Princess Louise of Prussia (Luise Auguste Wilhelmine Amalie; 1 February 1808 – 6 December 1870) was a princess of the Netherlands as the wife of Prince Frederick. She was born the penultimate child of King Frederick William III of Prussia and Queen Louise. Although Princess Louise played a minor role in royal society, she helped establish the Luisestiftelsen—a charity organisation built for orphans—and pitched ideas for the construction of a residential home in Passow.
Since a young age, it was decided that Princess Louise would marry her first cousin, Prince Frederick of the Netherlands, who was her father's sister's son.[citation needed] Similarly, it had also been decided that Louise's brother Albert would marry Frederick's sister Marianne.[1]
Louise and Frederick had known each other since childhood because they were first cousins, and Frederick used to make frequent and prolonged visits to his uncle's court in Berlin. The pair quickly became engaged in 1823, and were married on 21 May 1825 in Berlin.[citation needed] They had four children:
Louise and Frederick lived in The Hague, first at Korte Voorhout, and from 1838 onward, in Wassenaar. Louise played no dominant public role but shared her husband's spotless reputation in the eyes of the public. She is described as having had a strong closeness to her extended family, with whom she corresponded, and often visited her relatives and eventually also her children abroad, when they left the Netherlands after their marriages. Her correspondence with her children and relatives is considered a valuable source of contemporary court life in the Netherlands, Sweden and Russia.[1] While there is no information as to whether she tried to participate in politics or not, she was strongly Pro-Prussian, and her views caused a conflict between her and queen Sophie during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.[1]
Louise and her husband both contributed ideas for the construction of their residence in Passow, in collaboration with the architects Eduard Petzold and Jan David Zocher. In 1869, Louise founded a charity foundation for orphans, the Luisestiftelsen ('Louise Foundation').[1]
_Louise_van_Pruisen_(1808-1870)_Nieuw_paviljoen_Slot_Charlottenburg_25-10-2018.jpg)
