Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1913-11-14
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At exactly five o'clock the maid
Knocked at the door of the Princess
Sophia. 1t was a loud knock, for her
highness had warned the girl she
would sleep deeply. The servant made
aAother noise. then crept away in the
e;,ly dawn.
I'll let her sleep till SIX she whis-
pared to herself. why should
rofal princess get up at five Per-
haEs | misunderstood the hour"
Then she went below to the kitchen,
where the half-dozen poorly paid serv-
ants of the impoverished prince of
SaEe,Weimar were waiting to tell her
the gossip of the household. She was
a new maid, and poorly informed
The Princess Sophia, it seemed,
losked herself in her room every night
with tragedy. The tragedy concern
ed che ultimate necessity of royal
houSes-money; and that ultimate lux
ury OF royal princesses-love. A hand
soma lieutenant had shot himself for
the sake of the Princess Sophia in
@ASGShAc iAFC CdIo pClOlCs LIZ was 81
poor that the father of the infatuated
girl. an impecunious fourth cousin of
the Saxon monarch, refused to con-
slider an alliance. And in Heidelberg
that very day young baron was
lodged whose proposal had been re-
jected as decisively. The baron's ia
theF was the most influential banker
in Germany; his contribution to the
sinking fortunes of Prince Wilhelm
of SaXG-Weimar would look like open
barter: the grand duke himself had
forbidden it. The second lover of the
Prir GEES Sophia was in short, too
rich.
Her Heart Broken.
The kitchen gossips added many
details about the royal girl whose
heart had been broken under the iron
discipline of her caste She had look
ed reOellious of late. Five years be-
fore she had broken an alliance with
a middle-aged, dissipated cousin, de-
creed by her relatives as worthy of
her hand. At twenty-seven, she was
nervous, embittered. Heidelberg so
ciety Jaw her rarely. Only her per-
sonal servants realized her natural
warmth of heart nowadays. Housed
in the same castle with her family,
she had estranged herself.
The new maid pondered 1t crossed
her mind that the fettered, beautiful
princess of Saxony might be glad to
An, LOT ~, bof af
her maid.
Suddenly she remembered that up
stairs the Princess Sophia still slept.
The little servant battered her
thumbs black and blue against the
chamber door before she gave up. No
one stirred inside. AS a Last resort
she peered through the keyhole. Then
the peasant girl saw the Princess
Sophia's answer to the imperial de-
crees that had separated her tortured
heart from her first lover because he
was too poor and from her second be-
cause he was too rich.
The Princess Sophia had killed her
self. Just beyond the door was
stretched a white hand clutching a
pistol
Born to Life of Sorrow.
Thus runs the most modern of fairy
stories. For the sorrows OF the Prin-
cess Sophia were as real as her sui
eide in Heidelberg on September It.
1913. They were as real as the bullet
which Lieut. Hans Elder gu Putlitz
oh hrai IN, in, ~,
1908 for love of her, and as real as
the grief which the young Baron Won
Bleichroeder carried to Prince Will
helms door on the day of his daugh-
ter's funeral--a door from which the
baron was turned away. For Hans
Won Bleichroeder was not merely
rich; he was a Jew, recently en-
nobled, who refused to renounce his
faith. The house of Saxe-WeimaT
will not even acknowledge, at this
date, that the match with the baron
was considered.
Departures from royal dignity have
been frequent in the house of Sake
Weimar for nearly a century, ever
since the family became a mere col
lateral branch of the royal house of
Saxony, unsupported by wealth or
real power. Two Of the men-Sophia's
uncle, Duke Bernard, and her brother,
Prince Hermann-have escaped from
the empty court life into happy pri-
vate marriages. Another, Prince Will
helm himself father of the unhappy
Princess Sophia, fed to America in
his youth, served as a riding master,
clerk, book agent and even as a res
taurant waiter in New York, but was
finally persuaded to return to Ger
many, marry his second cousin, and
live on small pension from the head
of the house. The women of the
family have remained in the velvet
prison which the kaiser provides fol-
all his connections, however. remote.
There have been no marriages of the
Saxe-Weimar women out of the linn
tied and dreary royal circle, no out
n,.1x~ 81