Friedrich III, German Emperor
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Friedrich III (October 18, 1831 – June 15, 1888), German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia, ruled 1888.
Born the son of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia (younger brother of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV), in 1858 Friedrich married Princess Victoria (Vicky) of Great Britain and Ireland, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The couple had eight children during their marriage: Wilhelm in 1859, Charlotte in 1860, Henry in 1862, Sigismund in 1864, Victoria 1866, Friedrich 1868, Sophie in 1870 and Beatrice 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 canceled 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.