Up for auction RARE! "Princess's" Sophia & Margaret of Prussia Signed Page. This item is certified authentic by JG Autographs and
comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.
ES-1432B
Sophia of Prussia (Sophia
Dorothea Ulrike Alice; 14 June 1870 – 13 January 1932) was Queen consort of Greece during
1913–1917 and 1920–1922. A member of the House of Hohenzollern and
daughter of Frederick III, German
Emperor, Sophia received a liberal and anglophile education, under
the supervision of her mother, Victoria, Princess Royal.
In 1889, less than a year after the death of her father, she married her third
cousin Constantine, heir apparent to the Greek throne. After a difficult
period of adaptation in her new country, Sophia gave birth to six children and
became involved in the assistance to the poor, following in the footsteps of
her mother-in-law, Queen Olga.
However, it was during the wars which Greece faced during the end of the 19th
and the beginning of the 20th century that Sophia showed the most social
activity: she founded field hospitals, oversaw the training of Greek nurses, and
healed wounded soldiers. However, Sophia was hardly rewarded for her actions,
even after her grandmother Queen Victoria decorated her with the Royal Red Cross after the Thirty Days' War: the
Greeks criticized her links with Germany. Her brother Emperor William II was indeed
an ally of the Ottoman Empire and
openly opposed the construction of the Megali Idea, which could establish a Greek state that
would encompass all ethnic Greek-inhabited areas. During World War I, the blood ties between Sophia and the German
Emperor also aroused the suspicion of the Triple Entente, which criticized Constantine I for his
neutrality in the conflict. After imposing a blockade of Greece and supporting
the rebel government of Eleftherios Venizelos,
causing the National Schism, France
and its allies deposed Constantine I in June 1917. Sophia and her family then
went into exile in Switzerland, while the second son of the
royal couple replaced his father on the throne under the name of Alexander I. At the same
time, Greece entered the war alongside the Triple Entente, which allowed it to
grow considerably. After the outbreak of the Greco-Turkish War in
1919 and the untimely death of Alexander I the following year, the Venizelists abandoned power, allowing the royal family's
return to Athens. The defeat of the Greek army against
the Turkish troops of Mustafa Kemal, however,
forced Constantine I to abdicate in favor of his eldest son George II in 1922.
Sophia and her family then were forced to a new exile, and settled in Italy,
where Constantine died one year later (1923). With the proclamation of the
Republic in Athens (1924) Sophia spent her last years alongside her family and
died of cancer in Germany in 1932.
Princess Margaret of Prussia (Margarete
Beatrice Feodora; 22 April 1872 – 22 January 1954) was a daughter of Frederick III, German
Emperor and Victoria, Princess Royal,
and the younger sister of Emperor Wilhelm II and
a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. She
married Prince Frederick Charles
of Hesse, the elected King of Finland, making her the would-be Queen of Finland had
he not decided to reject the throne. In 1926 they assumed the titles of Landgrave and Landgravine of Hesse. She lost three sons
in World Wars I and II. Princess Margaret of Prussia was the youngest of eight
children born to Frederick III, German
Emperor, then heir of the German Empire and his wife, Victoria, Princess Royal, Queen Victoria's eldest daughter. Born on 22 April 1872 in
the Hohenzollerns' New Palace in Potsdam, by the time the infant was christened, her head was
covered with short hair like moss, from which she acquired her nickname
"Mossy".[1] She was named Margarethe Beatrice
Feodora, and Crown Princess Margherita of Italy was
her godmother[1] and Emperor Pedro II of Brazil was
her godfather.
Princess
Margaret grew up amid great privilege and formality.[3] Together with her sisters, Princess Viktoria and Princess Sophie, Margaret was deeply attached to her parents,
forming an antagonist group to that of her eldest siblings, William II, Princess Charlotte and Prince
Heinrich. She remained close to her mother after the death of her
father. Margaret was widely regarded as the most popular of Kaiser Wilhelm II's sisters, and she maintained good relations
with a wide array of family members. She was a first cousin of both
King George V of the United
Kingdom and Empress Alexandra of Russia, all three being grandchildren
of Victoria. As an adult, she
was said to resemble her aunt, Princess
Alice.