-law received a chew the fat from Obergruppenführer Siegfried Taubert, commissioned by Heinrich Himmler to discreetly spy on the kin. Aware of their vulnerability, the two women then refrained from expressing doubts about the conditions surrounding Christoph ‘s death. Eager to know more about the destiny of Philipp and Mafalda, Sophie tried, on the other hand, to obtain information from Emmy Göring, without success. At the like time, several relatives of the princess visited Friedrichshof, including her mother, Princess Alice, who managed to obtain a pass for Germany at the end of January 1944 and stayed with her daughter until April. other relatives, including her brother-in-law Wolfgang and their cousin Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia arrived at the castle in February 1945 .
Post-war years [edit ]
occupation of Friedrichshof [edit ]
The defeat of Germany and its occupation by the Allies brought raw difficulties in the biography of Sophie and those close to her. The United States Army entered Kronberg on 29 March 1945 and Friedrichshof was then partially occupied. Before the arrival of the “ G.I. “, the Hesse-Kassels removed compromising documents, such as books of a political nature from their library. They besides hid some of their belongings, specially class gems and jewels. This precaution was not unnecessary since the American troops engaged in numerous thefts in the castle. many objects were stolen there, and its cellars were looted while the estate ‘s peacocks were killed and roasted in front of their owners .
In the days following the begin of the occupation, the american intelligence services arrested Princes August Wilhelm of Prussia ( 7 April ) and Wolfgang of Hesse ( 12 April ). With Landgravine Margaret suffering from pneumonia, Sophie found herself in the situation of having to represent her kin alone before the authorities. however, on 12 April, the american army ordered the emptying of Friedrichshof, leaving to Hesse-Kassel syndicate merely the practice of its dependencies. A workweek former, on 19 April, they gave them the order to leave, within four hours, the cottages they occupied in the sphere. Distraught, Sophie and her mother-in-law had to find recourse with neighbors, and in finical with the parents of the future MP Walther Leisler Kiep. While Friedrichshof was transformed into an officers ‘ cabaret by the american english army, the Hesse-Kassels settled in Wolfsgarten in May, where they were received by Louis, Prince of Hesse and by Rhine and his wife Margaret Campbell Geddes, who soon took care of the younger children of Philipp, Landgrave of Hesse. The landgrave was in fact kept in detention by the Americans until 1947 and the investigation which was carried out against him as separate of the denazification inaugural did not end until 1950. Deprived of her conserve ‘s property, which was placed in receivership until 1953, Sophie found herself in a very parlous fiscal situation. Under these conditions, the death of her forefather prince Andrew ( who died in France in December 1944 ) brought her a average, but welcome inheritance .
irregular marriage [edit ]
Widowed since October 1943 and mother to five children, Sophie got close to Prince George William of Hanover, son of Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, and brother of Frederica, Queen of the Hellenes. Encouraged by Princess Margaret of Hesse and by Rhine, their romance ended in an engagement, which was celebrated in January 1946. As the House of Hanover was related to the british royal family, George William ‘s don had previously sought license from King George VI to proceed with the date. however, with the UK and Germany even at war, the UK politics banned the monarch from responding to it, except in an informal capacity. As her marry was scheduled for April, Sophie was trying to convince to the american authorities to allow her to use the jewelry she left in Friedrichshof and wished to wear during the ceremony. Having obtained the necessary allow, the princess and Landgravine Margaret went to the castle, where they thought they would find the jewelry that Prince Wolfgang obscure in the cellar in 1943. To their discouragement, however, the two women realized that the jewels had been stolen and an investigation was soon opened to find out what happened to them.
It was then established that on 5 November 1945, Captain Kathleen Nash, Major David Watson and Colonel Jack Durant had discovered the jewels, whose respect was estimated at £2 million at the time, and that they finally stole them in February 1946. Brought to justice, the three american english soldiers were found guilty, but only some of the stolen pieces were found entire, the lie having been dismantled to be more easily sold in Switzerland. In addition, the american english government procrastinated for several years around the question of the tax return of the remaining pieces, which were not given back to their owners until 1 August 1951. In the goal, the kin recovered around 10 % of the steal jewelry. Under these conditions, the marriage of Sophie and George William took on a elementary form than expected. Organized at Salem Castle, place of Berthold, Margrave of Baden ( husband of Princess Theodora ), the event was the occasion for the bride to reunite with her brother Prince Philip, whom she had not seen since 1937 and who came to Germany with his arms load with food and gifts. In the years that followed, Sophie gave give birth to three more children : Welf Ernst ( 1947–1981 ), Georg ( natural 1949 ) and Friederike of Hanover ( bear 1954 ) .
Philip ‘s marriage [edit ]
Since 1939, Sophie ‘s brother Prince Philip had been linked to Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom. Already in love, the two were unofficially engaged at Balmoral in 1946, and Philip adopted, shortly after, british nationality. The couple ‘s engagement was announced officially on 10 July 1947, and preparations for the marry began immediately thereafter. however, the ties of Philip ‘s syndicate to Germany frightened the british court and government, who feared that the public could be reminded of the Germanic origins of the House of Windsor if the royal family were publicly associated with former Nazi Party members. Prince Philip found himself unable to invite his sisters to his marry. Aware of the difficulties their brother had to face, Sophie, Margarita and Theodora considered their sideline wrong and deleterious. They felt snubbed when they realized that their cousins, the Queen Mother of the Romanians and the Duchess of Aosta, had been invited despite their countries being allies of the Nazi government during the dispute. Harassed by the press, who submitted requests for interviews with them, Sophie and her sisters spent the day of 20 November 1947 at Marienburg Castle with their families. Invited by the Duke and Duchess of Brunswick, they celebrated the union of their brother in the company of their cousin Princess Elizabeth of Greece and Denmark and Prince Louis and Princess Margaret of Hesse and by Rhine. A few days subsequently, the greek princesses received a visit from the Queen of the Hellenes ( who came to bring them a letter from their mother Princess Alice describing the marriage in detail ) and the Duchess of Kent .
Return to convention biography [edit ]
Settling in Salem [edit ]
With George William having completed his law studies at the University of Göttingen in 1948, he was approached by his brother-in-law, Berthold, Margrave of Baden, to take over the management of the Salem Castle School, which had since been closed due to the second World War. A former scholar of the institution, the prince then went to Scotland with his wife to meet with Kurt Hahn, the founder of the school, and to visit Gordonstoun, the institution that the latter founded when he had to flee Nazi Germany because of his jewish origins. For Sophie, who was very affected by the manner she was treated at the fourth dimension of her brother ‘s wedding, this trip to the United Kingdom was an opportunity to discreetly reconnect with Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth. once in Salem, George William and Sophie settled in a large house provided by the Margrave of Baden, and the children of the princess are educated in the institution run by George William. In fact, the fiscal situation of Sophie and her husband remained precarious for a farseeing time. For the princess, however, things gradually improved from 1950, when she received a humble inheritance from her maternal grandma, the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven. The ending in 1951 of the case of jewelry larceny from the mansion of Hesse-Kassels, and the end of the probe into the function of Sophie ‘s first conserve Christoph in the Nazi government in 1953 [ N 4 ] then helped to normalize her fiscal site and that of her five elder children. Sophie and her family remained in Salem until 1959, when George William gave up his post of school director. In the meanwhile, the couple welcomed their nieces to their home, Princesses Sophia and Irene of Greece and Denmark, sent to Salem by their forefather, King Paul, to complete their studies .
Reintegration into imperial circles [edit ]
once the monarchy was restored in Greece in 1946, Sophie was invited to Athens by her mother, Princess Alice, some meter late, in 1948. In the years that followed, Sophie and George William got closer to their brother-in-law, King Paul of Greece, and to his syndicate. Queen Frederica therefore came to consider Sophie as her best friend. As a resultant role, the princess and her husband were regularly welcomed at the greek Court, and the couple was among the many personalities invited by the Greek sovereign to the “ cruise of the kings ” in 1954. Sophie and her family were besides invited to Athens on the occasion of the marry of Princess Sophia of Greece and Denmark and Juan Carlos, Prince of Asturias in 1962. [ 216 ] They were besides confront at the wedding of King Constantine II of Greece and Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark in 1964. [ 217 ] In the early 1950s, relations between the british imperial family and their german relatives in twist normalized, and Sophie, her sisters and their husbands were wholly invited to the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. The princesses and their families were then frequently invited to Buckingham Palace and Sandringham House. In 1964, Sophie was chosen as godmother to her nephew Prince Edward. In 1978, she attended the wedding of Prince Michael of Kent ( son of her cousin Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark ) and Baroness Marie Christine von Reibnitz. In 1997, she was invited, with her conserve, to the celebrations for the fortunate marry anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. [ 224 ] Over the years, Sophie besides developed a special kinship with Prince Charles, who received her on several occasions at his residency in Highgrove, once he had become an pornographic .
family losses [edit ]
The wedding of Sophie ‘s son Prince Karl of Hesse and Countess Yvonne Szapáry ( 1966 ). Sophie and George William are to the correctly of the stableman. In 1958, Sophie and George William bought a large chalet located in Schliersee, Bavaria. Well integrated with the local population, the couple led a relatively simple and discreet biography in the village. When she was not taking care of her children, Sophie would devote herself to gardening, read and listening to music while her husband went about his professional tasks. In the like years, the elder children of the princess formed their own families. Princess Christina was the first of Sophie ‘s eight children to marry, in 1956. [ 226 ] Over the years, Princess Alice ‘s country of health became a source of concern for Sophie and her class. Despite perennial requests from her children, the old lady refused to move abroad and continued to live about alone in Athens most of the year. After the establishment of the Regime of the Colonels in 1967, however, Sophie went to the Hellenic capital to persuade her mother to leave Greece and settle in the United Kingdom, which she ultimately agreed to do. Two years later, in 1969, Alice died at Buckingham Palace and Sophie and her syndicate traveled to London to attend her funeral. meanwhile, she had besides lost her sister Theodora, who died in Salem a few weeks before their mother. Struck by these consecutive losses, Sophie accompanied, in the weeks that followed, her sister-in-law, Queen Frederica and her niece Princess Irene on a spiritual journey to India. unfortunately for Sophie, this stumble was not the final she would make to the indian subcontinent. In 1975, her son Welf Ernst left Germany with his wife and their five-year-old daughter to settle in an ashram in Pune, with the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He died of an aneurysm in 1981 and was cremated in a elated ceremony that profoundly affected his parents. [ 233 ] A long legal battle ensued during which Sophie and George William challenged their daughter-in-law, Wilbeke von Gunsteren, to win the custody of their granddaughter, Princess Saskia of Hanover, who was finally entrusted to her aunt Princess Christina .
Final years [edit ]
Princess Sophie and Prince Philip laying a wreath at Yad Vashem, 1994 In 1988, Sophie had the satisfaction of making her beget ‘s last wishes come true by transferring her remains to the Church of Mary Magdalene, on the Mount of Olives, in Jerusalem. A few years belated, in 1993, the Yad Vashem Memorial honored Princess Alice as “ Righteous Among the Nations “ for supporting a jewish syndicate during the second World War. Sophie and Philip, her last survive children since Margarita ‘s death in 1981, were invited to the Israeli capital in 1994, for a ceremony in honor of their mother. [ 240 ] As the spanish historian Ricardo Mateos Sainz de Medrano pointed out, there was a certain sarcasm hera, considering Sophie ‘s past links to the Nazi regimen. The year 1994 besides brought the accidental death of one of Sophie ‘s grandsons, Prince Christopher of Yugoslavia. A skill teacher at a high school in Bowmore, Scotland, the 34-year-old prince died when he was hit by a cable car on his manner family on his bicycle. Informed by the Duke of Edinburgh while staying in the UK, Sophie was shocked by the news. [ 241 ]
The cemetery of St Martin ‘s Church ( 2016 ), where Sophie and George William are buried. The princess spent the end months of her life in a nurse dwelling in Schliersee, where she died on 24 November 2001 and was survived by her conserve, seven children, fourteen grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren. [ 224 ] [ 242 ] Her funeral was held at Wolfsgarten Castle in the bearing of many members of the nobility, and her remains were buried at the cemetery of St Martin ‘s Church in Schliersee, where she was finally joined by her second husband, in 2006 .
In popular polish [edit ]
Documentaries [edit ]
Prince Karl of Hesse briefly discusses his mother ‘s childhood and her ties to the Nazi regimen in a objective about his uncle, Prince Philip: The Plot to Make a King ( 2015 ). [ 94 ] In the same documentary, it is mentioned that Princess Sophie is the generator of an as of so far unpublished memoir. [ 94 ] Princess Sophie is besides mentioned in episode 7 ( “ Hesse Jewels ” ) of the moment temper of the objective series Daring Capers ( 2001 ) .
Film and television [edit ]
Sophie features as a character in the 2009 belgian pseudo- film noir The Hessen Affair ( The Hessen Conspiracy on DVD ), the plot of which centers around the larceny of her jewels and the entirely fictional post-1871 imperial german pate jewels from Kronberg Castle. Sophie is briefly portrayed by actress Eliza Sodró in the episode “ Paterfamilias ” of the second season of the television receiver series The Crown ( 2017 ) .
ancestry [edit ]
Notes and references [edit ]
Notes [edit ]
- ^ possibly the two men had already known each other for several years, but it was after this confluence that they began to regularly see each other. ( Petropoulos 2006, p. 103 )
- ^Kurhessische Hausstiftung, via an advance on the inheritance of the landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. After the Second World War, the mansion served as the residence of the British High Commissioner stationed in Berlin ( The villa was financed by the, via an advance on the inheritance of the landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. After the irregular World War, the mansion served as the mansion of the british High Commissioner stationed in Berlin ( Petropoulos 2006, p. 119 ) .
- ^ Although no tell has always been able to corroborate this hypothesis, respective people close to the House of Hesse-Kassel ( such as Lord Mountbatten ) considered that the airplane crash in which Christoph was killed was due to an ordered sabotage by Adolf Hitler. Regardless, the circumstances of the accident were never determined and even the flight plan chosen by the prince to return to Germany raised questions. ( Mateos Sainz de Medrano 2004, p. 479 and Petropoulos 2006, pp. 308–310 ) .
- ^ Organized posthumously between 1950 and 1953, the denazification trial of Prince Christoph established that he could not have been classified either in class I ( “ major delinquents ” ) or II ( “ delinquents ” ), nor even in category III ( “ Juvenile delinquents ” ), and that there was therefore no argue to confiscate his inheritance ( Petropoulos 2006, pp. 330, 362 ) .
References [edit ]
bibliography [edit ]
On Sophie [edit ]
- Vickers, Hugo (2014). “”Tiny”: Princess Sophia of Greece, Hesse-Kassel and Hanover 1914-2001″. Royalty Digest Quarterly (3). ISSN 1653-5219.
press articles devoted to Sophie [edit ]
On Sophie and the Greek royal kin [edit ]
On Sophie and the princely family of Hesse-Kassel [edit ]
Biographies of Sophie ‘s relatives [edit ]
