| Sophia Albertina | |
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| Reign | 1787-1803 |
| Predecessor | Anna Amalia |
| House | House of Vasa |
| Father | Adolf Frederick of Sweden |
| Mother | Louisa Ulrika of Prussia |
| Born | 8 October/18 October 1753 Stockholm |
| Died | 17 March 1829 Stockholm |
| Religion | Lutheran |
Princess Sophia Albertina of Sweden (full name: Sophia Maria Lovisa Fredrika Albertina; 8 October 1753 – 17 March 1829) was the last Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg Abbey and as such reigned as vassal monarch of the Holy Roman Empire.
Sophia Albertina was the daughter of King Adolf Frederick of Sweden and Louisa Ulrika of Prussia. She was thus a princess of Sweden, a princess of Holstein-Gottorp and a sister to Gustav III of Sweden. She was a member of the Accademia di San Luca.
She was given her two names as namesake of her two grandmothers: the Prussian Queen Sophia Dorothea of Hanover and Margravine Albertina Frederica of Baden-Durlach.
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Sophia Albertina and her youngest brother, Prince Frederick Adolf of Sweden, were the favourites of their mother, and also very close themselves. Sophia Albertina lived at ther mothers court and under her strict control until the latter’s death in 1782. During the conflict of 1778, when her mother, the Queen Dowager, supported the rumour that her brother King Gustav III had given the task to father his heir to Count Frederick Adolf Munck, Sophia Albertina and her brother Frederick sided with their mother. [1] In 1780, when the carriage of the Queen Dowager and Sophia Albertina met the carriages of the King and the Queen, Sophia Albertina avoided a confrontation by waving at the royal couple, thereby hiding her mother from view. [2] In 1781, she came in conflict with the King, who was close to ban her from court when her mother refused her to pay her respect to the Queen, but the situation was solved by her sister-in-law, Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp. At her mothers death, she and her brother Frederick burned some of their mothers papers before they could be seen by the King. In Stockholm, a palace was built as her residence, known today as Arvfurstens Palats.
Sophia Albertina was not described as beautiful or intelligent, but she enjoyed parties and participated enthusiastically in the festivities of the court of Gustav III. According to her sister-in-law, Hedvig Elizabeth Charlotte, she was good hearted but very temperamental and hard to handle, and she is described as generous and caring but easily provoked in to conflicts. [3] Sophia Albertina did not like to see women be treated badly, and often intervened when she considered a woman at court to have been insulted or in any way badly treated, such as when Gustav III in her eyes treated the ladies-in-waiting participating in his amateur theatre to hard, and when her sister-in-law was given a bad seat in the theatre, which caused Sophia Albertina to accuse her of not attending to her rights. [4] She also intervened for Magdalena Rudenschöld during the Armfelt conspiracy, and managed to have the formers death sentence revoked. [5] During the Parlament of 1789, when Gustav III came in conflict with the nobility, Sophia Albertina joined with her sister-in-law to demonstrate her views by refusing to attend court.
Sophia Albertina was interested in theatre and dance, though, according to Axel von Fersen the Elder, she was not very good at it, and she participated in the amateur theatre at court. She was also interested in riding and hunting and had at least thirteen named dogs as pets. She painted in pastel and made profile portraits and caricatures. During a visit to Rome in 1793, she was inducted to the Accademia di San Luca.[6]
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Early on there were plans for a possible marriage. In 1772 her brother, King Gustav III, who lived in a childless and unconsummated marriage, had the idea of letting his younger siblings provide an heir to the throne, and both Sophia Albertina and her brother Prince Charles was considered with this task. [7] Among the marriage partners considered for Sophia Albertina were her cousin Prince Peter of Holstein-Gottorp, Prince-Bishop of Lübeck, but these plans were abandoned in 1780. [8] King Stanisław August Poniatowski was also mentioned, but nothing came of the plans.
Sophia Albertina was sometimes called The Princess with the ice heart. However, there was a well known legend among the people of Stockholm which indicated that she was not excluded from having a love life. There were well known and persistent rumours that Sophia Albertina gave birth to a child sometime in 1785/86. [9]The child has sometime been said to be a son, named Peter Niklas, or a daughter, named Sophia after herself. [10]The place for the birth has been suggested as Allmänna Barnbördshuset, a public hospital, where women were allowed to give birth with their faces covered by a mask to preserve their anonymity. The daughter was allegedly brought up by foster parents and arranged to be married to a wealthy merchant as an adult. This rumour is unconfirmed and the truth of it is unknown. The father has been pointed out as Count Fredrik Vilhelm von Hessenstein, son of King Frederick I of Sweden and his mistress Hedvig Taube. Another suggested father was Gustav Badin, her African butler, but there is no mention that the child was of mixed race.
Fredrik Vilhelm von Hessenstein is often pointed out as the love of Sophia Albertina[11], and she is said to have wished to marry him, but Gustav III refused to grant his permission because the mother of Hessenstein had been a royal mistress. The intimate friend of Sophia Albertina, Caroline Rudenschöld, refers to these issues in a letter from 1792, were she mentions two love interests of Sophia Albertina. Rudenschöld mentioned that she was concerned about a confidence the Princess had given her, but that she was assured that Sophia Albertina would “do everything what is in her power to do to overcome this unfortunate passion” and to “use her sense to overpower it”[12] , and she ads: “I can understand that this inclination of Yours is so much more unfortunate than the last one”.[13]
In 1795, the Lolotte Forssberg affair occurred, which caused considerable attention. Lolotte Forssberg was the chamber maid and foster sibling of Sophia Albertina. In 1795, an anonymous letter was found by Sophia Albertina, which pointed out Lolotte Forssberg as her secret sister. Sophia Albertina issued an investigation, and believed herself to have reasons to believe that Forssberg was indeed her sister,[14] and therefore decided to take responsibility for her welfare and treat her officially as a sister. She believed for a time that Forssberg was her legitimate sister, whose births her parents had reasons to hide, and therefore demanded that Lolotte Forssberg should be officially recognised. [15] This caused a scandal, not only in Sweden, but also in Germany, were her maternal relatives, the Prussian Royal Family, expressed their disapproval over what they perceived as a deception for which she had been a victim. [16]It is likely, that Lolotte Forssberg was in fact her sister, but her illegitimate half sister by her father and a lady-in waiting. [17]In 1799, Sophia Albertina herself stated that Lolotte Forssberg was her illegitimate halfsister, and arranged a marriage with her courtier, Count Magus Stenbock, and had her presented at court. Gossip would later suggest, that Lolotte Forssberg was the illegitimate child of Sophia Albertina herself, but as Forssberg was born in 1766, she was evidently not the same woman as the alleged secret daughter of Sophia Albertina and Frederick Hessenstein, who had been born in 1785. Lolotte Forssberg was to remain with Sophia Albertina her entire life, and was named as her heir in her will.
Sophia Albertina was given the title of Coadjutrix in the Quedlinburg Abbey by the grace of her maternal uncle Frederick the Great in 1767.
In 1787, one or two years after her secret childbirth was to have taken place, she succeeded her maternal aunt, Anna Amelia of Prussia, as Princess Abbess of Quedlinburg, a Protestant convent of women in Germany. As such, she was the reigning head of state of a small German state directly under the Holy Roman Empire, which gave her the status of monarch in the Holy Roman Empire.
When she ascended to the post, she received an offer from the King of Prussia, Frederick the Great, who wished to "relieve" her from the position by buying the realm of Quedlingburg from her and annexing it to Prussia. She declined the offer by saying that she was sure that he was not serious. Sophia Albertina travelled Quedlinburg in 1787, and made her oath as abbess 15 October 1787.
As Princess-Abbess, she was active in the rule of the city of Quedlinburg, and her rule has been described as a popular one. She founded schools for poor children, established the first theatre in the city and increased the salary of vicars. Gossip pointed out Quedlinburg as a place where noblewomen went to give birth to their illegitimate children in secret. She brought with her a court of 50 people, and often entertained guests, particularly her German relatives, during her stays at Quedlinburg. Sophia Albertina was present in Quedlinburg from 1787 to 1788, a second period from 1792 until 1795, and a third period from 1799 until 1803.
In 1803, during the German Mediatization, the state of Quedlinburg was dissolved and Sophia Albertina was thereby automatically deposed from her throne. She was, however, granted the income for life.
After the dissolution of Qudlinburg Abbey, Sophia Albertina stayed in Sweden permanently. She was not close to the elected heir, Charles August of Augustenburg, because he did not like the company of women. [18]He did, however, offer her the position of Abbess at the Danish Vallo Convent, after the 1809 government had cancelled her pension and the allowance from Quedlinburg had became irregular, but she declined the offer. [19]During the reign of her brother Charles XIII, she seldom appeared at court, because he did not like Lolotte Forssberg, whose influence over Sophia Albertina was said to dominate her last years.[20]
Sophia Albertina was not close to the new Bernadotte dynasty, but during her last years, she spent much time with the Crown Prince couple. She was well aware of her position as the last member of the former dynasty. She participated in the ceremonies of the royal court until her: at the wedding of the Crown Prince in Stockholm in 1823, she placed the bridal crown on the head of Josephine of Leuchtenberg, and in 1826, she was a witness of the birth of the future king Charles XV of Sweden, and had the task to inform the King of the birth and the gender of the newborn.
| Regnal titles | ||
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| Preceded by Anna Amalia |
Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg 1787-1803 |
German Mediatisation |
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