Word: wilhelmina
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...House of Nassau can trace its origin to 800, its members settling in the Lowlands from Germany in 1400. The Orange-Nassau line barely missed dying out with Wilhelmina's father, William III. William's first wife and two sons died one after the other. At 62 he married the 20-year-old Princess Emma, of Waldeck-Pyrmont, a small German State. Of that marriage the sole issue was Wilhelmina, born August 31, 1880. Repeal of the Salic Law forbidding female rulers allowed her to succeed to the throne...
...Princess Wilhelmina's life was mostly work and little play. At ten her father died and she became Queen, with her able mother acting as Regent. On her first appearance on the balcony of the Royal Palace at Amsterdam she is said to have asked: "Mama, do all these people belong to me?" Queen Emma answered: "No, my child, it is you who belong to all these people." Her preparation by private tutors for queenship was guided by this principle. At 18, in 1898, she was crowned in the New Church at Amsterdam, swearing to support the Constitution...
Private Life. Two years after her coronation Wilhelmina married a dashing young lieutenant of the Prussian Guards, Henry Wladimir Albert Ernst, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Prince Henry was fond of meeting up with sea captains and artists, and led a hard life playing second fiddle for 33 years in a severely formal and moral court. The Queen was far from happily married, and the Prince was far from popular with the strict Dutch. Wilhelmina came very near dying from a miscarriage. Her only child, Juliana, the present Heir to the Throne, was born in 1909. The Prince Consort died...
Major ripple on the placid surface of Queen Wilhelmina's personal life of late has been the acquisition of a son-in-law in Prince Bernhard zu Lippe-Biesterfeld, whose line has not enjoyed temporal sovereignty in the hilly little Principality of Lippe-Detmold since 1849. Nobody in The Netherlands had ever heard of the Prince before his engagement to Juliana was announced, but all knew that he must fit the proper specifications of a Prince Consort. He must be of royal blood, a Protestant, of flawless character, in perfect health. He was all that, but he also proved...
Diplomatist. "Given to duty and very clever in carrying it out," was the way Fisherman-Essayist Henry van Dyke described Queen Wilhelmina in the days when he was U. S. Minister to her court...