Marie of Saxe-Altenburg, Queen of Hanover

Queen Marie of Hanover
Portrait by Joseph Stieler

In the middle of the 19th century, the German kingdom of Hanover was ruled by King Ernest Augustus, a British prince by birth, who was also the Duke of Cumberland. Long before Ernest Augustus became king, he had married the rather controversial and scandalous Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Although their marriage can be said that it was out of love, their relationship with his family was quite sour. Frederica was disliked by most members of the British royal family and when Ernest Augustus became King of Hanover, he and Frederica wasted no time in setting up their court in Hanover. Frederica had only four years as queen and she died after an illness. She failed to endear herself with the people and as a result she did not become a popular queen.

Fortunately, her successor, the daughter-in-law she never met, was immensely popular with the people of Hanover.

Hanover's next and most popular queen, Marie, was born a princess of Saxe-Hildburghausen on the 14th of April 1818, the eldest daughter of  Joseph, the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Hildburghausen and Amelia, Duchess of Wurttemberg.  She had five younger sisters, the two of them - Elisabeth and Alexandra - became Grand Duchess of Oldenburg and Grand Duchess of Russia, respectively. As a little girl, Marie and her family moved to Altenburg from their native Hildburghausen as a result of a transfer of territories among the Saxon duchies, and she and her siblings became princesses of Saxe-Altenburg instead.

King George V of Hanover by Franz Kruger.

At the age of 21, Marie first met the then Crown Prince George of Hanover in his summer residence, Schloss Monbrillant. But it was during a summer vacation on the island of Norderney that the two fell in love. They discovered that they both shared many things in common, particularly their devotion to religion and love for music. They were also temperamentally suited with each other and both were simple and down-to-earth. 

George was the only surviving child of King Ernest Augustus and Queen Frederica. He was by all accounts, a sweet-natured, sensitive, intelligent boy who was blinded in one eye at the age of nine by a childhood illness and then lost the sight of his other eye on an unfortunate incident involving the brass weight at the end of a curtain cord a few years later.  From then on, he could only distinguish between light and dark. "I'm still alive and I'm already buried. Blind or dead is pretty much the same thing", wrote the frustrated prince. All medical efforts to save his vision have all been unsuccessful. 

In 1843, George and Marie married in Schlosskirche and it was followed by a five-day celebration. They settled in Fürstenhof in Calenberger Neustadt, where they lived in an almost middle-class family life. By all accounts, they had an exemplary marriage and were devoted to each other and their children. Marie's inclination to Pietism and her insistence to breastfeed her children earned the ire of her father-in-law - he even refused to dine with her at a table. Ernest Augustus also disapproved of George and Marie driving in a carriage together. However, the crown prince couple was extremely popular among the population. So it was said that Marie tenderly called her husband "my man" or "angel man" and made no secret of it.

George and Marie succeeded to the throne of Hanover upon the death of King Ernest Augustus in 1851. The now King George V had a castle built for his wife as a birthday present, the Marienburg Castle. During their reign, the courtly and bourgeois musical life of Hanover experienced a great boom. The king and queen surrounded themselves with musicians and artists, and Marie immersed herself in charitable works. She founded the Henriettenstiftung - a hospital which was named after her beloved grandmother. 

Queen Marie wearing the Russian
Order of St. Catherine
(courtesy of the Royal Collection)

During the Austro-Prussian War, George sided with Austria, which was defeated eventually by Prussia. As a result, he was expelled from Hanover when the victorious Prussians annexed Hanover. Nevertheless, George never abdicated; he went into exile in Vienna, while Marie and the children initially stayed at the Marienburg as an act of defiance, because the castle was the family's private property and could therefore not be confiscated by Prussia. She was able to successfully smuggled abroad all the Hanoverian crown jewels and other precious items before finally leaving for Austria herself and her children. There, the family moved into a villa in Gmunden near Salzburg, which they rented and later acquired.

Marie had a good relationship with Queen Victoria and even in exile, she was invited to England to become a godmother to the British queen's granddaughter, Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein in 1872.

King George died in 1878 while he was in Paris where he attempted to re-establish his Guelphic Legion, a military unit aimed at a re-conquest of his kingdom. He was buried in St. George's Chapel in Windsor. Marie died 28 years later and was buried near the Schloss Cumberland in Austria.