Wilhelmine of Prussia, Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth
Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia was a princess of the German Kingdom of Prussia and composer. She was the eldest daughter of Frederick William I of Prussia and Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, granddaughter of George I of Great Britain. In 1731, she married Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth; the baroque buildings and parks built during her reign shape much of the present appearance of the town of Bayreuth, Germany. Born in Berlin, Wilhelmine shared the unhappy childhood of her brother, Frederick the Great, whose friend and confidante she remained all her life, with the exception of one short interval, she was fiercely abused by her governess during her childhood. Wilhelmine wrote: "Not a day passed that she did not prove upon me the fearful power of her fists." The mistreatment continued until the prince's governess said to their mother, oblivious to the abuse, that she would not be surprised if Wilhelmine was beaten until she was crippled. After this, the governess was promptly replaced. Being the eldest daughter in her family, she was early the target of discussions about political marriages.
Her mother, Queen Sophia Dorothea, wished her to marry her nephew Frederick, Prince of Wales, but on the British side there was no inclination to make an offer of marriage except in exchange for substantial concessions that Wilhelmine's father would not accept. The fruitless intrigues carried on by Sophia Dorothea to bring about this match played a large part in Wilhelmine's early life, her father, on the other hand, preferred a match with the House of Habsburg. After much talk of other matches came to nothing, Wilhelmine was married in 1731 to her Hohenzollern kinsman, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. Frederick had been engaged to Wilhelmine's younger sister, but at the last moment King Frederick William I decided to replace her with Wilhelmine; the groom was not consulted in this decision. This marriage was only accepted by Wilhelmine under threats from her father and with a view to lightening her brother's disgrace, it was a happy marriage, but was clouded first by limited financial resources and by a love affair of the future Margrave with Dorothea von Marwitz, whose rise as an official mistress at the court of Bayreuth was bitterly resented by her brother Frederick the Great and caused an estrangement of some three years between him and Wilhelmine.
When Wilhelmine's spouse came into his inheritance in 1735, the pair set about making Bayreuth a miniature Versailles. Their building projects included the rebuilding of their summer residence; the so-called Bayreuth Rococo style of architecture is renowned today. The pair founded the University of Erlangen. All of these ambitious undertakings pushed the court to the verge of bankruptcy; the margravine made Bayreuth one of the chief intellectual centers of the Holy Roman Empire, surrounding herself with a court of wits and artists that accrued added prestige from the occasional visits of Voltaire and Frederick the Great. Wilhelmine's brother Frederick granted her an allowance in exchange for troops, following the same procedure with her sisters. With the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, Wilhelmine's interests shifted from dilettantism to diplomacy. Austrian diplomats were trying to influence the court of Bayreuth to take their side against Prussia. In September 1745, during the Silesian war, Wilhelmine met with Maria Theresa of Austria.
This destroyed her intimate relationship with her brother. In 1750 Wilhelmine visited the Prussian court for several weeks and met famous contemporaries such as Voltaire, Maupertuis and La Mettrie. In June 1754, the siblings met for the last time, after which Frederick swore her his eternal loyalty, she acted as eyes and ears for her brother in southern Germany until her death at Bayreuth on 14 October 1758, the day of Frederick's defeat by the Austrian forces of Leopold Josef Graf Daun at the Battle of Hochkirch. Although Frederick had lost many friends and family to death throughout his life, Wilhelmine's hit him the hardest, he suffered from severe illness for a week following news of Wilhelmine's death and fell into a depression from which he never recovered. On the tenth anniversary of her death, her devastated brother had the Temple of Friendship built at Sanssouci in her memory; the margravine's memoirs, Memoires de ma vie, written or revised in French between 1748 and her death, are preserved in the Royal Library of Berlin.
They were first printed in two forms in 1810: a German translation down to the year 1733 from the firm of Cotta of Tübingen. There have been several subsequent editions, including a German one published at Leipzig in 1908. An English translation was published in Berlin in 1904. For the discussion on the authenticity of these entertaining, though not trustworthy, see G. H. Pertz, Uber die Merkwürdigkeiten der Markgrafin. See Arvede Barine, Princesses et grandes dames. Writer William Thackeray recommended the memoirs to "those who are curious about European Court history of the last age". In addition to her other accomplishments, Wilhelmine was a gifted composer and supporter of music, she was a lutenist, a student of Sylvius Leopold Weiss, the employer
Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg is an affluent locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a town in 1705 and named after late Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Prussia, it is best known for Charlottenburg Palace, the largest surviving royal palace in Berlin, the adjacent museums. Charlottenburg was an independent city to the west of Berlin until 1920 when it was incorporated into "Groß-Berlin" and transformed into a borough. In the course of Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was merged with the former borough of Wilmersdorf becoming a part of a new borough called Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. In 2004, the new borough's districts were rearranged, dividing the former borough of Charlottenburg into the localities of Charlottenburg proper and Charlottenburg-Nord. Charlottenburg is located in Berlin's inner city, west of the Großer Tiergarten park, its historic core, the former village green of Alt Lietzow, is situated on the southern shore of the Spree River running through the Berlin glacial valley.
The Straße des 17. Juni road, former Charlottenburger Chaussee, which runs eastwards from Charlottenburg Gate through the Tiergarten park to Brandenburg Gate, connects Charlottenburg with the historic centre of Berlin-Mitte. In the north and west, the Berlin Ringbahn and the Bundesautobahn 100 mark the border with the Charlottenburg-Nord and Westend suburbs. Adjacent in the south is the territory of Wilmersdorf. Charlottenburg borders on the district of Halensee in the southwest, as well as on Moabit and Tiergarten in the east and on Schöneberg in the southeast. Archaeological findings in the area date back to the Neolithic era. Within the Margraviate of Brandenburg, on the land occupied by present-day Charlottenburg, there were three settlements in the late Middle Ages: the farmsteads Lietzow south of the Spree and Casow beyond the river, as well as a further settlement called Glienicke. Although these names are of Slavic origin, the settlements are to have had a mixed Slavic and German population.
Lietzow was first documented in 1239, when the Ascanian margraves John I and Otto III of Brandenburg founded the Benedictine Sankt Marien nunnery in nearby Spandau. The nuns were enfeoffed with the Casow estates. From old field names, it is believed that a third medieval settlement on Charlottenburg territory, arose in the area of the present day streets Kantstraße, Fasanenstraße, Kurfürstendamm and Uhlandstraße at the former Gliniker Lake. Unlike Casow and Glienicke, the Lietzow area has been populated continuously and its development is well documented. In the course of the Protestant Reformation, Elector Joachim II Hector of Brandenburg confiscated the monastic estates in 1542 and had the nunnery dissolved in 1558. For more than four hundred years, members of the Berendt family were mayors and thus had to pay lower taxes. A village church was first documented in 1541. Ecclesiastically, Lietzow came under the Wilmersdorf parish, the priests reached it from there by the so-called Priesterweg, on the line of the streets now called Leibnizstraße, Konstanzer Straße and Brandenburgische Straße.
In 1695, Sophia Charlotte of Hanover received Lietzow from her husband, Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg, in exchange for her estates in Caputh and Langerwisch near Potsdam. Frederick had a summer residence built there for Sophie Charlotte by the architect Johann Arnold Nering between 1695 and 1699. After he had crowned himself Frederick I, King in Prussia, the Lützenburg castle was extended into a stately building with a cour d'honneur; the Swedish master builder Johann Friedrich Eosander supervised this work. Sophie Charlotte died in February 1705; the king served as the town's mayor until the historic village of Lietzow was incorporated into Charlottenburg in 1720. Frederick's successor as king, Frederick William I of Prussia stayed at the palace, which depressed the small town of Charlottenburg. Frederick William tried to revoke the town's privileges. With the coronation of his successor Frederick II inl 1740 the town's significance increased, as regular celebrations again took place at the palace.
Between 1740 and 1747 Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff built the eastern New Wing as Frederick's residence. Frederick II preferred the palace of Sanssouci, which he had designed himself; when Frederick II died in 1786, his nephew Frederick William II succeeded him, Charlottenburg became the favourite royal residence, remained so for his son and successor Frederick William III. After the defeat of the Prussian army at Jena in 1806, the French occupied Berlin. Napoleon took over the palace. Charlottenburg became part of the new Prussian Province of Brandenburg in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars. In the late 18th century, Charlottenburg's development did not depend only on the crown; the town became a recreational area for the expanding city of Berlin. Its first true inn opened in the 1770s, in the street called Berliner Straße, many other inns and beer gardens were to follow, popular for weekend parties especially. Berliners seeking leisure and entertainment came by boat, by carriage and by horse-drawn trams, above a
Frederick William II of Prussia
Frederick William II was King of Prussia from 1786 until his death. He was in personal union the Prince-elector of Brandenburg and sovereign prince of the Canton of Neuchâtel. Pleasure-loving and indolent, he is seen as the antithesis to his predecessor, Frederick II. Under his reign, Prussia was weakened internally and externally, he failed to deal adequately with the challenges to the existing order posed by the French Revolution, his religious policies were directed against the Enlightenment and aimed at restoring a traditional Protestantism. However, he was a patron of the arts and responsible for the construction of some notable buildings, among them the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Frederick William was born in Berlin, the son of Prince Augustus William of Prussia and Duchess Luise of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, his mother's elder sister, was the wife of Augustus William's brother King Frederick II. Frederick William became heir-presumptive to the throne of Prussia on his father's death in 1758, since Frederick II had no children.
The boy was of an easy-going and pleasure-loving disposition, averse to sustained effort of any kind, sensual by nature. His marriage with Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Crown Princess of Prussia, daughter of Charles I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, contracted 14 July 1765 in Charlottenburg, was dissolved in 1769, he married Frederica Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, daughter of Ludwig IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt on 14 July 1769 in Charlottenburg. Although he had seven children by his second wife, he had an ongoing relationship with his mistress, Wilhelmine Enke, a woman of strong intellect and much ambition, had five children by her—the first when she was still in her teens. Frederick William, before the corpulence of his middle age, was a man of singularly handsome presence, not without mental qualities of a high order, he was a talented cellist. But an artistic temperament was hardly what was required of a king of Prussia on the eve of the French Revolution, Frederick the Great, who had employed him in various services expressed his misgivings as to the character of the prince and his surroundings.
For his part, Frederick William, who had never been properly introduced to diplomacy and the business of rulership, resented his uncle for not taking him seriously. The misgivings of Frederick II appear justified in retrospect. Frederick William′s accession to the throne was, followed by a series of measures for lightening the burdens of the people, reforming the oppressive French system of tax-collecting introduced by Frederick, encouraging trade by the diminution of customs dues and the making of roads and canals; this gave the new king much popularity with the masses. Frederick William terminated his predecessor's state monopolies for coffee and tobacco and the sugar monopoly. However, under his reign the codification known as Allgemeines Preußisches Landrecht, initiated by Frederick II, continued and was completed in 1794. In 1781 Frederick William prince of Prussia, inclined to mysticism, had joined the Rosicrucians, had fallen under the influence of Johann Christoph von Wöllner and Johann Rudolf von Bischoffwerder.
On 26 August 1786 Wöllner was appointed privy councillor for finance, on 2 October 1786 was ennobled. Though not in name, he in fact became prime minister. Bischoffswerder, still a simple major, was called into the king′s counsels; the opposition to Wöllner was, indeed, at the outset strong enough to prevent his being entrusted with the department of religion. From this position Wöllner pursued long lasting reforms concerning religion in the Prussian state; the king proved eager to aid Wöllner's crusade. On 9 July 1788 a religious edict was issued forbidding Evangelical ministers from teaching anything not contained in the letter of their official books, proclaimed the necessity of protecting the Christian religion against the "enlighteners", placed educational establishments under the supervision of the orthodox clergy. On 18 December 1788 a new censorship law was issued to secure the orthodoxy of all published books; this forced major Berlin journals like Christoph Friedrich Nicolai's Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek and Johann Erich Biester's Berliner Monatsschrift to publish only outside the Prussian borders.
Moreover, people like Immanuel Kant were forbidden to speak in public on the topic of religion. In 1791, a Protestant commission was established at Berlin to watch over all ecclesiastical and scholastic appointments. Although Wöllner's religious edict had many critics, it was an important measure that, in fact, proved an important stabilizing factor for the Prussian state. Aimed at protecting the multi-con
Wilhelmina of Prussia, Princess of Orange
Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia was the consort of William V of Orange and the de facto leader of the dynastic party and counter-revolution in the Netherlands. She was the daughter of Prince Augustus William of Luise of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Wilhelmina was the longest-serving Princess consort of Orange. Wilhelmina was brought up by her grandmother. On 4 October 1767 in Berlin, she was married to William V of the last Dutch Stadtholder; as a person, she was politically ambitious. She was involved in the revolutionary political conflict in the Netherlands from 1781 onwards – not only a supporter and partner, but as a main driving power behind the party of her spouse, she was recognized as the true leader of the dynastic Stadtholder party, a role its followers encouraged her to take. She was in heavy correspondence with foreign powers and used foreign supporters to influence Dutch internal policy. In 1785, her spouse was put under a demand to abdicate. Wilhelmina persuaded William not to give in, subsequently went to Friesland – to visit a jubilee, but in reality she aimed to gain support in the ongoing political conflict.
In 1786, the family moved from the capital at the Hague to Nijmegen. After the revolution proper broke out in 1787 and William had moved his court to Guelders, she attempted to return to the Hague. Both Wilhelmina and her brother, King Frederick William II of Prussia perceived the occurrences as an insult. After having returned to Nijmegen, Wilhelmina asked her brother for a military intervention. Frederick, despite having been in power for only a year, attacked the Dutch Republic on 13 September 1787. Many rebels had to flee to France, William was restored to power. With the support of foreign troops, Wilhelmina returned to The Hague and was celebrated by her followers as the true ruler of the Netherlands. However, the Dutch patriots returned in 1795 with support from the French, William fled to his ally, his cousin George III of England. During their exile, the couple lived in Kew until 1802, subsequently went to Germany, where they lived in Nassau and Braunschweig. Thereafter and her daughter – both having been widowed in 1806 – lived together at various places in the Confederation of the Rhine.
William, the son of William V and Wilhelmina, went with them into exile, but returned to the Netherlands in 1813 to become King William I of the Netherlands, the founder of the present Dutch monarchy. Wilhelmina and her daughter returned to the Netherlands in 1814, she received Tsar Alexander I of Russia in Haarlem in 1815. Wilhelmina and William V of Orange were parents to five children: An unnamed son Frederika Luise Wilhelmina, married in The Hague on 14 October 1790 to Karl, Hereditary Prince of Brunswick, a son of Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg and Princess Augusta of Great Britain, without issue. An unnamed son William I, King of the Netherlands Willem Georg Frederik, Prince of Orange-Nassau and without issue
England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles"; the Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
London
London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south-east of England, at the head of its 50-mile estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Londinium was founded by the Romans; the City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just 1.12 square miles and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of the London Assembly. London is considered to be one of the world's most important global cities and has been termed the world's most powerful, most desirable, most influential, most visited, most expensive, sustainable, most investment friendly, most popular for work, the most vegetarian friendly city in the world. London exerts a considerable impact upon the arts, education, fashion, healthcare, professional services and development, tourism and transportation.
London ranks 26 out of 300 major cities for economic performance. It is one of the largest financial centres and has either the fifth or sixth largest metropolitan area GDP, it is the most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the busiest city airport system as measured by passenger traffic. It is the leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. London's universities form the largest concentration of higher education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted three modern Summer Olympic Games. London has a diverse range of people and cultures, more than 300 languages are spoken in the region, its estimated mid-2016 municipal population was 8,787,892, the most populous of any city in the European Union and accounting for 13.4% of the UK population. London's urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census.
The population within the London commuter belt is the most populous in the EU with 14,040,163 inhabitants in 2016. London was the world's most populous city from c. 1831 to 1925. London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London. Other landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square and The Shard. London has numerous museums, galleries and sporting events; these include the British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum, Tate Modern, British Library and West End theatres. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world. "London" is an ancient name, attested in the first century AD in the Latinised form Londinium. Over the years, the name has attracted many mythicising explanations; the earliest attested appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written around 1136. This had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had taken over the city and named it Kaerlud.
Modern scientific analyses of the name must account for the origins of the different forms found in early sources Latin, Old English, Welsh, with reference to the known developments over time of sounds in those different languages. It is agreed; this was adapted into Latin as Londinium and borrowed into Old English, the ancestor-language of English. The toponymy of the Common Brythonic form is much debated. A prominent explanation was Richard Coates's 1998 argument that the name derived from pre-Celtic Old European *lowonida, meaning "river too wide to ford". Coates suggested that this was a name given to the part of the River Thames which flows through London. However, most work has accepted a Celtic origin for the name, recent studies have favoured an explanation along the lines of a Celtic derivative of a proto-Indo-European root *lendh-, combined with the Celtic suffix *-injo- or *-onjo-. Peter Schrijver has suggested, on these grounds, that the name meant'place that floods'; until 1889, the name "London" applied to the City of London, but since it has referred to the County of London and Greater London.
"London" is sometimes written informally as "LDN". In 1993, the remains of a Bronze Age bridge were found on the south foreshore, upstream of Vauxhall Bridge; this bridge either reached a now lost island in it. Two of those timbers were radiocarbon dated to between 1750 BC and 1285 BC. In 2010 the foundations of a large timber structure, dated to between 4800 BC and 4500 BC, were found on the Thames's south foreshore, downstream of Vauxhall Bridge; the function of the mesolithic structure is not known. Both structures are on the south bank. Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans about four years after the invasion
