Death of a Hohenzollern

Stiffly sitting around a white bed in a small sanatorium at Frankfurt-am-Main last week, a deposed king, a discarded queen, a prince & two princesses silently watched tragic death end the tragic life of their mother. As if two abdications, bitter hatred and widowhood had not brought her enough pain, Dowager ex-Queen Sophie of Greece, 61, died slowly, painfully of cancer. In Doom, Holland. ex-Kaiser Wilhelm, denied permission to visit her, coughed with bronchitis, shivered with fear that the disease which had taken first his father and now his sister might some day kill him.

Daughter of Friedrich III and granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Sophie Hohenzollern was married, brilliantly, to Prince Constantine of Greece. In 1913 her father-in-law was assassinated and she became queen. Denounced as an intriguer for Germany during the War, she was driven from Greece with her husband in 1917. A year later when Constantine was reported near death from an old wound, rumor spread that she had stabbed him. In 1920 King Constantine was restored to his throne. Two years later she again fled with him to Italy. There she watched him die. while her son. King George II, ruled Greece for a year before he too was dethroned. The rest of her life, until a few months before she died, was spent in a villa in Florence with three of her children, Prince Paul and Princesses Irene and Catherine, while another daughter. Helen of Rumania, carried on her family's tragic tradition.

Last week at the memorial services in Frankfurt-am-Main there were no brothers or sisters. Her niece. Princess Victoria Louise, was there with the ex-Crown Prince and Prince Eitel Friedrich. With the death of Sophie there remained in the European deck only 17 queens, ten in play, seven in the discard.

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