GERMANY Saxony 1904 Scandal Crown Princess/Archduches Luise Picture Postcard !!

Scandal

Threatened by her father-in-law with being interned in a mental asylum at the Sonnenstein Castle for life, on 9 December 1902 and with the help of two of her maids, sisters Sidonie and Maria Beeger – daughters of the royal court architect Eduard Beeger – Louise (pregnant with her seventh child) fled from Dresden towards Lake Geneva, where André Giron was waiting for her. At first, in the Saxon court, it was believed that this trip was for recreation, but she had arranged to meet her elder brother Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria, who had begun a liaison with (and shortly after married) Wilhelmine Adamović,^[3] a prostitute and daughter of a postman. Three days after their arrival, the Beeger sisters left Geneva. In the meantime, André Giron (who was with Louise's brother) contacted a notary in Brussels to lay a false trail to the Belgian capital. However, the siblings were identified at Geneva a few days later.^[4]

The escape of the Crown Princess of Saxony was the first scandal of the German nobility in the 20th century, especially hurtful for the staunchly Catholic Saxon Royal Family. The conservative Baroness Hildegard von Spitzemberg noted in her diary:

"They were all met as we of the horrific scandals at the Saxon court, which were of unparalleled repulsiveness! Five children, a husband, a throne: leave all that at the age of 32 years to elope being expecting by the tutor of these children - it's downright dreadful!... Thus, when royal women forget themselves and all else considered decent, noble and catholic, they then forfeit the very right of existence."^[5]

Hermione von Preuschen, on the other hand, answered the “Louise Question” put to several women writers by the Neues Wiener Journal as follows:

"[...] first I was, like a teen-aged girl, full of jubilation that there is such a thing, such a great love that can trample throne and children, past and future in the dust, in order to chase after its star. It was an intoxication in me, a triumph - so yes! Throw down the glove to all convention, to all 'good manners' in pursuit of what one recognizes as the highest in one's nature – great passion. And then, with the transformation, with the 'remorse', an astonishment, a pity - that that too flew and shriveled and became small, like almost everything human. The disillusionment, the hangover - the morale! And what the good Philistines praise, the penitent Louise, I could weep for her."^[6]

Alice Gurschner said simply:

"Betrayed husbands, bad mothers and wives who envied you for Giron reviled you loudest."

Without consulting his son, King George of Saxony officially declared the civil divorce of the Crown Princely couple on 11 February 1903 by a special court, which he had set up on 31 December 1902.^[7] One year later, on 15 October 1904, the Saxon monarch died after forcing his son, the new King Frederick Augustus III, to bar her from returning to the Dresden court. In Geneva, the former Crown Princess led a happy life and even dared to show up with her lover in public, but unexpectedly a few days before the divorce was declared she separated from Giron for unknown reasons.