Synopsis: Hermine Reuss of Greiz is perhaps better known as the second wife of the Kaiser (Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany) whom she married shortly after the death of his first wife Auguste Viktoria and while he was in exile in the Netherlands. She was by then a widow herself with young children. She was known to be ambitious about wanting to return to power, and her husband insisted on her being called 'Empress'. To achieve her goal, she turned to the most powerful man in Germany at the time, Adolf Hitler. Unfortunately, her dream was not realised as Hitler refused to restore the monarchy and with the death of Wilhelm in 1941, Hermine was forced to return to her first husband's lands. She was arrested shortly after the end of the Second World War and would die under mysterious circumstances while under house arrest by the Red Army.
This was a nice little introductory biography of a woman posibly not known to many. Despite my love of seeking out the "lost" women of history, for me, this was someone not on my radar - more so as my purview lies within the ancient and medieval period. As such, I found myself not overly engaged - as I mentioned, this was just out of my remit.
What I did do was find myself comparing Hermine with Wallace Simpson - both married to royal men who were directly descended from Queen Victoria, and both gained notoriety for their support of Herr Hitler.
Not having read anything else on Hermine with which to compare this to, I still found it to be an informative and not overly complicated biography nonetheless.
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