The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe, Volume I. | Page 8

much of a
philosopher, and even atheist, as Frederick the Great, for whom he
professed the most profound veneration.
It was Countess Waldersee who revived all the inherited and latent
religious tendencies of his character.
Up to the time when he ascended the throne, Prince William and his
consort were constant and devout attendants at the prayer-meetings
held in the salons of the countess, and if he remains to this day a
remarkably religious man, with a sufficient regard for scriptural
commands to have shown himself a more faithful husband than any
other prince of his house, either living or dead--if, to-day, piety is
fashionable at the court of Berlin instead of being bad form, if the
building or endowment of a church, or of a charitable institution, is
regarded as the surest road to imperial favor, it is due to the influence
of William's American aunt, the daughter of that New York grocer, the
first Princess Noer, and who is to-day Countess of Waldersee.
It is natural that the influence exercised over William and his wife by
the countess should have given rise to the utmost jealousy, especially
on the part of his mother, Empress Frederick, and during the hundred
days' reign of her lamented husband, she availed herself of her brief
spell of power to secure the virtual banishment of the count and the
countess from Berlin, by causing the field marshal to be transferred
from the chieftaincy of the headquarter staff to the command of the
army stationed in Altona. Moreover, she did not hesitate to denounce
the influence of the Waldersees as disastrous, as illiberal, and in every
sense of the word reactionary, and if her husband, Emperor Frederick,

was led to share her views concerning them, it was because of his
disapproval of the movement against the Jews in which the countess
had figured so conspicuously. It is a peculiar fact that although
Emperor William has always remained on the most affectionate terms
with the Waldersees, and never loses any opportunity of manifesting
the warmth of his affection for them, he has never repealed the decree
of banishment to which they were virtually subjected during his father's
reign. He has transferred the field marshal from one post to another, but
he has never appointed him to one which would admit of his coming
back to live in Berlin. I cannot help thinking that the emperor resented
the imputation that he was subject to the sway of his wife's aunt, and
was offended by the articles which appeared at one moment both in the
German and foreign press intimating that she was the power behind the
throne. He is sufficiently jealous of his dignity to object to be
considered as subject to the influence of anyone, be it man or woman,
and one of the chief causes of the dismissal of old Prince Bismarck was
precisely because so long as he remained in office there was a
disposition to regard the kaiser as a mere puppet in the hands of the old
statesman.
It is this aversion to being considered as swayed by any other influence
than his own that has led the emperor on so many occasions to adopt a
course diametrically opposed to that urged upon him by his clever and
masterful mother, a woman with the most powerful intellect and the
least tact to be found in all Old World royalties. It was this, too, that led
the emperor to banish, just a trifle unjustly, the pretty and dashing
Countess Hohenau from his court. She had been guilty of no
indiscretion with regard to him. She had done nothing wrong, and she
was not only a brilliant ornament of the imperial entourage, but
likewise a relative of the family. But he banished both her husband and
herself almost at a moment's notice, owing to the fact that in the
anonymous letters circulated at the time of the so-called Kotze scandal,
he was mentioned as altogether infatuated and subjugated by her
beauty.
Count Hohenau is the half-brother of that Prince Albert of Prussia, who
is now Regent of the Grand Duchy of Brunswick. Old Prince Albert of

Prussia, his father, was married to the eccentric and half-crazy Princess
Marianne of the Netherlands. Not long after the birth of the present
Prince Albert, she lost her heart to such an extent to a chamberlain in
her household that her husband was compelled to divorce her,
whereupon she contracted a morganatic marriage with the gentleman in
question, and lived and died at an advanced age only about twelve
years ago.
Prince Albert, the elder, thereupon married morganatically a young girl
of noble birth of the name of Baroness Rauch, whose family had for
more than one hundred and fifty years occupied leading positions at the
Court of Berlin.