Frederica of Hanover

Frederica of Hanover (Friederike Luise; Φρειδερίκη; 18 April 1917 – 6 February 1981) was Queen of Greece from 1 April 1947 until 6 March 1964 as the wife of King Paul.

Born Her Royal Highness Friederike Luise, Princess of Hanover, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, and Princess of Brunswick-Lüneburg on 18 April 1917 in Blankenburg am Harz, in the German Duchy of Brunswick, she was the only daughter and third child of Ernest Augustus, then reigning Duke of Brunswick, and his wife Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia, herself the only daughter of the German Emperor Wilhelm II.

Both her father and maternal grandfather abdicated their thrones in November 1918 following Germany's defeat in World War I, while her paternal grandfather had been stripped of his British royal dukedom the previous year.

In 1934, Adolf Hitler, in his ambition to link the British and German royal houses, asked for Frederica's parents to arrange for the marriage of their seventeen-year-old daughter to the Prince of Wales.

In her memoirs, Frederica's mother described that she and her husband were "shattered" and such a possibility "had never entered our minds".

Victoria Louise herself had once been considered as a potential bride for the very same person prior to her marriage.

Moreover, the age difference was too great (the Prince of Wales was twenty-three years Frederica's senior), and her parents were unwilling to "put any such pressure" on their daughter.

To her family, she was known as Freddie.

Prince Paul of Greece proposed to her during the summer of 1936, while he was in Berlin attending the 1936 Summer Olympics.

Paul was a son of King Constantine I and Frederica's great aunt Sophia.

Accordingly, they were maternal first cousins once removed.

They were also paternal second cousins as great-grandchildren of Christian IX of Denmark.

Their engagement was announced officially on 28 September 1937, and Britain's King George VI gave his consent pursuant to the Royal Marriages Act 1772 on 26 December 1937.

They married in Athens on 9 January 1938.

Frederica became Hereditary Princess of Greece, her husband being heir presumptive to his childless elder brother, King George II.

During the early part of their marriage, they resided at a villa in Psychiko in the suburbs of Athens.

Ten months after their marriage, their first child, the future Queen Sofía of Spain (and future mother of Felipe VI), was born on 2 November 1938.

On 2 June 1940, Frederica gave birth to the future King Constantine II.

At the peak of World War II, in April 1941, the Greek royal family was evacuated to Crete in a Sunderland flying boat.

Shortly afterwards, the German forces attacked Crete.

Frederica and her family were evacuated again, setting up a government-in-exile office in London.

In exile, King George II and the rest of the Greek royal family settled in South Africa.

Here Frederica's last child, Princess Irene, was born on 11 May 1942.

The South African leader, General Jan Smuts, served as her godfather.

The family eventually settled in Egypt in February 1944.

After the war, the 1946 Greek referendum restored King George to the throne.

The Hereditary Prince and Princess returned to their villa in Psychiko.

On 1 April 1947, George II died and Frederica's husband ascended the throne as Paul I, with Frederica as queen consort.

A Communist insurgency in Northern Greece led to the Greek Civil War.

The King and Queen toured Northern Greece under tight security to appeal for loyalty in the summer of 1947.

Queen Frederica was constantly attacked for her German ancestry.

Left-wing politicians in Greece repeatedly used the fact that the Kaiser was her grandfather, and that she had brothers who were members of the SS, as propaganda against her.

She was also criticized variously as "very Prussian" and "was a Nazi".

When she was in London representing her sick husband at the wedding of his first cousin Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark to King George VI's elder daughter Princess Elizabeth in November 1947, Winston Churchill remarked on the Kaiser being her grandfather.

Queen Frederica had replied acknowledging the fact, but reminding him that she was also descended from Queen Victoria, and that her father would be the British king if the country had operated under Salic Law (allowing only males to inherit the crown).

During the civil war, Queen Frederica set the Queen's Camps or Child Cities (translation of: Παιδο(υ)πόλεις / Paidopoleis or Paidupoleis) a network of 53 camps around Greece where she would rescue children of members of DSE and former partisans.

See the recent archival research from the General State Archives of Greece of the former Royal Palaces of letters from citizens from the area of Trikala to Frederiki for admission to hospitals or employment.

Μιχάλης Φύλλας,«Επιστολές Τρικαλινών στη βασίλισσα Φρειδερίκη «Στηρίζω εις σας μεγαλειοτάτη όλας μου τας ελπίδας...», Θεσσαλικό Ημερολόγιο, τομ.

77 (2020), σελ.282-286, και την Σάμο, Μιχάλης Φύλλας,«Επίκειται ο εξ ασιτείας θάνατός μου...».

Όψεις της σαμιακής κοινωνίας στις αρχές της δεκαετίας του '60», Απόπλους, τχ.83 (Άνοιξη 2020), σελ.330-336