Louisa Ulrika of Prussia

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Louisa Ulrika of Prussia
Queen of Sweden
Louisa Ulrika, Queen of Sweden painting by Antoine Pesne, c. 1744
Reign	1751 - 1771
Titles	HM Queen Dowager Louisa Ulrika of Sweden HM The Queen of Sweden HRH Princess Friedrich von Holstein-Gottorp HRH Princess Louisa Ulrika of Prussia
Born	1720
Died	1782
Consort to	Adolf Friedrich von Holstein-Gottorp
Issue	Stillborn Gustav III of Sweden Charles XIII of Sweden Frederick Adolf Sophia Albertine
Royal House	House of Holstein-Gottorp House of Hohenzollern
Father	Frederick William I of Prussia
Mother	Sophia Dorothea of Hanover

Louisa Ulrika of Prussia (Swedish: Lovisa Ulrika; German: Luise Ulrike) (1720—1782) was a Swedish Queen, Queen consort of Sweden between 1751 and 1771 as wife of King Adolf Frederick of Sweden, and mother of King Gustav III of Sweden and King Charles XIII of Sweden.

Contents 1 Crown Princess 2 Queen 3 The Failed Royal Revolution of 1756 4 Queen Dowager 5 Children 6 Titles 7 References

[edit] Crown Princess

Louisa Ulrika was the daughter of Frederick William I of Prussia and his wife Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, and was thus a younger sister of both Wilhelmine of Bayreuth and Frederick the Great. She was given the Swedish name Ulrika because Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden had ben her god-mother.

In 1744, Ulrika married Adolf Friedrich von Holstein-Gottorp, who had been elected crown prince of Sweden in 1743 and after his succession to the throne in 1751 reigned as King Adolf Frederick of Sweden. She was recommended as a bride by Russia, just as her husband was recommended as an heir to the throne by Russia. At first, however, it was her sister Amalia who was considered, as her brother warned that Louisa Ulrika was perhaps to ambitious to be a good queen in a monarchy without power, as Sweden then was during the Age of Liberty.

Louisa Ulrika was received with great enthusiasm in Sweden when she arived in 1744 as a hope of solving the country's succession problems, and gained popularity with her beauty and by the birth of her children; no children had been born in the Swedish royal house in over fifty years by the birth of her first child. At her arrival, she was given Drottningholm Palace as a gift, where she resided with her young court. She was described as beautiful, cultivated - entirely according to the French tradition- and interested in science and culture; count Tessin called her: "A mind of a god in the Image of an angel", but she was also described as extremely proud and arrogant, which made her less and less liked outside of the aristicraty over the years. During her time as a crown princess, they were rumours that she had an affair with count Tessin, but this was with all certainty not true: her son Gustav III later replied to these rumours, that although Count Tessin had ben in love with her, this was against the "natural contemt" that Louisa Ulrika herself felt for every subject, noble or not.

[edit] Queen

In 1751, she became queen. When she became queen, Louisa Ulrika revitalized the royal court, which had been neglected during the reign of King Frederick I, and founded a theater at Drottningholm Palace. Her interest for theater was, however, entirely French-influenced, and she interrupted the development of a native Swedish national theatre at Bollhuset by replacing it with a French Theatre, which was only a benefit for those who could speak French.

In Sweden, she is mainly remembered for the founding of the Witterhetsakademin (in 1753), an academy which counted Carl von Linné among its members; she was a great patron of science and art, a protector of the work of scientists such as Carl von Linné and artists such as the painter Ulrika Pasch and the poet Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht. Her "adoption" of Gustav Badin 1757 was intended as a form of scientific experiment.

As soon as she became queen in 1751, she made preparations to owerthrow the parliament. Her attempt of a royalistic revolution was prevented in 1756. The same year, Sweden went to war against her brother, which she opposed. Nevertheless, she remained a dominant figure, with numerous quarrels with the government over the years. In 1763, the government asked her to write to her brother, the King of Prussia, in to prevent the Swedish province of Pommerania in Germany to be anexed by Prussia after the Seven Years War, which she did after great persuation. She succeeded in the negotiations, which for her was a form of thriumph over the parliament. As a sign of gratitude for this act, the government paid her debts, which made it possible for her to use her money to affect the votings in the parliament through bribes; her plan was now to change the constiution through this method. After 1766, her attempts had failed, and her politicall activity was now over; i 1766-1771, the anti-parlamentharistic opposition looked to her son Gustav instead of her. Her arrogance, political wievs and conflicts with the parliament made her less during her husband's reign.

[edit] The Failed Royal Revolution of 1756

Queen Louisa Ulrika strongly dominated her husband and the court, and she would also had been the real ruler during her husband's reign if the Swedish monarchy had not been stripped of its power in 1718 and 1720; at this point, the king was a mere decoration and Sweden was a monarchy only in name. This greatly displeased the queen, herself born in an absolute monarchy. She could not understand nor condone the parliament; for her, it was not acceptable for a royal person to have to receive peasants in the royal salons, as she was forced to do with the peasant's representatives from the parliament. She was further enraged when the parliament forced the king to give up his claims on the throne of Holstein, and arranged the marriage between her son Gustav to Sofia Magdalena of Denmark, when she herself had preferred a German princess. She was enraged when the parliamentaristic C.F.Scheffer was appointed her son's educator. In 1755, the parliament decided, that if the king opposed to sign the laws issued by the governemnt, a stamp would be used instead.

To display her contemt, she humiliated the parliament's representatives by the etiquette of the royal court; she stopped their carriages at the Palace gates, let forced them to wait for hours, while she let those who arived before them be received and let them sit on small little, low stools before her to make them loose their dignity.

Already three months after her coronation, Louisa Ulrika remowed the diamonds from the crown and replaced them with glas. She gathered followers among the aristocraty to plan a coup d'état to overthrow the government, dissolve the parliament from its power and reinstate absolute monarchy in Sweden. Her followers where called the hov-partiet (The royal court party), and they were men form the nobility in opposition to the parliament for personal reasons, wanting revards from the queen when the aftr a successful coup. In the court theatre, the French and Italian troupes performed plays hinting that the king should taken control over his kingdom.

To finance the coup, the Queen pawned the jewelry she had ben given as a wedding gift by the state, as well as some of the crown jewels belonging to the state, among them 44 diamonds she had placed in the Queen's Crown, whom she pawned in Berlin to loan money. The lady-in-waiting of the Queen, Ulrika Strömfelt, informed the government that parts of the crown jewels were missing. For this act, she was later to receive the honorary title "Ständernas dotter" ("Daughter of the Parliament") and a pension of §2000. The government demanded to inspect the crown jewels, as it was the property of the state. The Queen refused, as she did not recongise any right of the government to inspect anything. At the same time, the king was taken ill, and the government retrited to allow him to recower, giving the queen time the goet the diamonds back to the inspection. At the same time, weapons and bullets wee being made. The plan was to hire criminals to cause chaos on the streets; the royalistic officers would then block the streets, the royalists would be armed and the King would enter the square to "resume control", after which the public would "celebrate him as the saviour from the parliament".

The plans were often discussed at the pub of the royalistic Ernst Angel. Angel was the illegitimate son of Maximilian of Hesse-Cassel, the brother of king Frederick I of Sweden, which he often pointed out. The 21 June 1756, the police heard Angel talk about the plans of a royal revoulution while he was drunk. He was arrested and interrogated, and the next day, the arrests of the noblemen begun. When the royal couple entered Stockholm after a stay at from Drottninghom Palace that night the streets where filled with militarys. The whole conspiracy against the parliament was discovered. The parliament woted for a death sentence for four ot the involved noblemen, who was deciapitated on Riddarholmstorget in Stockholm in front of thousands of specators, outside the royal palace, and three days later, Ernst Angel and three more was decapitated. Several others where sentenced to prison, whipping, exile, pilloring and by being banned from seats in the parliament.

The Queen, who was the instigator behind all this, received a strong note form the parliament communicated by the archbishop, who forced her to write a letter of confession and regret. He afterwards said, that he thought he had seen "tears of rage and sorow" in her eyes: she herself wrote that she had tried to display: "all the coldness, all the contemt possible to make in a demonstration": she regretted nothing but that her revolution had failed. The king had a statement read to him saying that he would be desposed if her ever attempted something similar again.

[edit] Queen Dowager

In 1771, the king died and she became a Dowager Queen. Louisa Ulrika was at the death of the king emensly impopular in Sweden: when the news of the king's death reached her son, the new king, who was then in Paris, he wrote that the Queen Dowager be protected, as "I know how little loved my mother is".

In 1772, her son the new king succeeded where she had failed in 1756 by overthrowing the democracy and reinstating absolute monarchy, which was a great satisfaction to her. However, she could never settle with the position of dowager queen, and her last years was spent in bitterness. In 1777, she was forced to sell Drottningholm Palace to her son Gustav.

She did not get along with either of her daughter-in-law's, calling Sophia Magdalena of Denmark "cold and shy" and Hedwig Elizabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp "flirtatious." She broke with her son, the king, in 1778, after having accused him of having another man father his child. A great scandal erupted, during which the king even threathened to exile her to Pomerania. She was forced to make a formal statement during which she withdrew her accusation, a repetition of the humiliation of 1756. In the following conflict, ther younger children, Sofia Albertina and Frederick, was on her side, and the relationship with Gustav was not repaired until her death bed in 1783.

[edit] Children

She had the following children:

1. (Stillborn) (1745)
2. Gustav III of Sweden (1746-1792)
3. Charles XIII of Sweden (1748-1818)
4. Frederick Adolf (1750-1803)
5. Sophia Albertine (1753-1829)

Louisa Ulrika was also a maternal grandchild of the King George I of Great Britain.

[edit] Titles

• Her Royal Highness Princess Louisa Ulrika of Prussia
• Her Royal Highness Princess Friedrich von Holstein-Gottorp
• Her Majesty The Queen of Sweden
• Her Majesty Queen Dowager Louisa Ulrika of Sweden

[edit] References

• Herman Lindqvist (2006). Historien om alla Sveriges drottningar (in Swedish). Norstedts Förlag. ISBN 9113015249.
• Anna Ivarsdotter Johnsson och Leif Jonsson, "Musiken i Sverige, Frihetstiden och Gustaviansk tid 1720-1810."
• Herman Lindqvist, "Historien om Sverige. Från Istid till Framtid."
• Stig Hadenius, "Vad varje svensk bör veta. Sveriges historia."
• Herman Lindqvist, "Historien om Sverige. Gustavs dagar."

Louisa Ulrika of Prussia House of Hohenzollern Born: 24 July 1720 Died: 16 July 1782
Swedish royalty
Preceded by Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden (Queen consort)	Royal Consort of Sweden (Queen consort) 1751 - 1771	Succeeded by Sophia Magdalena of Denmark (Queen consort)