Frederick III, German Emperor

Frederick III was German Emperor and King of Prussia for ninetynine days in 1888, the Year of the Three Emperors. Friedrich Wilhelm Nikolaus Karl, known informally as Fritz, was the only son of Emperor Wilhelm I and was raised in his familys tradition of military service. Although celebrated as a young man for his leadership and successes during the Second Schleswig, AustroPrussian and FrancoPrussian wars, he nevertheless professed a hatred of warfare and was praised by friends and enemies alike for his humane conduct. Following the unification of Germany in 1871 his father, then King of Prussia, became the German Emperor. Upon Wilhelms death at the age of ninety onMarch 1888, the throne passed to Frederick, who had by then been Crown Prince for seventeen years. Frederick was suffering from cancer of the larynx when he died onJune 1888, aged fiftysix, following unsuccessful medical treatments for his condition.

Frederick William was born in the New Palace at Potsdam in Prussia onOctober 1831. He was a scion of the House of Hohenzollern, rulers of Prussia, then the most powerful of the German states. Fredericks father, Prince William, was a younger brother of King Frederick William IV and, having been raised in the military traditions of the Hohenzollerns, developed into a strict disciplinarian. William fell in love with his cousin Elisa Radziwill, a Princess of the Polish nobility, but his parents felt Elisas rank was not suitable for the bride of a Prussian Prince and forced a more suitable match. The woman selected to be his wife, Princess Augusta of SaxeWeimar, had been raised in the more intellectual and artistic atmosphere of Weimar, which gave its citizens greater participation in politics and limited the powers of its rulers through a constitution Augusta was wellknown across Europe for her liberal views. Because of their differences, the couple did not have a happy marriage and, a

Source: Wikipedia