Memory and succession in Coburg

The death of Prince Albert

On 13 December 1861, Prince Albert died of typhus in Windsor surrounded by his family. A few months earlier Victoria’s mother Victoire, duchess of Kent, had died. The death of her husband turned Victoria from one moment to the next into an elderly life-rejecting woman. The 42-year old widow had lost with her beloved husband also her closest confidant and political councillor. She secluded herself and wore her widow’s weeds to the end of her life. The achievements of the German prince who at the beginning had been ridiculed and even criticised were generally acknowledged after his death. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) said about the deceased: “This German prince has ruled over England with a wisdom and energy that none of our kings has ever shown” [‘Dieser deutsche Prinz hat England mit einer Weisheit und Energie regiert, wie sie keiner unserer Könige je gezeigt hat’]. On the initiative of Queen Victoria a wealth of monuments, paintings, small pieces of sculpture and of memorial buildings arose posthumously all over the world.

Prince Alfred Ernest Albert, the successor of Coburg

Albert’s and Victoria’s second eldest son Alfred Ernest Albert (1844–1900), called “Affie”, in 1893 succeeded to ducal throne of Coburg, since Albert’s brother Duke Ernest II (1818–1893) died without legitimate heirs. The duke of Edinburgh as his title had been since his childhood had made his career in the navy and spent many years at sea, finally as “Admiral of the Fleet”. His marriage to the Russian Grand Princess Maria Alexandrowna (1853–1920) renewed the connections between Coburg and the tsar’s court in Saint Petersburg. The urbanity of the duke, however, found a sudden end in Coburg. His collections, gathered together during his journeys, in particular the exquisite collection of glass objects, were donated by his widow to the art collections on the Veste Coburg in 1904. His short term of office was not a happy one. He never learned to speak German properly and was “bored” in the provinces. His family life was not happy either. His son, the successor to the throne Alfred (1874–1899) was unable to live up to his role as hereditary prince and died in 1899 as the result of a suicide attempt.

Duke Carl Edward

Once again, there was no immediate pretender to the throne available for the duchy of Coburg. Next in line was Charles Edward (1884–1954), son of Albert’s early deceased son Leopold, duke of Albany, and of Princess Helene of Waldeck-Pyrmont. In 1899, Charles Edward moved to Germany, where he received his education at school and university as well as in military matters before taking up the government as Duke Carl Eduard of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in Coburg.

During WWI the English royal family gave up the name of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and called itself after the ancestral seat of Windsor. The duke of Coburg joined after the end of monarchy the national socialist movement and served the NS-Regime as “Hitler’s aristocratic diplomate”, since he defended both politics and ideology and calmed down foreign conversational partners.