Empress Auguste Victoria
Auguste Viktoria von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg (22 October 1858 - 11 April 1921) was Kaiser Wilhelm II’s first wife and the last German empress and last queen of Prussia.
When she came to the Netherlands in November 1918, she was already in ill health. Von Ilsemann, as well as his wife Elisabeth Bentinck, regularly wrote that they were worried about the empress's health. With her health problems increasing, they did not want to burden her with worries concerning, for example, the emperor's impending extradition.
Sweet and sensitive personality
Von Ilsemann and Elisabeth Bentinck describe the empress as a very kind, sweet and sensitive person. Perhaps a little too sweet: in order to support her husband unconditionally, Auguste Viktoria was not always completely honest. Occasionally, she confirmed Wilhelm in his errors and she also wanted to hide the fact from him that her health was failing.
In 1921, she died at the age of 62, only shortly after taking up residence with the emperor at Huis Doorn.
Although Bentinck and Von Ilsemann sometimes expressed surprise at how unkind the emperor could be to his wife from time to time, after her death he spoke of her as follows:
ʽIt is a true consolation that the empress died so gently; she has been relieved of heavy, prolonged suffering. Yes, it will be quiet in the house now that this woman of noble birth is no more. The wicked people, whose fault it is that the empress had to die in a foreign country instead of in her homeland, will not go unpunished. What a wonderful person she was! (...)'
