Prince Philip's Mother - The Strange, Exciting Life of Princess Alice | Free Documentary History

the bellevue sanatorium for the insane switzerland on the 27th of july 1932 a female inmate slipped through an open window and made a getaway in the local town she boarded a train heading for the border with germany and freedom but just on the point of escape she was apprehended for the authorities it was just another day managing the strange inmates of the local asylum but this woman was no ordinary inmate this woman was prince philip's mother we all know about the queen mum so outgoing so well publicized so loving of publicity in fact when we forget there was another queen mum very eccentric but also incredibly strong-willed unlike the queen mum prince phillips mother was born a princess but turned her back on royal life you didn't think of on alice as a cozy old aunt you thought of her as somebody rather unique actually she was locked away in mental hospitals and subjected to experimental treatments by psychiatrists including sigmund freud neighborly wanted to talk about it and it was regarded as hushed up but she overcame mental illness and physical disability to become an unlikely hero of world war ii this is the strange and remarkable story of prince philip's mother princess alice one of the royal family's best kept secrets princess alice battenberg's start in life couldn't have been more royal born at windsor castle in 1885 she was a great-granddaughter of queen victoria although her parents were more german than british alice was raised as an english princess but from childhood she was set apart from the rest of her family by a profound disability she was stoned deaf and my grandmother realized that she had to just get used to coping with her disability herself she said to the family look if alice doesn't hear and doesn't understand what you said it's quite important not to repeat it so that she learns to stand on her own feet her mother's tough love worked by the age of 18 alice could not only speak clearly but also lip read in three languages and in 1902 at the coronation celebrations of king edward vii she met and fell in love with the glamorous prince andrew youngest son of king george the first of greece she was dotty about him absolutely mad for him really really deeply in love he was very entertaining and very charming and and she fell lana's anger [Music] after their wedding in 1903 alice set up home with her husband in her newly adopted country [Music] at the royal family's palace in athens alice settled into her allotted role as a princess and mother [Music] in ten years she produced four daughters [Music] and even managed to win over an increasingly anti-monarchist [Music] [Music] the greek idyll didn't last in marrying prince andrew alice had hitched herself to the most unstable royal family in europe in 1912 a brutal war broke out between the greeks and their bitter rivals the turks determined to make herself useful alice left her children and headed straight for the front organizing a series of desperately needed battlefield hospitals [Music] she got really stuck in she was there in the front for months on end often working through the night in very very primitive conditions dealing with people who were being shot up all around her losing limbs and she was there literally wrapping the bandages she was hands on god what things we saw shattered arms legs and heads such awful sights cast off bandages knee-high the corridor full of blood [Music] this was just the start of ten traumatic years for alice and her family the first world war triggered a decade of conflict in greece between pro and anti-royalist forces in 1922 republican troops entered athens alice's brother-in-law the king fled the country but her husband prince andrew was arrested and put on trial by a revolutionary court it was all so awful my my aunt did did have a very difficult time because of course it was a definite threat that my uncle andrea might have ended up being executed for not being on the right side but they must have come under a great deal of pressure to add to her worries alice had just given birth to a fifth child in june 1921 prince philip was delivered on the kitchen table of alice's country home phillip was born sixth in line to the increasingly beleaguered greek throne but the child was blissfully oblivious to the crisis engulfing his family philip sits with bare legs on the hard road and crawls on it without minding the stones he laughs all day long i have never seen such a cheerful baby but there was no time for celebrations in december 1922 philip's father prince andrew was convicted of disloyalty by the revolutionary authorities and faced a death sentence when prince andrew was granted a last minute stay of execution the family seized their opportunity to flee [Music] with the baby prince philip stowed in an orange crate as a makeshift cot alice and her family boarded a british warship and sailed into a humiliating exile alice's life as a conventional royal princess was over [Music] in 1923 princess alice and her family including the 18 month old prince philip arrived in paris as refugees in their flight from greece alice and her husband had not only lost their fortune but also much of their purpose [Music] i talked to prince philip about this and he said to me my recollection of the 1920s in paris was that we were a very happy family and it was a very good time and indeed if you talk to witnesses they'll talk about their bucket and spare holidays at the seaside they will talk about the father prince andrew being there and being very charming very amusing but there was strain these fleeting images rediscovered during the making of this film and seen here for the first time on television offer a unique glimpse into prince philip's family at the time of their exile in paris in the 1920s [Music] in front of the camera philip's father his sister [Music] and his mother put on a brave face but beneath the surface the pressures of exile [Music] andreas [Music] while prince andrew brooded on his fate philip's mother was left isolated and emotionally vulnerable for her it was very very frustrating when big family groups which often happened we would be 20 around the table and then of course she was lost you know she couldn't see people's lips and suddenly somebody would start roaring with laughter at the end of the table and she'd think it was a joke about her which of course it never was trapped in her silent world dark thoughts began to prey on alice's mind in 1928 aged 43 she announced a sudden conversion to the greek orthodox church but increasingly her religious beliefs were anything but orthodox princess alice seems to have become increasingly religious very very preoccupied with the spiritual she began to tell people that she had a very intimate relationship with jesus christ she used sexual language and spoke about flirtations with jesus christ and so forth she ultimately came to believe that she had a photograph signed by jesus christ and what we see in princess alice is what sometimes can be called religious delusions not ordinary religiosity [Music] my poor alice is in a quite abnormal state she has visions of christ and is told that she will soon have a message to deliver to the world she wanders about the house praying i think she has anemia of the brain from too much contemplation in desperation alice's family turned to the fashionable new science of psychiatry the sanatorium the first cygnetic intramural sanatorium founded and directed by iron symbol was contributed enormously to the literature in february 1930 alice was persuaded to leave her son phillip and check into an experimental psychiatric clinic near berlin run by the pioneering dr ant simmel [Music] we are standing in front of the senatorial of tegel which was built as a special psychological hospital in april 1927. it was a new idea to treat patients so severely mentally ill that they could not visit the doctors and in their offices or in the institutes there were phobias obsessive compulsive neurosis and also addictions of different kinds alcohol cocaine and so on and therefore symbol tried to treat patients who other places could not successfully be treated princess alice of greece now found herself in the company of some of europe's most disturbed psychiatric patients [Music] one person who remembers the tagle is victor ross whose mother worked at the hospital at the time princess alice was a patient i would have been 13 12 13 something like that i wasn't inside the building very often it was really part of it were actually out of bounds to me for obvious reasons i spent most of my time in the park really but i certainly saw people having epileptic fits i certainly saw people who shouted and cursed and spat pretty i mean crazy people i remember they used to roll on the on the grass and saying i'm getting better i'm getting better every day i'm getting better i'm better today than yesterday then i'll be better tomorrow well i was not convinced [Music] previously sealed medical files from the tagle reveal that simul diagnosed princess alice with paranoid schizophrenia she'd begun to hear voices and believed herself to be not only married but also physically involved with christ and with other religious figures including buddha in his search for the origins of alice's illness symbol discovered an important clue one of princess alice's ladies in waiting had told him privately off the record that the princess alice had a very very deep passion for an englishman back in the mid-1920s which she had never consummated and zimmel suggested that there was something about her romantic history her erotic history that had got repressed or damned up or complicated in some way alice would never disclose the identity of her mystery love but dr simmel believed the princesses frustrated desires were an important factor in her breakdown princess alice we must remember was born to the royal family in 1885 at a time when women's bodies were encased in corsets and women were not really encouraged to have a sexuality beyond appropriative marital sexuality certainly not in her milieu and i i think we must remember how shocking it would have been not only to her relatives and friends but to herself to have perhaps an erotic attraction towards someone other than her husband and not quite know what to do with these feelings seeking advice for how to treat his royal patient dr simmel now turned to a famous colleague and mentor the visitors book for the tegel clinic reveals that in 1930 sigmund freud the father of psychoanalysis himself visited the tagle and personally reviewed princess alice's case recommendations were shocking and controversial extraordinarily freud recommended that princess alice might be given x-rays to her ovaries now when i first read this in the published case notes i was really very very shocked indeed because his entire psychology is based on non-biological treatments non-medical treatments to get them to talk the talking cure not to give them x-rays so this prescription for princess alice is really very anomalous and very perplexing indeed the explanation for freud's unusual advice lies in his connection with a viennese scientist who specialized in the study of hormones and sexuality in the 1920s oygan steinach performed a series of radical experiments including transplanting the testicles of gay men in order to cure their condition steinach also speculated that x-rays could be used to accelerate the menopause triggering hormonal changes that could cure mental illness at uh the time when elise came to the hospital they were discussing especially freud and zimmel discussing whether hormones could help to for breakout of schizophrenia and severe psychosis and in the case of princess elise his advice was to make an x-ray of the gonads to accelerate her her menopause so that uh cool down her libido and her sexual excitement today we would laugh about it but nevertheless the endocrinology and hormones the studies began at that time in march 1930 the 45 year old princess was escorted to a treatment room and her reproductive organs subjected to a concentrated stream of x-rays there is no evidence that she was consulted about her treatment or consented to it or that it produced any improvement in her health soon afterwards princess alice discharged herself and returned to her family declaring herself fit and well alice's mother disagreed her illusions are still firmly rooted her face has altered and her expression especially in the eyes is altered too when she is enjoying being among us i feel a brute and then again i clearly realized the need of her going away she did behave quite strangely and in those days again you see it sounds awful to say it but if if people behaved in a strange manner then what people did was remove them from their families situation and put them in some sort of a clinic where you know it didn't matter what they did on the 2nd of may 1930 while the eight-year-old prince philip was taken out for the day alice received an unexpected visit i mean the most awful thing is that pretty much one day her mother takes prince philip off for a picnic and by the time he comes home his mother's gone and it's literally a car and men in white coats coming to take her away philip's mother was forcibly bundled into a car and given a powerful sedative concealed inside an orange shortly after midnight alice crossed the border into switzerland and arrived at the bellevue sanatorium prince philip's mother was no longer just a patient but a prisoner [Music] nobody wanted to talk about it and it was regarded as rather hushed up and not very well treated or understood so i think my aunt would have suffered very much it was difficult to talk to other people about it because they were embarrassed and ashamed and all the nonsense but in those days of course it was something to be kept very quiet about the bellevue was an exclusive swiss sanatorium that catered for the mentally ill amongst europe's richest families but it could offer little in the way of effective treatment for the next two and a half years alice was detained at the bellevue protesting her sanity she demanded her freedom and even made a daring escape attempt alice had not only lost her liberty she'd also been abandoned by her husband well prince andrew was not at all supportive i don't think i think that by the time that um princess alice went into the nursing home at kreuzling and i think he he had fundamentally had enough and i personally believe that he he renounced you know any responsibility for his wife at that point well i mean he went and lived in south of france and he had mistresses and he was no support to anybody although they would never divorce the marriage was over and alice hadn't only lost her husband while she was under lock and key in the space of little over a year all four of her daughters married german princess they lock her away and it was a terrible time for her she isn't able to go to all the weddings she doesn't get word of them she becomes an isolated lonely figure but the hardest separation of all was from her youngest child prince philip in his mother's absence philip was packed off to boarding schools in england and during the holidays farmed out to members of the extended family including his uncle lord mountbatten he was a lovely cousin to have around he really was but it was very difficult childhood for him and and the time of the holidays he never actually knew where he was going to go when he started the holidays i mean i suppose he was told yes shortly before but there wasn't the feeling of having a definite home like all children have one of the royal family once said prince philip was like a dog always looking for a basket and that characterized his early life he was always being shuffled from pulitzer post from one relative to the other and there's a kid of 11 or 12 to have your mother suddenly abducted from you um being told she was mad and at the same time your father is is vanishing off with a mistress somewhere it's not really surprising he's got a pretty tough exterior talking about prince philip not having one special home but having a series of different family homes all his life really as a young man i think this puts it rather clearly here where he came to stay with us in our little cottage where he signs phillip and he wrote under a dress no fixed abode which really says it all on the 23rd of september 1932 the doors of the bellevue psychiatric hospital swung open and for the first time in two and a half years prince philip's mother was free [Music] alice had been demanding her release ever since her arrival at the bellevue and she'd been shocked to discover that she was detained not on the authority of doctors but of her own family princess alice didn't realize that it was her mother really who had taken that responsibility to put her in i think the answer is she was extremely angry when she found out because she didn't know that and i can understand totally how she would have felt betrayed i don't think she ever completely forgave her mother for that actually as the worst of alice's symptoms receded her mother finally agreed to authorize her release alice now determined to turn her back on the family that she felt had let her down it must be obvious to you and the whole family as well as myself that i should not take up my former life for five years prince philip's mother disappeared [Music] she became a nomad drifting around germany and lodging in a succession of modest boarding houses but one person remembers her almut reuter was 11 years old when an unusual guest checked into the bed and breakfast hostel run by her parents here in cologne [Music] [Music] but the new resident on bahama strasse wasn't quite what the landlady and her daughter expected [Music] [Music] [Music] alice was emerging from her breakdown with her intense religious faith intact but as she regained her health her thoughts also returned to her teenage son my mother phillip it would take a tragedy to bring alice and phillip back together in 1937 alice's daughter cecile was killed in an air crash along with her husband and three children at the funeral in nazi germany alice was reunited with the family for the first time in seven years and in the princess the family recognized the alice of old i think that the death of her daughter cecile was a real shock and seemed to sort of make her once again feel that actually you know there was she was needed and she she should she should be there to help her family suddenly there she was again [Music] by the late 1930s alice's three surviving daughters were all married their husbands officers in hitler's military but there was one of her children whose future was still undecided her son prince philip in november 1938 with the greek monarchy restored to power alice returned to athens for the first time since her exile and she wanted philip to be part of her new life dear phillip i have taken a small flat just for you and me i found some furniture stored away which i have not seen since 1917. i'm so looking forward to your living in our flat but there was a difficulty during his mother's absence philip had been growing up under the wing of his ambitious uncle lord mountbatten he saw a bright future for prince philip in britain's royal navy well i think for prince philip it must have been very difficult when his mother reappeared she sort of felt that he ought to become a prince of greece and get to know athens better because there was a chance that he might one day be king of greece and that's what she had in mind and you know they didn't see see that at all the 17 year old philip had to choose between an uncertain future in greece with his mother and a promising naval career in britain i didn't think that the family were keen for him to go and live with his mother they would have felt that you know she hadn't been around all those years a lot of people didn't really take her seriously they thought she was just off on another of her sort of kind of you know fanciful idea trips so it's a bit sad for her really because again she had not known her son while he was growing up and by then in a sense it was sort of too late [Music] in 1940 adolf hitler's armies conquered europe and in april 1941 the swastika was raised over the acropolis alice now found herself alone in nazi occupied greece her son fighting in britain's royal navy britain now stood alone against the nazis elizabeth the future queen mother did her bit for the war effort visiting bombed out londoners but in occupied athens prince philip's mother offered help of a more practical kind she set to work in a soup kitchen for the needy then the food ran out athens began to starve i do remember my father being so worried about her because there she was stuck in athens great deprivation very little food and so my father was always on the lookout for any possibility of sending her a food pass or and two or three times there was an opportunity here to somebody who would be able to get it through to her and so he sends it and was so exasperated because she immediately gave it away and at the dining room table or something he'd say ah alice is driving me daughter you know i managed to send commander so and so he's taking a package and they're smuggling it through to her what has she done given it away every time he sent her something but alice's greatest act of charity was still to come in 1943 nazi authorities in greece began the deportation of jews to death camps in the city of salonika 60 000 jews were rounded up but a few escaped and fled south to athens [Music] amongst them were the cohens one of the country's most prominent jewish families and old friends of the greek royal family when word of the cohen's plight reached princess alice she faced a terrible decision and they they were just passing the residence of princess alice at the moment they passed at the very moment they passed a door opened and the lady in waiting of princess alice came out she said to tilde we are looking for you we are looking for you since yesterday and princess alice wants absolutely to see you because she is ready to hide you and it was a miracle for more than a year alice concealed the cohens on the top floor of her residence in central athens discovery would have meant certain death for them and grave danger for alice all the people who had hidden jews it was at the risk of their own life she came every day every day she took tea wisdom and she became very very very very good friend the resourceful princess even managed to turn her disability into a weapon one day the gestapo came and they wanted to know who lived in the residence princess alice didn't answer she said she was deep and she was deaf and she had no fear she she was very very courageous without her without any doubt they would have perished would have perished completely and perished in um in a very very monstrous way yes she has been she has been she has been the angel of the family in 1944 athens was liberated [Applause] and with war over alice was free to visit her son for an important family occasion at north holt herod our cameraman meets princess alice of greece the princess is the mother of lieutenant philip mountbatten formerly prince philip of greece while princess alice had been stuck in athens her son had fallen in love with another princess princess elizabeth and lieutenant baton will never forget july the 10th 1947. with his engagement to the future queen phillips future was decided once and for all their majesties the king and queen were followed by queen mary and princess andrew of greece the bridegroom's mother alice had been prevented from attending the weddings of her four daughters this one she was not going to miss but there were some who raised an eyebrow at the bridegroom's unconventional mother there were quite a few people at court who had reservations about him because of his family who was he where did he come from and during the run-up to his engagement to princess elizabeth he was staying at windsor castle and he was being shown around the castle by a rather patronizing courtier it was giving him as a rundown of the history of the castle and prince philip interrupted the quarter and said yes thank you very much i do know my mother was born here princess alice of greece great granddaughter of queen victoria was back under the roof of the british royal family but the mother-in-law to the future queen wasn't satisfied to slip into a life of royal luxury as soon as the wedding was over she disappeared prince philip's 63 year old mother was about to unveil her biggest shock yet [Applause] in june 1953 the eyes of the world were on london heads of state and royals from around the world had gathered for the most glittering state occasion in living memory to see queen elizabeth crowned with prince philip at her side [Music] but amongst the hermen the jewels and the gold braid there was one figure who stood out from the rest watch the coronation and the camera of course concentrates on the royal party but behind comes another solitary figure a nun in grey walking through the abbey who is it believe it or not it's princess alice the duke of edinburgh's mum [Music] while the royal family had been preparing for the coronation princess alice had been hard at work founding her very own religious order she called it the sisterhood of martha and mary and in the poor suburb of athens where she built a convent and an orphanage still in use as a community center today alice is still remembered when princess alicia came to our to live in our neighborhood we thought that this princess like the others with rich life when we see a woman very simple we changed mind we saw that she was a nun and it got very strange we had never known a princess none alice's latest incarnation was no sudden win ever since her frontline nursing experience in the balkan wars she'd been drawn to a life of service 25 years after being locked up for her unorthodox religious ideas alice had finally found her calling she invited me to go and stay in athens and she lived in tiny apartments trying to to catch novices to enter her order and she did it very seriously the young greek girls were very obedient because there was one awful moment that she was going actually to inspect a hospital and a nun was driving and aunt alice suddenly says left left here and so of course left here as she orders the wheel is turned left they go into a black wall they were both carried into hospital and stretches to fund her project alice had sold off the last of her royal jewelry collection much to the dismay of family members and her religious father continued to baffle my grandmother was a bit skeptical about it and i do remember her saying whoever heard of an abyss who smoked and played canasta but if some of the royal family found it hard to take alice's faith seriously to the poor of athens she was a godsend i was an orphan and she just embraced me and kissed my hand i was very proud and from that moment she called me my little neighbor that woman could read your heart and i must tell you something i try not to cry and she was an idea for me i must offer something as this woman offers and after many years i came to the red cross and became a volunteer of the red cross [Music] in 1967 history repeated itself the greek royal family was expelled from athens by a military coup prince phillips fiercely independent mother refused to budge it took an airplane sent by philip and a special request from the queen herself to bring her home to the land of her birth [Music] alice moved into a small room in buckingham palace after a lifetime separated by madness war and family politics philip and his mother were together at last and so there was this strange granny rattling around the palace she insisted apparently on calling him bubbkins which had been her pet name for him as a child they say that at buckingham palace you could always tell when she was coming along the corridor because of the whiff of wood binds in the air the idea of the duke of edinburgh's mum walking the corridors of buckingham palace dressed as a nun sucking on a wood vine it's wonderful [Music] just two years after being reunited with her son princess alice died at buckingham palace on the 5th of december 1969 her only worldly possessions were three dressing gowns [Music] shortly before her death alice wrote a farewell to her son dearest philip be brave and remember i will never leave you and you will always find me when you need me most all my devoted love your old mama [Music] but prince philip's mother had one final surprise in store she told her family that she wanted to be buried on the mount of olives and someone said well are we going to get there to visit the grave she won't even take the bus it would take two decades for prince philip to carry out his mother's final wish in 1988 after years of negotiations between church authorities princess alice's coffin was flown to jerusalem and interred in the orthodox church on the mount of olives it was the first time any member of the royal family has been to the state of israel shortly afterwards her son made a pilgrimage to her grave and accepted the highest possible honor on her behalf from the jewish nation for her courageous actions during the second world war she was a person with a deep religious faith and she would have considered it to be perfectly natural human reaction to fellow beings in distress this is the place where the remains of princess alice are kept here across the valley just opposite here where we're standing this is where the great judgment is going to be and all the three religions try to be buried in this area that's why she's lying here under our church and i guess god has something to do with it as well in the end god is responsible for everything so he probably arranged it [Music] gone [Music] you

Channel: Free Documentary - History

Views: 731,061

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full Documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), History, History Documentaries, Free Documentary History, Prince Philip, prince philip of greece and denmark, Alice von Battenberg, Princess Alice of Battenberg, Queen Elizabeth II, British Monarchy, Corfu, Greek Monarchy, Princess Alice, House Windsor, Queen Mum, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, royal house of windsor, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cambridge, England

Id: nH_awxh3z9c

Length: 47min 41sec (2861 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021