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- BIOGRAPHY
Friedrich Karl Nikolaus was born 20 March 1828 in Berlin, son of Prince Karl of Prussia and Princess Marie of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. He married Princess Marie of Anhalt-Dessau 29 November 1854 in Dessau and they had four daughters and one son.
Friedrich Karl's fondness for his favourite Hussars uniform had earned him the nickname 'Red Prince'. But the epithet applied equally to his temperament, which was brutish and bullying and his children lived in fear of him. When Luise was born in 1860 Friedrich Karl had beaten his wife so severely for producing another girl, the fourth, that he had permanently destroyed her hearing. It would take till 1865 before the next child, the longed for son, was born.
On 11 January 1871 Nicolai Elphinstone, a journalist, was arrested in France as a Prussian spy and thrown into prison. Fearing imminent death by firing squad, Nicolai wrote a series of final messages to his wife on the whitewashed cell wall---unadvisedly using German. Then, before dawn two days later, his cell door was openened and he was given a cigar and a tumbler of brandy, a sure sign of his impending doom. However he was saved from summary execution only by the sudden fall of the town that very morning and by the timely arrival of the fearsome 'Red Prince', Prince Friedrich Karl, who may have recognised the prisoner's distinctive surname from those among the court at Windsor.
The violent treatment of his wife and family was a scandal in royal circles and Friedrich Karl started to live separately from his wife. His life was the talk of Berlin. In 1877 Queen Victoria suspected Friedrich Karl would divorce his wife when the German Emperor eventually died, and would leave a moral stain on his children.
In 1879 Arthur, Duke of Connaught, son of Queen Victoria, proposed marriage to Friedrich Karl's daughter Luise. Friedrich Karl could barely conceal his delight at securing such a prestigious prize for his daughter. But this satisfaction did not prevent the Red Prince from raising a whole series of 'little hitches', principally issues concerning his daughter's future rank, title and income.
Friedrich Karl had to go to England to attend his daughter's marriage. The Red Prince complained that his accomodation, a rambling new house, had too few bedrooms but was swiftly silenced by the tart reply that 'the money was wanting for more'. When the 'very cross' Prussian prince tried to raise the matter again over dinner Queen Victoria, with a note of triumph, 'assured him I had just the same at Osborne!' Nothing marred the happy occasion except for Friedrich Karl's incorrigible bad temper and informing Queen Victoria that he had hoped his previous visit to England had been his last.
Friedrich Karl died 15 June 1885 in the hunting lodge at Klein-Glienicke.
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