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Show " T:m:l M c ; R J L T I P ..SI 1 What Happened When a Mere -: cp 1 I Baroness Stood Up in J g I I ar Chamber and f "g I ByR Princess Sophie S yjirl : "Ei Hohenzollern jSr f jBPfe B v- 1 X"t"T of the famous red room of Pots- dam Palace, former capital of Kais-r Kais-r crism. burst a princess of Prussia lier blue eyes blazing, her checks aflame, her breath panting through clenched teeth as she turned -and flung one haughty gesture of finality at tho four men gaping et her from their armchairs. For many minutes after she had gone and the "booing" in the streets had died to a muffled hum, the four men stared at the open door through whh h Sophie Charlotte Char-lotte of Oldenberg, wife of Prince Bitel Friedrich and daughter-in-law of the Kaiser, had swept like a blond Juno. Why had she, a princess of the imperial im-perial Hohenzollerns. rushed in a frenzy hum the presence of these four proletarians? prole-tarians? Whet had they done to stab her cheeks with scarlet and put angry diamonds dia-monds In her eyes? What had she said to leave them petrified with astonishment? What had happened in that tapestried rhambcr where once the war lords of Germany Ger-many juggled crowns and kingdoms? Sophie Charlotte-was summoned before be-fore that tribunal of commoners as the co-respondent in a divorce easel Four years ago no judge would have dared issue such a subpoena; had it been Issued, she daughter-in-law of the "all highest" would havo torn it to bits and laughed the courts of Germany to scorn. But the same war which made an emperor an exile, changed her from one of the regal "chosen" to a plain citizen of the Republic, Re-public, with no more rights and prerogatives preroga-tives than the lowlif-st Berlin haiuvfrau. Even so, they subpoenaed her with deference. The divorce suit was being heard in Ruhr. Sophie Charlotte was at the home of Prince Eitel Friedrich in Berlin. Ber-lin. She was not required to go to court A private hearing was arranged at Potsdam, Pots-dam, where, in the pn .-ence o! her a- user and four officials, she would answer the charge that she had sullied hei I ak dared the rage of her royal but corpulent husband, and found. In the person ol B cavalry captain, socially tar beneath her. the love a "e tate" morriace had denied her. li It was an amazing accu- 1 Hon the first specific . public utterance on a sub Jecl that had been gos- ied 3ub rosa in Euiopean ' ' - court circles ever since the beautiful daughter of the Grand Duko of Oldenberg was wed to Prince Eltel Friedrich, the Emperor's second sec-ond son. in 1906. The marriage was conceded 10 have been dictated by diplomacy instead of hv love. Souhie Charlotte was five, years the Prince's seuirr. She outranked him. too, In the army As a wedding present, t lie Kaiser had made her a colonel in the Twelfth Dragoons. At reviews and par-adi par-adi s, whi-h the Prince.-s always attended in full uniform, the Prince had the pleasure pleas-ure of riding at the heels of his wife and commanding officer There were other marked differences between the royal pair The Princess has always been vivacious, dashing, volatile. Bitel Friedrich is the phlegmatic type. Once known as "the man with the perfect physique," when he was a youth of twen ty, he took on so much flesh that waggish British and French paragraphera referred to him dining the war as "the prince of poundage" E2ite1 Fretdrlch tried to reduce. re-duce. He spaded in the Potsdam gardens and gained thirteen pounds. He rode until he fell from his horse and bruised a lib without breaking it At one time he weighed more than two hundred pounds. Prince Eitel's plumpness and rumors of "a romance behind the throne" developed de-veloped In Germany nt about the BamS time. When Elinor Glyn's famous novel, "Three VA e.-ks." wis published with its story of a royal "Lady" whose "Paul" was oiih r commoner, the eognosi -nl I in Berlin Ber-lin lifted their eyebrow! smiled behind their hands and wagged their tongue in private. But as long as Germany was a monarchy, mon-archy, scarcely a breath of scandal reached the public. There was a hint ol ''something in the wind" when Princess tSltel Friedrich was BUddenly discovered living incognito in Paris But th's es-capade es-capade wa hushed up when emissaries from Potsdam persuaded her to return to her husband. One noted journalist who dared to go farther in a nameless paragraph para-graph was arrested and sent to Jail for six mouths. Not until the war was over and Ger- Princess Sophie, at Right, in Her ja lk flf Uniform as Colonel of the Twelfth ifjV wM Dragoons, Reviewing Her Troops at Mstim&r Potsdam Before the War. Behind W 4 , WT Her, at a Respectful Saluting Dis- it I (ance, Is Her Husband, Prince Eitel, a Major, Whom She Outranked. At Left Is the Ex-Kaiser's Daughter, Victoria Louise, Duchess of Brunswick, in Her Uniform as Colonel of the Death's Head Hussars, many became 8 democracy did the spotlight spot-light of unfavorable notoriety fix itself directly on Princess Eitel Friedrich. Then, a yeijr ago. the middle-aged Baroness von Plettenberg filed suit for divorce against Mehmm nn Plettenberg, ex-captain in the Potsdam Palace Guards, and named Princess Eitel Friedrich as co-respondent The Baroness offered astounding allegations alle-gations when the suit came up for trial. She charged that the Princess had always loved von Plettenberg, that their romance ro-mance began when she was shindy Sophie Charlotte of Oldenberg; thai the Princess had von Pletteuborg transferred from the cavalry to the Palace; that the Kaiser, striving to end the affair, banished ban-ished von Plettenberg to America, where he represent c 'I the .North ;. -nnan Lloyd Steamship Company for Beveral years before be-fore the war "Winn In' returned from America, I married him." n Med the Baroness "We went on our honeymoon. Back in Berlin f my husband telephoned Princess Eltel Friedrich to requesj that she receive me at i-ourt. The Princess commanded blm to come to her at once. We entered an automobile and drove in her castle There my husband left me in the car 'I'll be back in :t minute.' he said. He did not re-1 re-1 11 ll foi four hours, and I was never received re-ceived at court." The testimony of the Baroness was barked up by that of a court official who said he overheard the telephone conversation conver-sation in which the Princess cried I reins, re-ins, to meet your wife!" and commanded von Piettenberg's immediate presence at her side. Letters were also introduced, according iq Berlin dispatches, purporting 'o Ue from the Primes to von PletteO oerg One of them said: "You know thut I have nothing in coin- Cupyri jM . 1028, IiitcroaUon.il Feature S( mon with the man I married. Onl in appearance am 1 his wife. But you also know how much we mean lo each other and that we can give boundlessly to each other " rf hls was not- Germany's ifrst roval family scandal. Prince August Wilhelm, fourth son of the Kaiser, and Joachim, his sixth son, both divorced their wives But never in the histor of .the nation had a woman dared to accuse openly an Imperial Prince.., of "vamping" her husband, never, until th o Republic had the German Ger-man newspapers dared to pnuT a line reflecting re-flecting on royalty. .Most of them continued to suppress the news of the Plettenberg divorce suit But several ol the boulevard Journals Jang wnh it Half Germany and all Berlin seethed with the story on the spring morning morn-ing when Princess Eitel Friedrich left her villa on the outskirts Of Berlin and mo-ti mo-ti red in a closed car to the Potsdam Palace Pal-ace twenty miles away; there to submit to such an examination of her heart af-tairs af-tairs as no Princess of the blood had ever been called upon to undergo. sin had been bummoned as a citizen, but she arrived every inch the princess. The street and the palace grounds swarmed with a curious crowd. Greedy eyen were on Sophie Charlotte as she alighted and her face screened by a heavy veil traversed the marble walk. Snickers followed her as she ascended the marble steps. But by tho set of her proud head and her regal carriage, none might have suspected she was not about to attend some exclusive sulon Tin- door of the red room closed behind her. Those who had penetrated that far got only a glimpse of the middle-aged Baroness von Plettenberg, gripping the .rvice. Jnc Umtl Britain Ruins Reversed. amis of her chair, and of four judicial looking men who rose automatically at the entrance of the Princess. RepubM 1 ans though they were, she spurred them to an obeisance no ordinary witne -would have been grunted !i was still the Princess who entered the red room But it was Sophie Charlotte", the woman, v ho burst forth thirty minutes later Past (he groups of startled corridor loafers stormed those blue eves :-nd those flaming cheeks out inio the sunshine whpre the waiting throng was i.tmm nied scores of men and women and boys rhey had been awed by the Princess; but this was a new. a human person, bli with the same emotion a with which the proletariat blazed, whether anger humiliation, humili-ation, grlel or scorn the) did not snow nor gr. ally .are. Somebody hissed. Somebody Some-body cheered, lu an instant the entire mob was in ia tumult, end?d onlv with tho disappearance or the imperial auto mobile in a spurt of white du"t Men and women turned to one another clamoring to know what had happened in he palace. Reporters besieged the door EitI S3 m ,De declWd Princ -ss Kite! Friedrich had confessed every intimate inti-mate detail of the romance She had a (!arone,s von Plettenberg She bad faced the judge with a smile, declared gayly she admitted all the charges "with the greatest of pleasure." He had it on authentic Information, declared the news-papei news-papei correspondent Prince Eitel replied , WJg .all a affirm T.alaK,,r"ale r8fU"d to d' or affiim The three other officials were swon, to secre. y Baroness von Ketten-berg Ketten-berg has enr, away. hvi ,uJ boJ her shoulders heaving. Whether she was eying, laughing or trembling with anger. 22EZE2 Prince Eitel Triedrich, W the Rumored Love Co His Wife "a coar was as much a mystery as thU emotions of Princess Eitel Slowly the crovd disperssB day rumors, denials and - logged the cables and the cam Berlin boulevard papers. ! sure nothinK authentic: rfJ mained sealed. The pri"ciP And no other witness to tbffl trial" at Potsdam could W tho mute portraits of the aem lern war lords which hM from the vails of the rJ J spe tacle of a Prussian p'l ing, for the lir-i time m "' of the people and an outr |