Exile and Divorce
The family settled in Baden, but her husband was restless and did not want to stay. She herself refused further sexual intercourse as she "did not wish to give birth in exile." She also wished to live a life more in the style of a queen, while he preferred a more simple family life. They were separated in 1810, and divorce proceedings begun in 1811. They were divorced in 1812. Secretly, she supported him financially after the separation. After the divorce, she entrusted her children to the formal guardianship of the Russian czar.
She kept a correspondence with her former mother-in-law, Sophia Magdalena in Sweden, and with queen Hedvig Elizabeth Charlotte, to whom she entrusted her economic interests in Sweden. According to her ladies-in-waiting, she turned down proposals from her brother-in-law Frederick William of Braunschweig-Oels and Frederick William III of Prussia. She was rumored to have had a secret marriage with her son's tutor, the French-Swiss JNG de Polier-Vernland. She travelled a lot, using the name Countess Itterburg. She died in Lausanne of a heart disease. She was buried in Schloss and Stiftskirche in Pforzheim, Germany.
The communities of Fredrika (1799), Dorotea (1799) and Vilhelmina (1804) located in Swedish Lapland were named in her honor.
Read more about this topic: Frederica Of Baden
Famous quotes containing the words exile and/or divorce:
“The bond between a man and his profession is similar to that which ties him to his country; it is just as complex, often ambivalent, and in general it is understood completely only when it is broken: by exile or emigration in the case of one’s country, by retirement in the case of a trade or profession.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connection can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)