Sophia Dorothea of Hanover

Sophia Dorothea of Hanover ( – 28 June 1757; ) was Queen in Prussia and Electress of Brandenburg during the reign of her husband, King Frederick William I, from 1713 to 1740. She was the mother of Frederick the Great (King Frederick II of Prussia).

At the time of Sophia's birth, her father was merely the son of a German prince, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. It was not until 1701 that the Act of Settlement placed him, through his mother, in line to inherit the throne of Great Britain. Sophia was 27 years of age, and had already become the Queen in Prussia and a mother of many children by the time her father became King George I of Great Britain in 1714.

Life

Sophia Dorothea was born on 16 March 1687 (O.S.), in Hanover. She was the only daughter of George Louis of Hanover, later King George I of Great Britain, and his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Celle. She was detested by her elder brother, King George II of Great Britain.

After the divorce and imprisonment of her mother, she was raised in Hanover under the supervision of her paternal grandmother, Sophia of Hanover, and educated by her Huguenot teacher Madame de Sacetot.

Marriage

Sophia Dorothea married her cousin (her father's sister's son), Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia, heir apparent to the Prussian throne, on 28 November 1706. They had met as children when Frederick William had spent some time in Hanover under the care of their grandmother, Sophia of Hanover, and though Sophia Dorothea disliked him, Frederick William had reportedly felt an attraction to her early on. Frederick William contemplated divorcing her the same year they married and, judging by her letters, accused her of not wanting to be married to him. According to Morgenstern, "He had none of that astonishing complaisance by which lovers, whether husbands or friends, seek to win the favor of the beloved object. As far as can be gathered from the words he occasionally let drop, the crossing of his first love might have been the innocent cause of this; and as the object of this passion, by the directions of her mother and grandmother, treated him with harshness, where, then, could he learn to make love?" The king was known for his parsimony and dislike of idleness to such a degree that he would beat people in the street as well as in the palace if he viewed them as lazy. It was to his mother's chamber the king paid the first visit on his return from campaigns, summoning the queen to meet him there; he regularly invited his mother to his personal residence at Potsdam, where his wife was never invited, and while he seldom visited his wife, he regularly attended his mother at Monbijou, where he took off his hat and remained standing until she gave him permission to sit. Sophia Dorothea presided at the wedding of her son Prince William in 1742, and her daughter Louisa Ulrika in 1744.

The relationship between Sophia Dorothea and her daughter-in-law queen Elisabeth Christine was not good during the first years of her son's reign, as she resented her daughter-in-law's precedence in rank, though her son assured it to be merely formal, but their relationship improved during the last years of her life. Sophia Dorothea saw her son for the last time after his first campaign in January 1757 during the Seven Years' War. At that point she was well, but soon after his departure, her health rapidly declined, and she died on 28 June 1757.

Issue

Ancestors

Notes and sources

Thea Leitner: Skandal bei Hof, Ueberreuter, 1993,