HOHENZOLLERN, PRUSSIA, FREDERICK THE GREAT, GEORGE I OF ENGLAND, FREDERICK VON DER TRENCK, PRINCESS ANNA AMALIE OF PRUSSIA

e-mail: douglasp@melbpc.org.au

This manuscript covers a period in history when the Royal Families of England and Prussia became inextricably linked. This is the story of the power struggles within the great Royal Houses of Hanover and Hohenzollern. The German House of Hanover came to the British throne in 1714 under George the First of England (1660-1727). George’s grandson Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712-1786), from the House of Hohenzollern, became arguably the greatest warrior King in German history. Both men carried the ruthless, overpowering genes of the House of Brunswick-Luneburg with its domains in and around Hanover, Brunswick and Celle in NW Germany.

From 1413 onwards the Hohenzollern family had its powerbase centred around the Electorate of Brandenburg, with its capital of Berlin. During the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) the invincible Frederick the Great led his tiny Prussian monarchy of 3 million against France, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Sweden and Saxony with a combined force of 43 million people and was NOT defeated. The Kaisers of Germany came from the Hohenzollern family.

This is also story of the smashing up of many illicit love affairs, as the houses of Hanover and Hohenzollern made their way along the road to unbelieveable wealth and glory, as the rulers of Great Britain and Germany respectively. Two famous, tragic love affairs are covered in great detail: Sophie Dorothea of Celle and Count Philip Konigsmark; and Princess Amalie of Prussia and Baron Frederick von der Trenck.

George the First of England was a womanizer. As a consequence his wife Sophie Dorothea of Celle, the daughter of the richest Prince in Germany, took a lover Count Philip Konigsmark. The ruthless George had Sophie Dorothea, the uncrowned Queen of England, imprisoned for the last 32 years of her life, stole her massive fortune and had Konigsmark murdered.

Frederick von der Trenck came from a famous Prussian family of Supreme Court judges and army generals. As a Cornet in King Frederick the Great’s elite bodyguard his future seemed to be without limits. Then Trenck dared to ‘steal’ the heart of Frederick the Great’s youngest sister Princess Amalie and get her pregnant. Frederick the Great smashed the affair apart. Though Trenck sat in the mighty King’s gaols chained up like a dog for nigh on eleven years, his spirit was never broken. Trenck eventually lost his head in a guillotine in 1794, in the madness that was called the French Revolution. Princess Amalie never married, instead she bacame the first German woman to compose at a professional level.