Louise of Hesse-Kassel

Biography

The house in Kassel where she was born on 7 September 1817 was to her only a place of birth: when she was three the family returned to Denmark, and her whole youth was spent in Copenhagen.

Her father, Prince William of Hesse-Kassel, of the Rumpenheim line, was military commandant of Copenhagen; her mother, Charlotte, was a granddaughter of King Frederick V, and at first the family lived in a mansion on Sankt Annæ Plads, then at Amalienborg. Besides the usual education of princesses, Louise studied painting with Martinus Rørbye and Wilhelm Marstrand, and music with the composer Friedrich Kuhlau. She painted well: some of her pictures were exhibited, and others she gave to members of other royal houses.

The family’s position changed sharply in 1839, when her mother’s brother Christian VIII came to the throne. His heir, the future Frederick VII, was childless, and under the King’s Law the woman closest by blood to the dying male line had a chance at the crown. But Louise and her brother and sisters were not male-line descendants of the House of Oldenburg, and in Holstein exactly that kind of succession applied. The dispute over the throne dragged on for more than ten years. On 26 May 1842, at Amalienborg Palace, she married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a distant relative. Her parents were at first opposed, because the groom’s line was thought insignificant, and gave way when members of the royal house promised to help the young couple with money. They settled in the Yellow Palace next to Amalienborg and lived modestly. In 1847 Christian VIII ruled that, if the heir had no sons, the throne should pass to Christian of Glücksburg, and the Great Powers were informed. Louise’s mother and brother renounced their rights in her favour, and she passed them to her husband. In 1852 the arrangement was confirmed in London, and on 3 July 1853 Frederick VII signed the law proclaiming Christian heir. The family received Bernstorff Palace, which became Louise’s favourite residence. She did not accept Frederick VII or his morganatic marriage to the actress Louise Rasmussen, and relations with the king remained strained.

On 15 November 1863, with the death of Frederick VII, she became queen. The times were hard: after the defeat in the Second Schleswig War of 1864 she had to ask the police to guard Amalienborg. The couple’s popularity grew only with the years. Louise took practically no part in politics, though, according to tradition, she objected to her husband’s signing the November Constitution, which he signed reluctantly.

She did, however, concern herself with her children’s marriages. Frederick married Louise of Sweden and Norway, Alexandra married the future Edward VII, William became King George I of Greece in 1863, and Dagmar, who took the name Maria Feodorovna, became the wife of Alexander III; Thyra married the Crown Prince of Hanover, and Valdemar married Marie of Orléans. Husband and wife were called the “father-in-law and mother-in-law of Europe”. Every summer their children and grandchildren gathered at Bernstorff and Fredensborg.

When their youngest daughter Thyra became pregnant in 1870, Louise sent her to her brother in Athens, and the child was born there, away from the press. To my mind, this episode shows well how she managed family affairs.

The queen disliked court life and lived in seclusion. Twenty-six charitable organisations were under her patronage. In 1857 she founded an orphanage for girls, and in 1863 the Deaconess Foundation, which introduced the profession of deaconess in Denmark and which she herself considered her most important work. A children’s hospital bears her name. She was also a patron of the painter Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann.

Towards the end of her life Louise was almost deaf, and two deaconesses from the society she had founded looked after her. She died on 29 September 1898 at Bernstorff Palace, aged 81. She was buried on 15 October in Roskilde Cathedral; later her husband, who died in 1906, was laid beside her in the shared marble sarcophagus designed by Edvard Eriksen and Hack Kampmann.