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| Frederica | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Frederica before her arrival in Greece | |||||
| Queen consort of the Hellenes | |||||
| Tenure | 1 April 1947 – 6 March 1964 | ||||
| Born | (1917-04-18)18 April 1917 Blankenburg (Harz),Duchy of Brunswick,German Empire | ||||
| Died | 6 February 1981(1981-02-06) (aged 63) Madrid, Spain | ||||
| Burial | 12 February 1981 Royal Cemetery,Tatoi Palace, Greece | ||||
| Spouse | |||||
| Issue | |||||
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| House | Hanover (by birth) Glücksburg (by marriage) | ||||
| Father | Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick | ||||
| Mother | Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia | ||||
| Signature |  | ||||
Frederica of Hanover (German:Friederike Luise;Greek:Φρειδερίκη Λουΐζα,romanized: Phreideríkē Louḯza; 18 April 1917 – 6 February 1981) wasQueen of Greece from 1 April 1947 until 6 March 1964 as the wife ofKing Paul and theQueen Mother ofGreece from 6 March 1964, when her sonConstantine II became King, until 8 December 1974, when themonarchy was officially abolished after a referendum.
Granddaughter ofKaiser Wilhelm II and daughter of DukeErnest Augustus of Brunswick, Frederica was born a few months before the fall of theGerman Empire. Her family overthrown, she grew up between Austria andWeimar Germany, where her father owned large properties. As a teenager, she joined theHitler Youth in 1933, before leaving to complete her studies for the next two years in the United Kingdom and then Italy. In Florence, she was received byPrincess Helen of Greece and Denmark, at whose house she met theCrown Prince of Greece, Paul. The two fell in love and married two years after the restoration of the monarchy in Greece. In the years that followed, she gave birth to three children,Sophia in 1938, Constantine in 1940 andIrene in 1942.
During theSecond World War,Greece was occupied by the Axis powers. The Greek royal family left the country and Frederica and her children settled first in South Africa and from 1943 in Egypt. The changing political situation in Greece, with the rise of theEAM and theKKE, challenged the institution of the monarchy. The royal family did not return to the country until 1946, when the Greeks ratified the return and restoration of the institutionin a referendum. In the period ofcivil war that followed, Frederica developed a strong social activity to support the efforts of the government and the Crown. She organised a network to help refugees affected by the forces of theDemocratic Army, creating the so-called "children's towns", an initiative that was widely criticised by opponents of the Crown.
After the death of Paul I in 1964, the dowager queen retired from public life. However, according to the prevailing historiographical view, she continued to influence the fate of the country through her son, nowKing Constantine II. Frederica was widely regarded as Constantine'séminence grise and continued to be attacked by the opposition, who blamed her for thetensions between the palace and the government of George Papandreou (1964–1965).
BornHer Royal Highness Friederike Luise,Princess of Hanover,[1]Princess of Great Britain and Ireland,[2] andPrincess of Brunswick-Lüneburg[3] on 18 April 1917 inBlankenburg am Harz, in theGermanDuchy of Brunswick, she was the only daughter and third child ofErnest Augustus, then reigningDuke of Brunswick, and his wifePrincess Viktoria Luise of Prussia, herself the only daughter of the German EmperorWilhelm II. Both her father and maternal grandfather abdicated their thrones in November 1918 following Germany's defeat inWorld War I,[1] whileher paternal grandfather had beenstripped of his Britishroyal dukedom the previous year.
In 1933 Frederica joined theJungmädelbund, the Nazi organisation for girls aged 10–14.[4] Although it is not entirely clear whether this was of her own volition or not, in her autobiography, "Measure of Understanding", she states: "One day two women in uniform appeared in my parents' room and my parents told me to come out. It had become a law that all children had to register with the Nazi Youth Movement and the women had come to remind my parents of this duty.(...)I didn't like wearing the uniform, and I never liked it later, but I saw it as something that had finally brought me into contact with other children. (...) My father didn't like the Nazi movement, but he couldn't discuss it openly. After two weeks in the youth movement I had a long private talk with my father. He explained to me what the whole uniform thing really meant, and we decided together that it would be better for me to cut all ties with it. But since I was in Germany, that would have been impossible under the law. So I was sent to England."[5] In 1934,Adolf Hitler, in his ambition to link the British and German royal houses, asked for Frederica's parents to arrange for the marriage of their seventeen-year-old daughter to thePrince of Wales.[6][7] In her memoirs, Frederica's mother described that she and her husband were "shattered" and such a possibility "had never entered our minds".[8] Victoria Louise herself had once been considered as a potential bride for the very same person prior to her marriage. Moreover, the age difference was too great (the Prince of Wales was twenty-three years Frederica's senior), and her parents were unwilling to "put any such pressure" on their daughter.[8]
To her family, she was known asFreddie.[9]
Prince Paul of Greece proposed to her during the summer of 1936, while he was inBerlin attending the1936 Summer Olympics. Paul was a son ofKing Constantine I and Frederica's great auntSophia. Accordingly, they were maternal first cousins once removed. They were also paternal second cousins as great-grandchildren ofChristian IX of Denmark. Their engagement was announced officially on 28 September 1937, and Britain's KingGeorge VI gave his consent pursuant to theRoyal Marriages Act 1772 on 26 December 1937.[3] They married inAthens on 9 January 1938.[2] Frederica became Hereditary Princess of Greece, her husband beingheir presumptive to his childless elder brother,King George II.
During the early part of their marriage, they resided at a villa inPsychiko in the suburbs of Athens. Ten months after their marriage, their first child, the futureQueen Sofía of Spain (and future mother ofFelipe VI), was born on 2 November 1938. On 2 June 1940, Frederica gave birth to the futureKing Constantine II.
According to several accounts, she had an affair withCIA director,Allen Dulles, after meeting him in 1958.[10][11]
At the peak ofWorld War II, in April 1941, theGreek royal family was evacuated toCrete in aSunderland flying boat. Shortly afterwards, the German forces attacked Crete. Frederica and her family were evacuated again, setting up agovernment-in-exile office inLondon.
In exile,King George II and the rest of the Greek royal family settled inSouth Africa. Here Frederica's last child,Princess Irene, was born on 11 May 1942. The South African leader, GeneralJan Smuts, served as hergodfather. The family eventually settled inEgypt in February 1944.
After the war, the1946 Greek referendum restored King George to the throne. The Hereditary Prince and Princess returned to their villa inPsychiko.
On 1 April 1947, George II died and Frederica's husband ascended the throne as Paul I, with Frederica asqueen consort. ACommunist insurgency in Northern Greece led to theGreek Civil War. The King and Queen toured Northern Greece under tight security to appeal for loyalty in the summer of 1947.
Queen Frederica was constantly attacked for her German ancestry.[12] Left-wing politicians in Greece repeatedly used the fact that theKaiser was her grandfather, and that she had brothers who were members of the SS, as propaganda against her.[13] She was also criticized variously as "very Prussian" and "was a Nazi".[13] When she was in London representing her sick husband at the wedding of his first cousinPrince Philip of Greece and Denmark to KingGeorge VI's elder daughterPrincess Elizabeth in November 1947,Winston Churchill remarked on the Kaiser being her grandfather. Queen Frederica had replied acknowledging the fact, but reminding him that she was also descended from Queen Victoria, and that her father would be the British king if the country had operated underSalic Law (allowing only males to inherit the crown).[14] In fact, Frederica held the titlePrincess of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, grantedad personam to the children of the then-Duke of Brunswick byGeorge V's letters patent of 1914, which remained unrevoked.[15]
During the civil war, Queen Frederica set up the Queen's Camps or Child Cities (translation of: Παιδο(υ)πόλεις /Paidopoleis orPaidupoleis), a network of 53 camps around Greece where she would rescue children of members of theDemocratic Army and former partisans.[16][17][18]
TheGreek Civil War ended in August 1949. The King and Queen took this opportunity to strengthen the monarchy, and paid official visits to MarshalJosip Broz Tito inBelgrade, PresidentsLuigi Einaudi ofItaly inRome,Theodor Heuss ofWest Germany, andBechara El Khoury ofLebanon, EmperorHaile Selassie I of Ethiopia, Governor-GeneralChakravarthi Rajagopalachari ofIndia, KingGeorge VI of the United Kingdom, and the United States as guest of PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower. However, at home in Greece and abroad in the United Kingdom, Queen Frederica was targeted by the opposition, because as a girl she had belonged to theBund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls), a branch of theHitler Youth group for young women; her supporters argued that evading membership in the group would be difficult under the existing political climate inNazi Germany at the time.
Unlike her meek husband, in post-War Greece Frederica was one of the most hated public figures.[19] This was due to a string of reasons that included her political interference, her intemperate character, her German ethnicity, and the fact she became identified in the public consciousness with all that was reactionary.[19] Frederica has been described as "inherently undemocratic".[20][21] She was notorious for her numerous arbitrary and unconstitutional interventions in Greek politics[22] and clashes with democratically elected governments. She actively politicked against the election ofAlexander Papagos.[23] At home in Greece and abroad in the United Kingdom, she was targeted by the opposition. In 1963 while visiting London, rioting by Greek leftists demonstrating against the situation with the political prisoners of theGreek Civil War, forced her to temporarily seek refuge in a stranger's house. Her political interference was harshly criticized and was a significant factor in the strengthening of republican sentiments.
Frederica's 16 November 1953 appearance inLife as America's guest was taken on one of the many state visits she paid around the world. Also that year she appeared on the cover ofTime. On 14 May 1962, her eldest daughter Sofía married PrinceJuan Carlos of Spain (later King Juan Carlos I of Spain) in Athens.
On 6 March 1964, King Paul died of cancer. When her son,King Constantine II, marriedPrincess Anne-Marie of Denmark later that year on 18 September, Queen Frederica stepped back from the majority of her public duties in favor of her daughter-in-law. She remained a figure of controversy and was accused in the press of being theéminence grise behind the throne.[24]
She retired to the countryside where she lived an almost reclusive life. However, she continued to attend royal events that were family-oriented, such as the baptisms of her grandchildren in both Spain and Greece.
King Constantine II's clashes with the democratically elected Prime MinisterGeorge Papandreou Sr. were blamed by critics for causing the destabilisation that led to a military coup on 21 April 1967 and the rise of theregime of the colonels.[citation needed] Faced with a difficult situation, King Constantine initially collaborated with the military dictatorship,[citation needed] swearing in their government under a royalist prime minister. Later that year he attempted a counter-coup in an attempt to restore democracy, whose failure forced him into exile. Following this, the junta appointed a regent to carry out the tasks of the exiled monarch.
In 1971, Frederica published an autobiography,A Measure of Understanding.[25]
On 1 June 1973 the junta abolished the Greek monarchy without consulting the Greek people and then attempted to legitimize its actions through a1973 plebiscite that was widely suspected of being rigged. The head of the junta became the new head-of-state asPresident of GreeceGeorge Papadopoulos.
The dictatorship ended on 24 July 1974 and the pre-junta constitutional monarchy was never restored. Aplebiscite was held on 8 December 1974 in which Constantine (who was able to campaign only from outside the country) freely admitted past errors, and promised to support democracy.[26] However, 69% of Greeks freely voted to make Greece a democratic republic.
Frederica died on 6 February 1981 in exile in Madrid of heart failure, reportedly following eyelid surgery[27] (blepharoplasty), although a biographer has claimed the surgery was cataract removal.[28]
She was interred atTatoi (the royal family's palace and burial ground in Greece). Her son and his family were allowed to attend the service but had to leave immediately afterwards.
| Styles of Queen Frederica of Greece | |
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| Reference style | Her Majesty |
| Spoken style | Your Majesty |
Frederica of Hanover Cadet branch of theHouse of Welf Born: 18 April 1917 Died: 6 February 1981 | ||
| Greek royalty | ||
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| Preceded by | Queen consort of the Hellenes 1 April 1947 – 6 March 1964 | Vacant Title next held by Anne-Marie of Denmark |
Generations are numbered by descent fromGeorge I. | ||
| 1st generation | .svg) | |
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*did not have a royal or noble title by birth §title lost due to divorce and subsequent remarriage ^title disputed | ||
The generations are numbered from the implementation of hereditary monarchy byFrederick III in 1660. | ||
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*also a princess of Greece by marriage ^also a Danish princess by birth §title lost due to divorce and subsequent remarriage | ||
