- For other uses, see Wilhelmina (disambiguation).
Wilhelmina (Wilhelmina Helena Pauline Marie of Orange-Nassau;
August 31, 1880 – November
28, 1962) was queen regnant of the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1890 to 1948 and Queen Mother (with the title of Princess) from 1948 to 1962. She ruled the
Netherlands for fifty years, longer than any other Dutch monarch. Her reign saw many turning points in both Dutch and world
history: World War I and World War II, the
Great Crisis of 1933, as well as the
decline of the Netherlands as a major colonial empire.
Outside the Netherlands she is primarily remembered for her role in the Second World War, in which she proved to be a great
inspiration to the Dutch resistance, as well as a prominent leader of the Dutch
government in exile.[1]
Early life
She was the only child of King William III and his second wife,
Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont. Her childhood was characterised by a close
relationship with her parents, especially with her father, who was already 63 years of age when she was born.
King William had three sons with his first wife, Queen Sophie. However when
Wilhelmina was born, William had already outlived two of them and only the childless Prince Alexander was alive, so she was second in line to the throne since birth. When
Wilhelmina was four, Alexander died and the young girl became heiress apparent.
King William III died on November 23, 1890 and, although
Princess Wilhelmina became Queen of the Netherlands instantly, her mother, Emma, was named Regent. In 1895, Wilhelmina visited the venerable and formidable Queen Victoria, who penned a crisp
evaluation in her diary: "The young Queen ... still has her hair handing loose. She is slender and graceful, and makes an
impression as a very intelligent and very cute girl. She speaks good English and knows how to behave with charming
manners."[1]
In 1901 she married Hendrik, Duke of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Although the marriage was said to be essentially without love, initially Wilhelmina truly cared for
Hendrik, and it is likely that those feelings were mutual.[citation needed] Hendrik however, suffered from his role as prince-consort, stating that it
was boring to be nothing more than decoration, forced always to walk one step behind his wife.[citation needed] He had no power in the Netherlands,
and Wilhelmina made sure this remained so.[citation needed]
A series of miscarriages also contributed to a crisis in their marriage. Prince Hendrik is reported to have had several
illegitimate children.[citation needed] Over time the marriage became less happy.[citation needed] The birth of Juliana, on April 30, 1909,
was met with great relief after eight years of childless marriage. [2]
Reign
Tactful, and careful to operate within the limitations of what was expected by the Dutch people and their elected
representatives, the strong-willed Wilhelmina became a forceful personality who spoke and acted her mind. These qualities showed
up early on in her reign when, at the age of 20, Queen Wilhelmina ordered a Dutch warship to South
Africa to rescue Paul Kruger, the embattled President of the Transvaal. For this, Wilhelmina gained international stature and earned the respect and admiration of people
all over the world. Wilhelmina had a stern dislike of Great Britain, which had annexed the republics of Transvaal and
Orange Free State in the Boer War. The
Boers were descendants of early Dutch colonists, with whom Wilhelmina felt very closely linked.
Queen Wilhelmina also had a keen understanding of business matters and her investments made her the world's richest woman, a
title retained by her daughter and granddaughter, Beatrix. The Dutch Royal
Family is still reputed to be the single largest shareholder of Royal Dutch Shell.
Prior to the outbreak of the First World War, a young Wilhelmina visited the powerful Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, who boasted to the Queen of a relatively small country, "my
guards are seven feet tall and yours are only shoulder-high to them". Wilhelmina smiled politely and replied, "Quite true, Your
Majesty, your guards are seven feet tall. But when we open our dikes, the water is ten feet deep!".[2]
World War I
Wilhelmina and her daughter Juliana, circa 1914
Although the Netherlands remained neutral during World War I, sizeable German investments
in the Dutch economy combined with a large trading partnership in goods forced the United Kingdom to blockade the Dutch ports in an attempt to weaken the
German Empire. The Dutch government traded with Germany in response. German soldiers were
given Edam cheese for their rations before an assault.
Wilhemina was a "soldier's queen"; being a woman, she could not be Supreme Commander, but she nevertheless used every
opportunity she had to inspect her forces. On many occasions she appeared without prior notice, wishing to see the reality, not a
prepared show. She loved her soldiers, but was very unhappy with most of her governments, which used the military as a constant
source for budget-cutting. Wilhelmina wanted a small but well trained and equipped army. However, this was far from the
reality.
In the war, she felt she was a "Queen-On-Guard". She was always wary of a German attack,
especially in the beginning. However, violation of Dutch territorial sovereignty came from both Britain and the United States, who, with the blockade, captured many Dutch trade and cargo ships in an attempt to disrupt
the German war effort. This led to increased tensions between the Netherlands and the Allied forces.
Civil unrest, spurred on by the Bolshevik revolt in Imperial Russia in 1917, gripped the Netherlands after the war. A
socialist leader named Troelstra tried to
overthrow the government and the Queen. Instead of a violent revolution, he wanted to control the Tweede Kamer, the legislative body of Parliament, and hoped to achieve this by means of elections, convinced that the
working class would support him. However, the popularity of the young Queen helped restore confidence in the government.
Wilhelmina brought about a mass show of support by riding with her daughter through the mobs in an open carriage. It was very
clear that the revolution would not succeed.
After the armistice ending World War I, Wilhelm fled to the Netherlands, where he was
granted political asylum by the Dutch government, partly owing to the Kaiser's family links with Queen Wilhelmina. In response to
Allied efforts to get their hands on the deposed Kaiser, Wilhelmina called the Allied Ambassadors to her presence and lectured
them on the rights of asylum.[3]
Queen Wilhelmina's image on a stamp which was used in the period between WWI and WWII.
Between the wars
During the 1920s and 1930s, the Netherlands began to emerge as an industrial power. Engineers reclaimed vast amounts of land
that had been under water by building the Zuiderzee scheme. The death of Wilhelmina's
husband, Prince Hendrik, in 1934 brought
an end to a difficult year that also saw the passing of her mother Queen
Emma.
The interbellum, and most notably the economic crisis of the '30s, was also the period in which Wilhelmina's personal power
reached its zenith; under the successive governments of a staunch monarchist prime minister, Hendrik Colijn (ARP), Wilhelmina was deeply involved
in most questions of state.
In 1939 Colijn's fifth and last government was swept away by a vote of no confidence two days after its formation. It is
widely accepted that Wilhelmina herself was behind the formation of this last government, which was designed to be an
extra-parliamentary or 'royal' cabinet. The Queen was deeply sceptical of the parliamentary system and tried to bypass it
covertly more than once.
She also arranged the marriage between her daughter Juliana and Bernhard of
Lippe-Biesterfeld, a German prince who had lost most of his possessions after the Great War. Although it was claimed that
he was initially a supporter of the Nazi regime, no hard evidence of this has ever been found or
publicised. It should be stated, however, that there was never a serious investigation into the matter. Prince Bernhard later
became a very popular figure in the Netherlands.
World War II
Monarchical Styles of
Queen Wilhelmina
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On 10 May 1940, Nazi
Germany invaded the Netherlands, and Queen Wilhelmina and her family were evacuated on HMS Hereward to the United Kingdom three days later. Queen
Wilhelmina had wanted to stay in the Netherlands: she had planned to go to the southern province of Zeeland with her troops in
order to coordinate further resistance from the town of Breskens and remain there until help
arrived, much as King Albert I of Belgium had done during World War I. She went
aboard a British cruiser at The Hague, which was to take her there. However, when she was on
board the captain stated that he was forbidden to make contact with the Dutch shore, as Zeeland was under heavy attack from the
Luftwaffe and it was too dangerous to return. Wilhelmina then took the decision to go to
Britain, planning to return as soon as possible. Wilhelmina also spent time in
Canada during the war, staying at the Governor General's residence, Rideau Hall. It was said that while she was there she made a great impact on the household, notably for
living relatively simply. The Queen insisted on doing her shopping personally, walking the streets of Ottawa unassisted (though
simply raising her hand to stop traffic whenever she wished to cross the road), and travelling to the United States on a regular
civilian train.[4]
The Dutch armed forces in the Netherlands, apart from those in Zeeland, surrendered on
15 May. In Britain, Queen Wilhelmina took charge of the Dutch government in exile, setting up a chain of command and immediately communicating a
message to her people.
Relations between the Dutch government and the Queen were tense, with mutual dislike growing as the war progressed. Wilhelmina
went on to be the most prominent figure, owing to her experience and knowledge. She was also very popular and respected among the
leaders of the world. The government did not have a parliament to back them and had few employees to assist them. A first test of
power came about when the Dutch prime minister, Dirk Jan de Geer, intended to open
negotiations with the Nazis for a separate peace, as he believed the Allies would not win. Wilhelmina was against this and sought
to remove the prime minister from power. With the aid of a minister, Pieter
Gerbrandy, she succeeded.
During the war her photograph was a sign of resistance against the Germans. Like Winston
Churchill, Queen Wilhelmina broadcast messages to the Dutch people over Radio Oranje. As always, the Queen pulled no punches, calling Adolf Hitler "the arch-enemy of mankind". Her late-night broadcasts were eagerly awaited by her people, who
had to hide in order to listen to them illegally. An anecdote published in her New York Times obituary illustrates how she
was valued by her subjects during this period: "Although celebration of the Queen’s birthday was forbidden by the Nazis, it
was commemorated nevertheless. When churchgoers in the small fishing town of Hizen rose and sang one verse of the Dutch national
anthem, Wilhelmus van Nassauwe, on the Queen’s birthday, the town paid a fine of 60,000 guilders."[5]
During the war, the Queen was almost killed by a bomb that took the lives of several of her guards and severely damaged her
country home near South Mimms in England. In 1944 Queen
Wilhelmina became only the second woman to be inducted into the Order of the Garter.
Churchill described her as the only real man among the governments-in-exile in London.
In England she developed ideas about a new political and social life for the Dutch after the liberation. She wanted a strong
cabinet formed by people active in the resistance. She dismissed De Geer during the war and installed a prime minister with the
approval of other Dutch politicians. The Queen "hated" politicians, instead stating a love for the people. When the Netherlands
was liberated in 1945 she was disappointed to see the same political factions taking power as before the war.
Following the end of World War II, Queen Wilhelmina made the decision not to return to
her palace but move into a mansion in The Hague, where she lived for eight months, and she
travelled through the countryside to motivate people, sometimes using a bicycle instead of a car. However, in 1947, while the country was still recovering from World War II, the revolt in the oil-rich Dutch East Indies saw sharp criticism of the Queen by the Dutch economic elite. Her loss of popularity
and the forced departure from the East Indies under international pressure led to her abdication soon after.
Later years
On September 4, 1948, after a reign of 58 years and 50
days, Wilhelmina abdicated in favour of her daughter Juliana. She was
thenceforward styled "Her Royal Highness Princess Wilhelmina of the Netherlands". After her reign, the influence of the Dutch
monarchy began to decline but the country's love for its royal family continued. No longer queen, Wilhelmina retreated to
Het Loo Palace, making few public appearances until the country was devastated by the
North Sea flood of 1953. Once again she travelled around the country to
encourage and motivate the Dutch people.
During her last years she wrote her autobiography entitled Eenzaam, maar niet alleen (Lonely but Not Alone), in which
she gave account of the events in her life, and revealed her strong religious feelings and motivations.
Queen Wilhelmina died at the age of 82 on November 28, 1962
and was buried in the Dutch Royal Family crypt in the Nieuwe Kerk in
Delft, on 8 December 1962. The funeral was, at her request and contrary to protocol, completely in
white to give expression to her belief that earthly death was the beginning of eternal life [6].
Ancestry
References
- ^ "Wilhelmina of Netherlands Dies" (UPI), New York Times, November 28,
1962. pp. A1-A39.
- ^ "Caged no more," Time. December 7, 1962.
- ^ "Worried Queen," Time. November 27, 1939.
- ^ Hubbard, R.H.; Rideau Hall; McGill-Queen’s University Press;
Montreal and London; 1977; p. 203
- ^ "Wilhelmina of Netherlands, " New York Times, p. A39.
- ^ Wilhelmina; Eenzaam maar niet alleen; Uitgeverij W. ten Have;
Amsterdam; 1959; p. 251
External links
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