Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (Maria Luise Augusta Katharina; 30 September 1811 – 7 January 1890), was Queen of Prussia and the first German Empress as the wife of William I, German Emperor.
A member of the Grand Ducal House of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and closely related to the Russian Imperial House of Romanov through her mother Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, in June 1829, Augusta married Prince William of Prussia. The marriage was tense; Wilhelm actually wanted to marry his cousin, Elisa Radziwiłł, who was judged to be unsuitable by the Prussian court, and the political views and intellectual interests of the two spouses were also far apart. Despite personal differences, Augusta and William often worked together to handle correspondence and social gatherings at court. In 1831 and 1838, they had two children, Frederick William and Louise. After the death of her father-in-law King Frederick William III of Prussia in 1840, Augusta became the wife of the heir presumptive to the Prussian throne.
It was not an official position that gave Augusta political influence, but rather her social relationships and dynastic proximity to William. An important role was played by extensive correspondence with her husband, other princes, statesmen, officers, diplomats, clergy, scientists and writers. She saw herself as her husband's political advisor and saw the Prussian Prime Minister and German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck as her main political enemy. While Bismarck biographies sometimes characterize the Empress's political views as anti-liberal or as destructive directed solely against Bismarck's policies, more recent research classifies them as liberal. Accordingly, Augusta did not succeed overall in convincing her husband to restructure Prussia and Germany along the lines of United Kingdom's constitutional monarchy. Nevertheless, she certainly had political leeway in raising the heir to the throne, as an advocate for the Catholic population and through her access to the king and anti-militaristic representation. Exactly how far Augusta's influence as a monarch's wife went in the 19th century is still being debated in historiography.
Life Childhood and youth (1811–1826): Shaped by the Weimar court
Princess Augusta was born on 30 September 1811 in Weimar. She was the third (but second surviving) child of Charles Frederick, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, sister of Emperor (Tsar) Alexander I of Russia. The princess' baptism took place a few days later, on 6 October, with her full name being Maria Luise Augusta Catherina. As is usual with royal and princely families, Augusta grew up not primarily in the care of her parents, but rather with her nanny Amalia Batsch.
Her court teachers taught her four foreign languages: English, Russian, French and Latin. Additional subjects included mathematics, geography, religion, history, dancing, drawing, horse riding and music. Her teachers included specialists such as the court painter Luise Seidler, the composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel and the numismatist Frédéric Soret. However, the most important point of reference for Augusta was the poet and natural scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe organized the teaching content in consultation with Augusta's parents and taught it in the environment of the University of Jena. For Augusta, looking back, Goethe was the "best, most dear friend" that she and her sister Maria Luise (who was three years older than her), would have had in their childhood. Both sisters hardly had any contact with their peers. According to the historian Lothar Gall, Augusta's political stance was shaped in the long term by her comparatively liberal family home. Her grandfather Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach had already introduced a constitution in the Grand Duchy in 1816.Micke-Serin, Andrea: Augusta und der Badische Hof. in: Truc Vu Minh, Simone Neuhäuser (ed.): Die Welt verbessern. Augusta von Preußen und Fürst von Pückler-Muskau, Kulturgeschichte Preußens – Colloquien 7 (2018), perspectivia.net (in German). According to Monika Wienfort, this contributed to Augusta later advocating the transformation of Prussia into a constitutional monarchy.Wienfort, Monika: Familie, Hof, Staat. Königin Augusta von Preußen. in: Truc Vu Minh, Simone Neuhäuser (ed.): Die Welt verbessern. Augusta von Preußen und Fürst von Pückler-Muskau, Kulturgeschichte Preußens – Colloquien 7, 2018, perspectivia.net (in German). As Gall believes, the political climate in Weimar favored Augusta's later proximity to a circle in the so-called Wochenblattpartei, who advocated not only for a Lesser Germany unity without Austria, but also for an "alliance with the leading forces of the liberal bourgeoisie" and a continuation of the Prussian reforms. The GDR historian Ernst Engelberg, on the other hand, fundamentally denies Augusta's liberal stance: her political views are more likely to be located in the tradition of enlightened absolutism. She did not want to know anything about a "parliamentary regime", but rather advocated "a constitution freely chosen by the monarch".
The Weimar court also shaped Augusta from a cultural perspective. She developed a strong interest in art, was considered well-educated and was particularly strictly brought up to observe official court manners, the so-called etiquette.
Marriage to Prince William: Means of alliance politics and dynastic position Augusta's mother, Maria Pavlovna, made marriage plans for both daughters towards Prussia, which bordered Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach on several sides and was therefore perceived as a threat to the Grand Duchy. The marriages of Augusta to Prince William and Marie to Prince Charles of Prussia, William's younger brother, were intended to ensure the continued existence of the Grand Duchy. Maria Pavlovna no longer considered the protection provided by family ties to the Romanov-Holstein-Gottorp dynasty to be sufficient. Since she became Grand Duchess herself in 1828, she was able to push ahead with marriage efforts.Schedewie, Franziska: Die Ernestiner und die russische Heirat. in: Siegrid Westphal, Hans-Werner Hahn, Georg Schmidt (ed.): Die Welt der Ernestiner. Ein Lesebuch. (in German). Böhlau, Köln/Weimar/Vienna 2016, p. 268. On the Prussian side, the motivation was to further expand the dynastic ties with Russia, because Augusta was a niece of Emperor Nicholas I. Since the joint victory over Napoleon, Prussia and Russia were particularly close in terms of alliance politics. A daughter of the Prussian King Frederick William III, Princess Charlotte, had already been married to Nicholas, Emperor Alexander I's second brother and eventual successor, in 1817.
Since his youth, Prince William, on the other hand, was in love with a former childhood playmate, his cousin Princess Elisa Radziwiłł, daughter of his first cousin twice removed Princess Louise. However, due to her paternal descent from the Polish noble family Radziwiłł, Elisa was not considered an equal. The Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach made his consent to the marriage of William's younger brother Charles and his daughter Marie conditional on William only being allowed to enter into a morganatic marriage with Elisa. Frederick William III did not want such a connection, and therefore forbade his son to marry Elisa in June 1826. In the same year, William and Augusta met for the first time when Marie was engaged to Charles.Schulze-Wegener, Guntram: Wilhelm I. Deutscher Kaiser, König von Preußen, Nationaler Mythos. (in German). Mittler, Hamburg/Bonn 2015, p. 148. Since it was now clear that William's older brother, the later Frederick William IV, would remain childless, William now had the task of producing legitimate dynastic offspring. This is how Frederick William III arranged a marriage between William and Augusta.
The Weimar princess saw several advantages in the connection. Before the marriage, Augusta, as the second-born daughter, held a lower rank at court than her older sister. Since the latter was only supposed to marry William's younger brother, Augusta would rank above Marie in Prussia and could expect to become the wife of the heir to the throne. The wedding took place on 11 June 1829 in the chapel at Schloss Charlottenburg. At this time, Augusta was 17 years old.
First years of marriage: Tense relationship with Wilhelm and birth of the children
According to the historian Robert-Tarek Fischer, the marriage was tense for several reasons: On the one hand, William, who was 14 years older, made no secret of his continued affection for Elisa. On the other hand, Augusta's liberal views and intellectual interests were not shared by William and large parts of the Prussian court. As the historian Birgit Aschmann assumes, Augusta was also used to greater "cultural openness" from the Weimar court than was the case with the Hohenzollerns. From her husband's point of view, she didn't correspond enough to the bourgeois ideal of a woman. As William criticized in October 1829, she was more of a "woman of mind and not of heart". In doing so, Augusta violated the gender image of the time, according to which men had to be rational and women had to be emotional. According to the historian Jürgen Angelow, despite its political motivation, the marriage "was not quite as unhappy as it could have been". Over time, a relationship of trust and respect developed between the two. In her role as a Prussian princess, Augusta was expected to be reserved at the Berlin court. Deviating from this norm, however, she shared her views openly and was therefore later perceived as a political threat to her husband.
On 18 October 1831, Augusta gave birth to her son Frederick William. The succession of the Prussian royal house seemed assured by the birth. Augusta had a great influence on the upbringing of the future heir to the throne: Frederick William completed a military career, but was also taught natural sciences, philosophy, literature and classical studies according to a neo-humanistic curriculum. At his mother's instigation, his playmates included many middle-class high school students. Augusta encouraged her son to study at the University of Bonn —away from the influence of the Berlin court. Seven years passed until the second child, Louise, the later Grand Duchess of Baden, was born in Berlin on 3 December 1838. Louise was Augusta's last child, as her next two pregnancies, in 1842 and 1843, ended in miscarriages.
Courtly life: Conflicts, residence design and interaction with William
Augusta had a contentious relationship with the Prussian court. The courtly demeanor she practiced in Weimar was perceived as overly proud and aloof in Berlin and Potsdam. Augusta, for her part, disliked the court, which was culturally more frugal and more military-oriented compared to her homeland. She saw her position as increasingly useless and complained that only Crown Princess Elisabeth, the wife of the future King Frederick William IV, was allowed to do charitable work. In addition, she maintained contact less with the established Prussian noble families than with confidants, some of whom were viewed as "foreigners".