Princess Victoria Elizabeth Augusta Charlotte was born on July 24, 1860, at the New Palace in Potsdam, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. She was the eldest daughter and second child of Prince Frederick William of Prussia, later Emperor Frederick III, and Victoria, the Princess Royal of Great Britain. Through her mother, she was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
Her older brother was the future Kaiser Wilhelm II. His difficult birth left him with a malformed left arm, and his health concerns dominated the family's attention in Charlotte's early years. As second in line to the throne, he was expected to become emperor one day.
Charlotte's mother, known affectionately as Vicky, was initially close to her eldest daughter. Their relationship changed as Charlotte grew older. By the age of two, she had earned the nickname "sweet naughty little Dita," and she proved the most difficult of the family's eventual eight children.
As a young girl, Charlotte was often nervous and easily agitated, sometimes pulling anxiously at her clothes. She bit her nails so severely that her parents made her wear gloves to stop the habit, though the measure offered only temporary relief. Letters and diaries from the time record a strained mother-daughter relationship that did not soften over the years.
At just 21 months old, Victoria wrote with concern about her daughter's tantrums. When Charlotte was three, her mother complained of hyperactivity and sudden mood swings. Queen Victoria urged her daughter from London to be more patient with her granddaughter, though with little success.
Some historians have suggested Charlotte may have inherited a medical condition from her British ancestors, one that could be traced back to the 18th century. Her behavior was not her mother's only frustration. Charlotte was also an indifferent student, which disappointed a mother who placed great importance on education.
Victoria was extremely strict with her three eldest children: Wilhelm, Charlotte, and Henry, born in 1862. After Henry came two more boys and three girls. The boys, Prince Sigismund and Prince Waldemar, died in childhood. Sigismund died in 1866 before his second birthday, and Waldemar died in 1879 at the age of 11.
Their deaths devastated Victoria. Over time, a noticeable difference emerged in how she treated her children. She remained strict with Wilhelm, Charlotte, and Henry, while becoming more affectionate and indulgent toward her three younger surviving daughters, Victoria, Sophie, and Margaret.
The difference did not go unnoticed. Wilhelm, Charlotte, and Henry sensed their mother's disappointment and grew increasingly resentful as they watched her shower their younger siblings with affection they felt they had been denied. For Charlotte, these tensions left a lasting mark.
In January 1871, the German Empire was formed under Prussian domination, and Charlotte's grandfather became Emperor Wilhelm I. The Second Industrial Revolution was transforming Germany into an economic behemoth, and the new imperial power quickly emerged as one of the world's great powers.
Royal daughters like Charlotte were suddenly courted by Europe's royal houses as potential marriage partners for any country seeking closer ties to the German Empire. The details of Charlotte's engagement, announced on April 1, 1877, just before her 17th birthday, were therefore somewhat surprising.
She would not marry a foreign prince. Instead, she was to wed her second cousin, Bernhard, the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Meiningen, a soldier who had fought in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 and who was also a scholar. The marriage did not unite Germany with a foreign power, but it served a broader dynastic purpose.
By marrying the heir of Saxe-Meiningen, Charlotte would strengthen ties between the Prussian royal family and another German ruling house. This was significant within the newly established German Empire, where Prussia dominated the imperial structure but individual German states and their ruling families retained considerable influence.
The match was not entirely arranged between strangers. Charlotte already knew Bernhard, and their courtship had begun during a fairground trolley ride in Berlin. Charlotte's older brother decided to speed up the ride, and when his frightened sister clung to Bernhard, an unlikely romance was set in motion.
During her teenage years, her difficult behavior had taken new forms. She was known for flirting, spreading malicious gossip, and stirring up trouble, traits her mother hoped she would outgrow. Victoria now hoped marriage might give her daughter direction, writing that "At least her wicked qualities will not be able to cause any harm."
Charlotte was strong-willed and knew what she wanted, while Bernhard was considerably more reserved. Princess Catherine Radziwill, familiar with the Imperial Court, later claimed that Charlotte herself had pushed for the marriage despite her young age because she wanted to escape her mother's influence.
The wedding took place on February 18, 1878, at the chapel of Berlin Schloss. Charlotte was 17, and Bernhard was 26. Some guests remarked on how well Charlotte looked, but behind closed doors she was said to have been quite ill and fainted several times during the day, a sign of how fragile her health always was.
The newlyweds settled at Potsdam, where on May 12, 1879, Charlotte gave birth to her only child, a daughter named Feodora. Notably, she was Queen Victoria's first great-grandchild.
Charlotte had come to relish Berlin's glittering high society, where she was admired for her fashion, lively parties, and sharp tongue. She resented anything that risked this freedom, and she particularly disliked pregnancy. After Feodora's birth, Charlotte appears to have made a private decision: she would have no more children.
Before long, she was back enjoying society life in Berlin and taking long holidays. In the coming years, however, a dangerous scandal would ruin her reputation and bring her lifestyle crashing down.
In March 1888, Charlotte's father finally ascended the German throne as Emperor Frederick III. Tragically, his reign lasted just 99 days before he died of throat cancer. His death brought Charlotte's brother to the throne as Wilhelm II, and Charlotte's position at the Imperial Court became even more prominent.
A fateful event a few years later would truly cement Charlotte's notorious legacy. In January 1891, she hosted what was supposed to be an ordinary skating party and dance at the Jagdschloss Grunewald hunting lodge outside Berlin. The exclusive guest list included top-tier German aristocracy, notably Duke Ernst Günther of Schleswig-Holstein and Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse.
Much of what happened that night has been obscured by rumor and legend. What is clear is that heavy drinking and various simultaneous illicit extramarital affairs turned a wild social gathering into the beginning of a scandal that lasted for years.
In the days that followed, dozens of individuals began receiving blackmail letters, presumably from someone who had attended the event writing anonymously. These described what had happened, dragged up old salacious gossip about some attendees, threatened to reveal who had been present, and in some cases included explicit collages and images.
Word of the letters soon spread beyond the royal court, and suspicion quickly fell on Charlotte. Her reputation for sharp-tongued gossip led some contemporaries to believe she was behind them. She herself had received letters from the anonymous sender, though several people believed at the time that she had merely sent these to herself to cover up her actions.
The scandal escalated over months and dragged on intermittently in the years that followed. There was even a debate in the Reichstag on the letter scandal. Eventually, in June 1894, Liberet von Kotze, a master of ceremonies at the Imperial Court who had attended the January 1891 gathering, was arrested after suspicions emerged that he was at least responsible for the collages included with some of the letters.
Blotting paper was found in his desk, and an examination determined that the handwriting was nearly identical, though late 19th century handwriting made it difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. He protested his innocence and was exonerated after being court-martialed. Kotze eventually reacquired his position at court, though not before fighting several duels against his accusers.
Despite the heavy suspicion on Charlotte, investigators eventually pinned the case on a different suspect. They concluded, perhaps wrongly, that the letters had been written by Ernst Günther's mistress, who was deported to France and became an easy scapegoat.
Charlotte was far from escaping unscathed. The letter's author had somehow obtained her personal diary, which contained intimate secrets about the Imperial family and the court. Charlotte may not have written the letters, but her own carelessness had helped make the scandal possible.
Wilhelm never fully forgave his sister. Bernhard was transferred to a regiment in Breslau, effectively exiling the couple from Berlin, while Wilhelm restricted their ability to travel abroad without giving up their royal privileges. The damage went far beyond Charlotte herself, striking at the reputation of the German monarchy.
For Charlotte, another nightmare was taking root at home: a torment of mental breakdown, agony, and a terrifying royal disease. The letter scandal, also known as the Kotze affair, was not her only difficulty in the 1890s. Her relationship with her daughter was also increasingly tense.
Charlotte was, by all accounts, not a naturally affectionate mother. She had been happy to leave Feodora to be raised by her grandmother for protracted periods while she socialized in Berlin. Like mother, like daughter, Feodora began seeking out a husband so she could escape her unhappy family environment.
In September 1898, the 19-year-old princess married 33-year-old Prince Heinrich XXX Reuss, a man who was neither wealthy nor particularly high-ranking. The Imperial family considered the match beneath her, causing a serious rift between Charlotte and Feodora. The split grew increasingly bitter in the years that followed.
By 1900, Feodora was telling friends that her mother was actively spreading malicious gossip about her at court, including rumors that Feodora had contracted a venereal disease from her husband. In truth, Feodora was simply enduring a heartbreaking inability to conceive, undergoing a series of painful and dangerous procedures in a desperate bid to have a child.
What makes the feud between mother and daughter especially peculiar is that both women were seemingly quite ill in ways that affected their behavior toward each other. Charlotte's catalog of health issues was recorded in detail over the years in her letters to her doctor.
These included psychological symptoms such as fits of depression, combined with physical issues like severe itching, rashes, swelling, nausea, and dizziness. Later, she even reported occasional partial paralysis of her limbs while her urine color darkened. One night in 1909, she began screaming and ranting for hours until her doctor sedated her.
Feodora suffered from many of the same symptoms, the only difference being that her condition appeared even more advanced at a younger age than her mother's. Late 19th century medicine tended to characterize behavior like this as hysteria, especially when displayed by women.
Modern analysis has looked at Charlotte and Feodora's wider family background, in particular the case of their maternal ancestor King George III of Great Britain, to understand what was wrong with them. George suffered from bouts of hysteria and mania on and off from 1788 onward, and spent the last 10 years of his life, between 1810 and 1820, in a world of his own.
The most likely cause of what used to be termed the madness of King George was porphyria. This is a metabolic disorder in which an enzyme deficiency creates porphyrins in the body that poison the system over time and lead to an array of both psychological and physical symptoms. There is a convincing, though unprovable, case that both Charlotte and Feodora suffered from a hereditary form of porphyria, explaining both their tense relationship and Charlotte's more problematic behavior throughout her adult life.
Charlotte's health continued to deteriorate through the 1900s and into the 1910s. These were difficult years for the German Imperial family as a whole. Her brother, the emperor, suffered a quasi-psychological breakdown in the late 1900s owing to the impact of the Eulenburg affair at court, which had seen questions raised about his own sexuality.
His reckless foreign policy also drove Germany toward conflict with Britain and France and contributed in no small part to the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914. Right before that conflict erupted, Charlotte's husband succeeded as Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. The New York Times subsequently ran a story with the headline "The Kaiser's clever sister is now on a throne."
Charlotte's health carried on declining during the war years. By the winter of 1917, she was reporting increased kidney pain and digestive disorders, and her mobility had become quite restricted. A lot of her time was spent in a clinic where she was reliant to a growing degree on morphine for pain relief.
She lived long enough to see her brother abdicate at the start of November 1918 and Germany's defeat in the war. As the German Empire and its old system collapsed, her husband Bernhard relinquished his title under pressure from the Meiningen Workers and Soldiers Council as the German Revolution erupted.
Charlotte spent the next year between clinics and moving houses before suffering a heart attack on October 1, 1919. She was 59 years old. Her husband died nine years later at the age of 76 and was buried next to Charlotte at Schloss Altenstein in Thuringia.
Sadly, there is no evidence that she and Feodora ever reconciled after their earlier difficulties. Despite her own poor health, Feodora lived until 1945, when she, like her mother before her, died not long after a world war had ended. Despite Charlotte's participation and contribution, the identity of the anonymous blackmailer in the letter scandal of the early 1890s has never been proven beyond a doubt.