The future marriage of the German Crown Prince, which has
been a matter of great anxiety to the Imperial Court and the people of Germany, has been somewhat unexpectedly settled. The Emperor took the occasion of a festival which he attended in Schleswig-Holstein to announce that his son had betrothed himself to the Duchess Cecilia, sister of the reigning Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Report speaks well of the young Duchess, who is only eighteen; and as she is a German Princess, a descendant of the worshipped Queen Louise of Prussia, and connected with the reigning families of Russia and Denmark, as well as with the ex-Royal Family of Hanover, the alliance is popular throughout Germany. To outsiders its great interest consists in the fact that the Crown Prince, who will one day play so important a part in European politics, is to be married—next spring— within the caste, and will from that period be more visible to diplomatists and the general public of Europe. At present he is little known, but he is believed in Berlin to have ability and a character; and the rumour that he is an absolutist probably signifies only that he is a Hohenzollern. Francis Joseph of Austria was once the strongest of absolutists, and is said still to believe in that theory of government; but he has made a good many concessions in his lifetime, and in Hungary is strictly constitutional.
Previous page
