Word: wilhelmina
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Queen's Day. When a chorus of 19,000 children and adults gathered in the Dam to serenade her, 68-year-old Queen Wilhelmina could be seen plainly on the palace balcony, waving her hands like a drum majorette. Later on, at a huge pageant in the Olympic Stadium, the Queen clapped and laughed like a child at the circus. That day was Aug. 31, a day that has been the national holiday of The Netherlands for as long as most Hollanders could remember. "Why can't we celebrate the new Queen's birthday...
From the moment (11:33 a.m., Saturday, Sept. 4) when Wilhelmina dotted the second i of her bold signature at the solemn abdication ceremony in Amsterdam's Royal Palace, The Netherlands' Queen was her auburn-haired, 39-year-old daughter Juliana. By her own choice, Wilhelmina had become merely a dowager Princess of The Netherlands...
...Flavor of Greenwich. When Juliana was 26, she met Prince Bernhard zu Lippe-Biesterfeld, a charming young man-about-Europe who worked for I. G. Farben in Paris. Declared Wilhelmina: "This is not the marriage of The Netherlands to Germany [but] the marriage of my daughter to the man she loves, whom I have found worthy of her love." The story goes that when a German diplomat suggested how sensible it would be if The Netherlands indeed joined Germany, Juliana remarked: "Oh, I think Mama is too old to rule such a large country as Germany...
During the war, Bernhard fought ably with the Dutch army underground. The Dutch people took to him, as did their Queen. He became one of Wilhelmina's closest advisers and greatest favorites. Something of the playboy before the war, even taking a cocktail on Sundays, he settled down to a quiet, domestic postwar existence with Juliana at rambling, pleasant Soestdijk Palace. The household has the flavor of Greenwich, Conn. The Lippe-Biesterfelds like bridge, talky dinner parties, go to bed by 11. Each time Juliana expected a child, the nation waited excitedly to hear whether...
...Spirit of Bryn Mawr. Juliana is far more sociable than her formidable mother. "Wilhelmina never starts a conversation," say friends, "and Juliana never finishes...