The tone between Paris and Berlin worsened even further after Bismarck published the humiliating Ems Telegram on 13 July 1870. Ī week after Sophie's birth, a case relating to succession to the throne of Spain damaged the Franco-Prussian relations. Being staunch liberals, they lived away from the Berlin court and suffered the intrigues of a very conservative Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and members of the House of Hohenzollern. Frederick William and Victoria were a close couple, both on sentimental and political levels. Her father, Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia, and her mother, Victoria, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom (herself the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria and Albert, Prince Consort) were already the parents of a large family and as the penultimate child, Sophie was eleven years younger than her eldest brother, the future Emperor William II of Germany. Princess Sophie was born in the Neues Palais in Potsdam, Prussia on 14 June 1870. (seated left to right) Princess Victoria, Princess Sophie and Prince Waldemar.
Standing left to right: Prince Heinrich, Crown Princess Viktoria, Crown Prince Frederick William with Princess Margaret, Prince Wilhelm, and Princess Charlotte.
Princess Sophie with her parents and siblings. Life Princess of Prussia and Germany Birth in a difficult context
Sophia and her family then were forced to a new exile, and settled in Italy, where Constantine died one year later (1923). 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. At the same time, Greece entered the war alongside the Triple Entente, which allowed it to grow considerably.Īfter 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. 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. 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.Īfter 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. 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. 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. 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 treated wounded soldiers. 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. In 1889, less than a year after the death of her father, she married her third cousin Constantine, heir apparent to the Greek throne. Sophia of Prussia (Sophie Dorothea Ulrike Alice, Greek: Σοφία 14 June 1870 – 13 January 1932) was Queen consort of the Hellenes from 1913–1917, and also from 1920–1922.Ī member of the House of Hohenzollern and child of Frederick III, German Emperor, Sophia received a liberal and Anglophile education, under the supervision of her mother Victoria, Princess Royal.