Friedrich III of Germany (Hohenzollern)

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Friedrich III (October 18, 1831 – June 15, 1888), was a German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia, who ruled for three months until his death in 1888.

He was born the son of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia and Augusta of Saxe-Weimar. His father was a younger brother of King Frederick William IV of Prussia).

In 1858 Friedrich married Princess Victoria (Vicky) of Great Britain and Ireland, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The couple had eight children during their marriage: Wilhelm in 1859, Charlotte in 1860, Henry in 1862, Sigismund in 1864, Victoria 1866, Waldemar 1868, Sophie in 1870 and Margarete in 1872. The rigorously educated Vicky, also known as the Princess Royal influenced her husband towards her own liberal views.

In 1861, Friedrich's father became King Wilhelm I of Prussia, and Friedrich himself became Crown Prince. As such, he commanded armies in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 (where his timely arrival was crucial to the Prussian victory at Sadowa) and in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

When the German states united as a single German Empire in 1871, Friedrich became heir to the new German monarchy with his father as Kaiser. Never liked by the powerful German Chancellor Bismarck, who distrusted his wife's liberalism, Friedrich was always kept out of any real position of power throughout his father's life. By the time his father died in 1888, Friedrich had incurable cancer of the larynx, which had been misdiagnosed by the English doctor Morell Mackenzie (later knighted by Queen Victoria). As a result of the misdiagnosis, surgery that might have cured the cancer was cancelled in 1887. When the error was caught, it was too late to operate. Later swelling by the tumor caused the prince to begin to suffocate, and so on February 9, 1888, a tracheotomy was performed and a silver tube was put into the prince's wind pipe. As a result of this operation, Friedrich was unable to speak for the remainder of his life, and communicated through writing. Friedrich ruled for only 99 days before his death, being succeeded by his son Wilhelm II.

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Issue

Name	Birth	Death	Notes
Kaiser Wilhelm II	27 January 1859	4 June 1941	married 1881, Augusta Viktoria; had issue
Princess Charlotte	24 July 1860	1 October 1919	married 1878, Bernhard III, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen; had issue
Prince Heinrich	14 August 1862	20 April 1929	married 1888, Princess Irene; had issue
Prince Sigismund	15 September 1864	18 June 1866	died aged 1; no issue
Princess Viktoria	12 April 1866	13 November 1929	married 1890, Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe; had issue
Prince Waldemar	10 February 1868	27 March 1879	died aged 11; no issue
Princess Sophie	14 June 1870	13 January 1932	married 1889, Constantine I of Greece; had issue
Princess Margarete	22 April 1872	22 January 1954	married 1893, Karl von Hesse-Kassel; had issue