Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach

Life

Childhood and youth (1811–1826): Shaped by the Weimar court

Princess Augusta was born on 30 September 1811 in Weimar. She was the third (but second surviving) child of Charles Frederick, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, sister of Emperor (Tsar) Alexander I of Russia. The princess' baptism took place a few days later, on 6 October, with her full name being Maria Luise Augusta Catherina. As is usual with royal and princely families, Augusta grew up not primarily in the care of her parents, but rather with her nanny Amalia Batsch.

Her court teachers taught her four foreign languages: English, Russian, French and Latin. Additional subjects included mathematics, geography, religion, history, dancing, drawing, horse riding and music. Her teachers included specialists such as the court painter Luise Seidler, the composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel and the numismatist Frédéric Soret. However, the most important point of reference for Augusta was the poet and natural scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe organized the teaching content in consultation with Augusta's parents and taught it in the environment of the University of Jena. For Augusta, looking back, Goethe was the "best, most dear friend" that she and her sister Maria Luise (who was three years older than her), would have had in their childhood. Both sisters hardly had any contact with their peers. According to the historian Lothar Gall, Augusta's political stance was shaped in the long term by her comparatively liberal family home. Her grandfather Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach had already introduced a constitution in the Grand Duchy in 1816. According to Monika Wienfort, this contributed to Augusta later advocating the transformation of Prussia into a constitutional monarchy. As Gall believes, the political climate in Weimar favored Augusta's later proximity to a circle in the so-called Wochenblattpartei, who advocated not only for a Lesser Germany unity without Austria, but also for an "alliance with the leading forces of the liberal bourgeoisie" and a continuation of the Prussian reforms. The GDR historian Ernst Engelberg, on the other hand, fundamentally denies Augusta's liberal stance: her political views are more likely to be located in the tradition of enlightened absolutism. She did not want to know anything about a "parliamentary regime", but rather advocated "a constitution freely chosen by the monarch".

The Weimar court also shaped Augusta from a cultural perspective. She developed a strong interest in art, was considered well-educated and was particularly strictly brought up to observe official court manners, the so-called etiquette.

Marriage to Prince William: Means of alliance politics and dynastic position

Augusta's mother, Maria Pavlovna, made marriage plans for both daughters towards Prussia, which bordered Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach on several sides and was therefore perceived as a threat to the Grand Duchy. The marriages of Augusta to Prince William and Marie to Prince Charles of Prussia, William's younger brother, were intended to ensure the continued existence of the Grand Duchy. Maria Pavlovna no longer considered the protection provided by family ties to the Romanov-Holstein-Gottorp dynasty to be sufficient. Since she became Grand Duchess herself in 1828, she was able to push ahead with marriage efforts. On the Prussian side, the motivation was to further expand the dynastic ties with Russia, because Augusta was a niece of Emperor Nicholas I. Since the joint victory over Napoleon, Prussia and Russia were particularly close in terms of alliance politics. A daughter of the Prussian King Frederick William III, Princess Charlotte, had already been married to Nicholas, Emperor Alexander I's second brother and eventual successor, in 1817.

Since his youth, Prince William, on the other hand, was in love with a former childhood playmate, his cousin Princess Elisa Radziwiłł, daughter of his first cousin twice removed Princess Louise. However, due to her paternal descent from the Polish noble family Radziwiłł, Elisa was not considered an equal. The Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach made his consent to the marriage of William's younger brother Charles and his daughter Marie conditional on William only being allowed to enter into a morganatic marriage with Elisa. Frederick William III did not want such a connection, and therefore forbade his son to marry Elisa in June 1826. In the same year, William and Augusta met for the first time when Marie was engaged to Charles. Since it was now clear that William's older brother, the later Frederick William IV, would remain childless, William now had the task of producing legitimate dynastic offspring. This is how Frederick William III arranged a marriage between William and Augusta.

The Weimar princess saw several advantages in the connection. Before the marriage, Augusta, as the second-born daughter, held a lower rank at court than her older sister. Since the latter was only supposed to marry William's younger brother, Augusta would rank above Marie in Prussia and could expect to become the wife of the heir to the throne. The wedding took place on 11 June 1829 in the chapel at Schloss Charlottenburg. At this time, Augusta was 17 years old.

First years of marriage: Tense relationship with Wilhelm and birth of the children

According to the historian Robert-Tarek Fischer, the marriage was tense for several reasons: On the one hand, William, who was 14 years older, made no secret of his continued affection for Elisa. On the other hand, Augusta's liberal views and intellectual interests were not shared by William and large parts of the Prussian court. As the historian Birgit Aschmann assumes, Augusta was also used to greater "cultural openness" from the Weimar court than was the case with the Hohenzollerns. From her husband's point of view, she didn't correspond enough to the bourgeois ideal of a woman. As William criticized in October 1829, she was more of a "woman of mind and not of heart". In doing so, Augusta violated the gender image of the time, according to which men had to be rational and women had to be emotional. According to the historian Jürgen Angelow, despite its political motivation, the marriage "was not quite as unhappy as it could have been". Over time, a relationship of trust and respect developed between the two. In her role as a Prussian princess, Augusta was expected to be reserved at the Berlin court. Deviating from this norm, however, she shared her views openly and was therefore later perceived as a political threat to her husband.

On 18 October 1831, Augusta gave birth to her son Frederick William. The succession of the Prussian royal house seemed assured by the birth. Augusta had a great influence on the upbringing of the future heir to the throne: Frederick William completed a military career, but was also taught natural sciences, philosophy, literature and classical studies according to a neo-humanistic curriculum. At his mother's instigation, his playmates included many middle-class high school students. Augusta encouraged her son to study at the University of Bonn —away from the influence of the Berlin court. Seven years passed until the second child, Louise, the later Grand Duchess of Baden, was born in Berlin on 3 December 1838. Louise was Augusta's last child, as her next two pregnancies, in 1842 and 1843, ended in miscarriages.

Courtly life: Conflicts, residence design and interaction with William

Augusta had a contentious relationship with the Prussian court. The courtly demeanor she practiced in Weimar was perceived as overly proud and aloof in Berlin and Potsdam. Augusta, for her part, disliked the court, which was culturally more frugal and more military-oriented compared to her homeland. She saw her position as increasingly useless and complained that only Crown Princess Elisabeth, the wife of the future King Frederick William IV, was allowed to do charitable work. In addition, she maintained contact less with the established Prussian noble families than with confidants, some of whom were viewed as "foreigners".

Augusta's summer residence since 1835 was Schloss Babelsberg near Potsdam. As a builder, she had some influence on the palace's construction: after studying architectural theoretical works and engravings of English country estates, she made sketches herself and asked the responsible architects to implement their designs. In the following years, Augusta also devoted herself to the interior design of the palace. With the English-inspired place and landscape garden, she expressed her sympathies for liberally governed Great Britain. Augusta also had a great influence on the interior design of her winter residence in Berlin, the Altes Palais. Here she invited military men, politicians, scientists, artists and courtiers to evening tea parties. One of their favorite guests was the explorer Alexander von Humboldt; there he reported on his travels or read classical literature. The antiquarian Ernst Curtius was often present as a speaker and chess player.

Political topics were also discussed, with Augusta using the meetings to gather information. In addition, she read several newspapers every day and, on this basis, created written summaries of the most important events for William. Through the meetings and exchanges with his wife, William thought (as he himself told her in a letter) that he could provide an official guideline for her statements. His aim was to influence their opinions in his favor and to conceal any disharmony between them from the public. William had Augusta take care of some of his writing correspondence: she had to proofread or copy texts he had written and was also a co-author of some of his correspondence. Such a division of tasks among royal couples was not unusual in the 19th century, because the dynasty was considered a kind of "family business".

Wife of the heir to the throne (1840–1858)

With the death of King Frederick William III on 7 June 1840, William became heir to the throne. Augusta was critical of the policies of the new ruling Prussian king, her brother-in-law Frederick William IV. She viewed its lack of reform as a mistake that would cost the monarchy the loyalty of the population. Augusta advocated early "voluntary surrender" and the fulfillment of the "general wishes" of the subjects. In their opinion, the existence of the monarchical form of rule itself was at risk if the crown did not respond to the demands of the political public. She shared the assessment with the British Queen's husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, that Prussia should first become a constitutional state following the British model and only then should it implement national unity for Germany.

According to the historian Caroline Galm, Augusta saw it as her duty to give her son Frederick William a chance at the throne through his own political involvement. She therefore increasingly turned to political topics and from 1843 onwards wrote several memoranda, which she presented to both her husband and Prussian statesmen. For her advice, Augusta contacted, among others, the envoys Alexander von Schleinitz and Franz von Roggenbach, a politician from the Grand Duchy of Baden. The correspondence between Roggenbach and Augusta has only been partially preserved, as Augusta had politically explosive letters destroyed or returned by confidants for fear of censorship. At court, the manner in which their opinions were presented was perceived as overly temperamental. William therefore jokingly referred to his wife as a "little opposition devil" in letters. Internally, she expressed doubts about William's intellectual abilities and accused him of not being sufficiently sophisticated in his observations.

Augusta now also maintained contacts with the British Queen Victoria. In 1845 the monarch visited Augusta and William in Berlin. The following year, the princely couple made a return visit to London. Victoria showed sympathy for Augusta and said in a letter to the Belgian king:

She is too enlightened and too liberal not to have enemies at the Prussian court, but I believe that I have found in her a friend who can be very useful to us.

The correspondence between the British Queen and Augusta continued for several decades and ultimately initiated the marriage between her son Frederick William and Victoria's eldest daughter and namesake, the Princess Royal. Since the 1840s, Augusta also wrote letters to Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, a famous writer and world traveler at the time. Augusta had known him from the Weimar court since 1826. She particularly appreciated the conversation with Pückler, who, in her opinion, stood out from the Prussian court with his eloquent and intellectual manner. She talked to him about, among other things, the Weimar court, England, Paris and her health. In 1842–1843 she entrusted the prince with the landscaping of Babelsberg Park. Augusta and Pückler agreed in their preference for the English cottage style and were based on English pattern books, for example by the architect Robert Lugar. In order to emphasize his artistic proximity to Augusta, Pückler had a blacksmith's shop built in Branitzer Park, which was similar to the Small Castle in Babelsberg Park.

Wife of the Prince Regent (1858–1861): political influence and failure

Because Frederick William IV was no longer considered fit to govern after several strokes, his brother was appointed Prince Regent in 1858. In the fall of that year, Augusta returned with him to Berlin, but remained connected to Koblenz through frequent travel throughout her life. William appointed ministers who stood for a more liberal policy and many of whom had frequented the Koblenz court. Alexander von Schleinitz, a confidant of Augusta, was given the Foreign Ministry. Augusta had been close friends with Schleinitz since the revolutionary period in 1848. Bismarck therefore speculated that his rival "only owes his career to petticoats". However, the historian Bastian Peiffer sees this as an insinuation and denies that Augusta was the actual founder of the new government. Birgit Aschmann sees contemporary names such as "Augusta Ministry" as conservative attempts to devalue the new political course. Augusta therefore sympathized with the newly formed ministry. Some of the ministers, like her, were convinced that aligning with Great Britain would also be advantageous domestically. According to the American historian Otto Pflanze, she saw the government of the so-called New Era as "her ministry"; their dismissal was therefore a lasting insult for Augusta, which is why she opposed the later Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck, regardless of whether he took a liberal or conservative course in politics.

The comparatively liberal phase only lasted about three years. There were several reasons for this. On the one hand, the British Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the most important operator of the Prussian-British connection, died in 1861. At the same time, conflicts between Augusta and her daughter-in-law Victoria increased. Augusta resented her influence on Frederick William. On the other hand, in the course of a reform of the Prussian army, William came into a fundamental conflict with the Prussian House of Representatives. In view of a Prussian constitutional conflict, he thought about more conservative appointments in his government.

Queen of Prussia (1861–1888)

In the middle of this state crisis, Frederick William IV died on 2 January 1861. Augusta became Queen consort of Prussia. Her coronation ceremony took place on 18 October of the same year in the Königsberg Palace Chapel. After William had placed the royal crown on himself, he then crowned his wife. Augusta was the second crowned queen in Prussian history; before her, only Sophia Charlotte of Hanover was granted such ceremony in Königsberg in 1701. During the escalating conflict between her husband and the House of Representatives, Augusta and William tried to talk out of appointing Otto von Bismarck as Prime Minister. She did not believe that he would have an integrating and conciliatory effect and expected him to further escalate the domestic political dispute. As she found in 1864, Bismarck was a "principled and careless person [...] who sometimes had to harbor doubts about the sanity of his words and deeds". Augusta already found Bismarck's appearance as envoy to the Frankfurt Bundestag to be diplomatically unacceptable. With his undisguised great power ambitions, he always aroused mistrust among the Prussians towards friendly governments in the German Confederation. As late as Easter 1862, the queen warned her husband about Bismarck as a possible prime minister with an eighteen-page memorandum. William ignored her advice in September 1862. Crown Prince Frederick William commented on his decision with the words: "Poor Mama, how bitterly this [sic] appointment of her mortal enemy will hurt her".

Bismarck, in turn, despised Augusta because of her influence on Wilhelm. He saw her actions as a violation of the boundaries of female freedom of action. From his perspective, female influence on the supposedly weak ruler had to be avoided. In addition to Augusta, he saw Crown Princess Victoria as a threat. While Bismarck attested to Augusta's sense of duty and noble behavior, he completely denied Victoria such qualities. From the perspective of Bismarck and his allies, Augusta belonged to an opposing political camp at court. The Bismarck party therefore also publicly polemicized against Augusta as the most prominent representative of the so-called English faction. In this way, their criticism of the government's reactionary and foreign policy course should be discredited. Despite Bismarck's appointment, Augusta continued to try to advise her husband. To this end, she intensified her contact with Franz von Roggenbach and often visited the former Baden Foreign Minister in Baden-Baden, where she stayed for a cure. Like Augusta, Roggenbach was a critic of Bismarck's politics. In consultation with Roggenbach, she formulated political memoranda to William I. Bismarck held Augusta responsible if the king did not follow his advice. In such cases she had plotted against him at previous breakfasts with the king. According to Bismarck, his political opponents would form in Augusta's environment, including Crown Princess Victoria and the entire court faction that was hostile to him. In later years, Bismarck accused the queen of ruining his ability to hold office and his health with her intrigues.

German Empress (1871–1888)

Augusta was hardly involved in the preparations for the Proclamation of the German Empire. While William was at the Palace of Versailles near Paris, the headquarters of the General Staff, she remained in Berlin and was in close correspondence with her husband. In her correspondence she tried to influence William politically. For example, she suggested waiting to proclaim emperor until the Bavarian state parliament had agreed to join the German nation state. However, William ignored her recommendation in this regard. Since the letters from Berlin to Versailles usually took three to four days, she was hardly informed about current political issues. William did not want to resort to the quicker means of communication via telegraph to her. She did not want to use the title of German Empress herself. In December 1870, Augusta informed the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach that it was sufficient if only William took imperial rank. However, Augusta's stance on this issue was not taken into account. After William's proclamation as Emperor on 18 January 1871, she received letters —for example from the Prussian state parliament— congratulating her on her new dignity. However, the title of "German Empress" was never legally fixed in the Constitution of the German Empire.

The Empress's political relationship with Catholicism played a special role after 1871: Augusta, who, like the Emperor, belonged to the Protestant faith, saw Ultramontanism, a political movement loyal to the Pope, as a detriment to the loyalty of the Catholic population since the 1850s. According to the historian Caroline Galm, Augusta therefore tried to "remedy integration deficits and reconcile the Catholics with the Protestant ruling dynasty". For example, in order to gain sympathy in predominantly Catholic southern Germany, Augusta recommended that her husband diplomatically advocate for the Pope's rights in October 1870. The background to this was the occupation of the previously independent Papal States by troops of the Kingdom of Italy. The Empress considered Bismarck's anti-Catholic policy in the Kulturkampf to be the wrong approach. Although she also rejected the content of the First Vatican Council of 1869, she believed that reconciliation could be achieved with moderate Catholic forces. In 1872 she sent William a specially written memorandum "on the ecclesiastical-political situation". In the document she called on him to "have a calming effect on the Catholic Church, to restore the lost trust and to mitigate the harshness of the contradictions as much as possible". Augusta appealed to the authorities and Emperor several times on behalf of the Catholic population. In 1872, for example, she campaigned for Philipp Krementz to remain in office as Bishop of Warmia. The cultural scientist Andrea Micke-Serin attributes a softening of the Congregations Law of 1875 to Augusta's influence. Although the law continued to provide for the closure of Catholic monastic orders in Prussia, it excluded pure nursing orders from this.

Death and legacy

Augusta died on 7 January 1890, aged 78, at the Old Palace during the 1889–1890 flu pandemic.

She was initially lying in state for the public at the Old Palace on Unter den Linden boulevard in Mitte, the historic heart and city center of Berlin, and later buried at the Mausoleum at Charlottenburg Palace beside her husband. In accordance with her will, the Augusta Fund, other charitable institutions (particularly in Berlin and Koblenz) and the Koblenz Rheinanlagen received financial donations.

Reception

Contemporary perception

Since Bismarck had not been on good terms with Augusta since the revolution of 1848, he painted a negative picture of the Empress in his autobiography, Thoughts and Memories: she had exerted a harmful influence on William I and was due to her sympathies for the French and English culture was unpatriotic. Bismarck also falsely accused her of being a "traitor" who passed on state secrets to the French embassy. Their pacifist attitude was unrealistic and their intrigues made it difficult for him to conduct state affairs. The Prussian Prime Minister and Imperial Chancellor attributed a "need for contradiction" to the Empress: when he swung to a conservative course, she tried to promote a liberal group of people. If, on the other hand, he acted more liberally, the Empress would have sided with the conservatives and Catholics. Bismarck thought that Augusta only did not oppose the Prussian government during the so-called New Era. In this phase she was able to prevail in the ministerial election. The historian Petra Wilhelmy comes to the conclusion that Bismarck for Augusta "did injustice to a certain extent". The monarch did not act out of a fundamental "spirit of contradiction" to his policies, but rather, in contrast to the Reich Chancellor, was comparatively liberal-minded and religiously tolerant. In addition to Bismarck, Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, publicly positioned himself against the supposed dominance of the Empress and Crown Princess Victoria, his own niece. In view of the "women's policy" he warned against "hostile and harmful to the Germans" undertakings.

Overall, however, the effectiveness of Augusta's political actions in the 19th century was rated as low due to her conflict with Bismarck. Reviews focused on their representative role in the monarchy. Like other princesses, she had to conform to the prevailing role model, that is, to be active in the area of charitable work and royal representation, the latter particularly during William's war-related absences. From the perspective of contemporaries, Augusta was only partially suitable for this. Although she was present as the patron of many Vaterländischer Frauenverein, apart from this commitment to caring for the wounded, she mostly kept a low profile in public.

On 27 July 1867, the Illustrirte Zeitung criticized Augusta's increasing withdrawal into family life. Before the revolution of 1848–1849 she was still "a brilliant figure at the court in Berlin". Nowadays, however, she mainly keeps herself "hidden in the quiet circle of family life [...]" and hardly takes part in Berlin court life anymore. Instead, she spent "most of the year outside the residence [...], at her favorite residence in Koblenz or in Karlsruhe with her daughter, or in a German bath, where she takes the usual cure". There was also criticism that she appeared in the capital in a rather inconspicuous manner for a monarch, i.e. that she did not represent enough of her social status. According to Katrin Feuerstein-Praßer, Augusta was never popular outside of Koblenz during her lifetime. The historian attributes this to the fact that Augusta would have had difficulty maintaining intensive contacts with the Prussian elite. On the other hand, it caused a stir that she spoke and wrote predominantly in French. This was no longer common practice at the German courts during the founding of the empire. According to the historian Gerd Heinrich, Augusta was a "controversial figure in almost every respect" among her contemporaries. On the one hand, her influence on the upbringing of the heir to the throne and her daughter Louise was viewed positively. Their princely demeanor and manners were sometimes considered appropriate; On the other hand, Augusta's irritability and her mood swings were negative. The intellect attributed to her Weimar influence and her penchant for ostentation would have seemed inappropriate at the comparatively economical Hohenzollern court.

Symbolic representation and commemoration

According to the historian Alexa Geisthövel, the memory of the Empress lost significance shortly after her death. Streets, secondary schools for girls and hospitals such as the Kaiserin Augusta Hospital in Berlin were named after her. However, only "a few monuments" were dedicated to her. Geisthövel emphasizes that in the 19th century it was unusual to erect public monuments to a non-reigning monarch. Among the Prussian queens, Augusta was the second after Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz to have a monument dedicated to her in Berlin. In 1891 a "Comité" called for donations for the Empress Augusta monument. As a result, the seated figure was inaugurated in 1895 on Opernplatz, today's Bebelplatz. The historian Helke Rausch interprets the erection of the Augusta monument "in the middle of the monarchical representation area" as an "attempt at politicization": since celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the founding of the German Empire were imminent at the time, the former head of the Berlin city council, Albert Stryck, pleaded in his speech at the monument to see Augusta as a representative figure of the German Empire alongside William I, the generals and statesmen. The reason he gave was that the Empress had raised young women to be active in nursing and to look after the men wounded in the wars of German unification. According to Rausch, contemporaries made Augusta a role model for female "duty and willingness to sacrifice" in the charitable sector. The Empress's monument, which was moved to the park of Schloss Monbijou in 1928, was destroyed during World War II.

In Baden-Baden, the city council commissioned the sculptor Joseph Kopf to build a monument to Empress Augusta. The bust was inaugurated in 1893 and was intended to commemorate the Empress's regular spa stays in the city. In 1893, in their residential city of Koblenz, an architectural competition was announced for a monument, which Bruno Schmitz won. By 1896 he built the Empress Augusta Monument together with the sculptor Karl Friedrich Moest. A figure of the ruler stands in the middle of the complex. A baldachin in the monument surrounds the figure from behind. The decorations symbolically indicate Augusta's commitment to the Red Cross and the city of Koblenz. The city of Cologne had another monument to the Empress planned and built on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring from 1897 onwards. The contract was advertised nationwide and a cost limit of 60,000 marks was set. The choice fell on the sculptors Franz Dorrenbach and Heinrich Stockmann. They completed a marble seated figure of the Empress by 1903.

Augusta used visual representations as a means of propaganda. Contrary to bourgeois values, however, she usually did not allow herself to be portrayed as the wife of William I. Instead, she showed herself as an independent monarch and thus followed the traditional image of a ruler. At the same time, she distanced herself from the militarism of the time in her depictions. According to Wagner-Kyora, a wood engraving from 1871, which she had copied, is typical in this regard. The picture shows her with a Red Cross brooch in a medallion. Two injured soldiers flank them. Below the medallion you can see the symbol of the Red Cross and an angel with crutches. On the one hand, the picture highlights Augusta's support of war-wounded care. At the top, the emblems of the German Empire, Alsace and Lorraine also refer to the newly created imperial state of Alsace-Lorraine; Augusta thus appears as a triumphant. Adolph Menzel portrayed Augusta as a pacifist in his painting Departure of King Wilhelm I for the Army, July 31, 1870. As the Franco-Prussian War begins, she mournfully presses a white handkerchief into her face. She is in striking contrast to the crowd, which is largely cheering the war. Significantly, says Wagner-Kyora, Red Cross flags can be seen in the painting, which were not present in the real historical situation, but here emphasize Augusta's pacifist attitude.

Research

Research has only focused more intensively on Augusta in the last two decades. Until then, the image of the Empress intended by Bismarck was mostly continued. Despite various publications, a generally accepted scientific biography is still missing. In particular, more source-based specialist essays are now questioning Bismarck's story regarding the Empress. The historian Monika Wienfort judged in 2018 that "Augusta research" hardly exists to date. According to the historian Birgit Aschmann, "central parts of her life are a research desideratum"; there is still no "scientifically satisfactory biography". According to Caroline Galm, there have so far been "only small, scientifically based studies" available, for example by the historians David E. Barclay, Alexa Geisthövel, Georg Wagner-Kyora, Frank Lorenz Müller and Susanne Bauer. The Augusta biographies from the time of the German Empire lacked "any source basis and –depending on the author's political background– assessed the Empress either in a harmonizing, panegyric or grossly negative manner". According to Galm, biographies from the 1930s and 1940s also adhered to this tradition of representation, not least because protection periods made it impossible to evaluate the archive material. The most recently published biographies by the writer Helmut H. Schulz in 1996 and the historian Karin Feuerstein-Praßer in 2011 also did not provide any new insights and continued to view the Empress as a "visionary without power": Augusta would therefore have been concerned with political control of her husband However, at the latest since Bismarck's appointment as Prussian Prime Minister in 1862, she had been deprived of any opportunity to participate in politics. As a result, her only option was to promote charitable care. Historiography thus continued to follow Bismarck's Augusta assessment. The role of the Empress, like that of Emperor William I, remained largely unexplored historiographically in favor of a perspective that favored Bismarck. As Ulrich Lappenküper said at a conference in 2018, Augusta is sometimes still presented as a "petty politician" who "is said to have always schemed against Berlin politics".

A research focus in the 21st century is Augusta's scope for political action and her self-image as a monarch's wife in the 19th century. According to Aschmann, research on Augusta is particularly interested in the fact that it was in conflict with "common patterns, gender expectations and political preferences of the time, not least the nationalist–militaristic mainstream". Galm points out that in the 19th century the wife of a monarch was not legally or normatively granted any political freedom of action. In practice, however, Augusta certainly had opportunities to participate politically. Her marriage was already motivated by foreign policy. She also had to fulfill representative tasks, took part in the upbringing of the children and was able to act as a political advisor to her husband. She also made many contacts and acted as an important social networker. According to the historian Jan Markert, Augusta's political influence was legally defined neither by the Prussian constitutions of 1848–1850 nor by the dynastic house law. However, she was particularly close to William I because of her dynastic position and her family connection. For this reason, in Markert's opinion, she was able to give certain groups of people access to the king or influence Wilhelm through conversations and correspondence. Markert judges that Augusta failed overall to "convince William of ideas that contradicted his personal monarchical perception of reality". The monarch therefore only consulted them in order to concretize his political program. During the time of the Prussian constitutional conflict, their opinions diverged so widely that joint discussions were hardly possible anymore. While Augusta followed old liberal ideas, William was more conservative. Furthermore, the King did not inform his wife about all the issues.

Honours

Kingdom of Prussia:

Dame of the Black Eagle, with Collar, 18 October 1861

Dame of the Order of Louise, 1st Division

Cross of Merit for Women and Girls, 9 April 1871

Kingdom of Portugal: Dame of the Order of Queen Saint Isabel

Russian Empire: Grand Cross of St. Catherine, in Diamonds, 12 December 1811

Spain: Dame of the Order of Queen Maria Luisa, 20 May 1863

Mexican Empire: Grand Cross of St. Charles, 10 April 1865

Kingdom of Saxony: Dame of the Order of Sidonia, 1871