ANTONIA, our little Princess

Small quotes from

ANTONIA 

the Portuguese Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen Princess

Chapter VI  of  volume VIII of  LOST LISBON

16 year old Antonia a few days 

before leaving Lisbon, in 1861.

The Book: 

LISBOA DESAPARECIDA

by

MARINA TAVARES DIAS



[After leaving Portugal for the last time, on her 1887 visit, Princess Antonia confesses to her brother, King Luiz, while travelling back to Germany through Spain: ]



[.../...] «'It is not the climate of my beloved Portugal, that light warm I have many, many times missed so much! No one knows how my heart suffers for being away, this is just for me, and if you were here now, for you too , my good Brother , because I keep no secrets from you .» 

Princess Antonia’s visit to Lisbon straightened ties between brother and sister . Antonia goes on: "I have suffered much from a kind of ice that lives inside the German hearts. They never have the same sincerity of the good-hearted Portuguese People . I sometimes fear that I am too much dedicated to my country. Only now, after having been there , do I realize how I love the Portuguese. When I left Portugal was very young, almost a child [Antónia was 16] , all seemed to be okay for me, I did not think I could ever find less love in my new homeland ' [Germany], D. Antonia reveals , without fear of exceeding herself, all her feelings to the King, to whom she had already talked in private. 

For their German relatives , she was expansive in excess: "If I was sad, I shouldn’t show what I felt, but if I laughed,  they criticized me for being too loud, thus forcing me to be someone other than myself. At 19 years of age, I had already felt more harshly than many people during all their lives’ [.../...]»

KING PEDRO AND HIS ROYAL FAMILY IN 1858 PORTUGAL

The Portuguese Royal Family in 1858. 

Photographic montage from individual photographs by Francisco Gomes and Václav Cifka. 

From left to right: 

- Queen Stephanie (born Princess of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen),
- Her husband King D. Pedro V;
- Prince Augustus;
- Prince Fernando (who died in 1861);
- Princess (Infanta) Antonia (who would marry Queen Stephanie's brother Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen);
- King Ferdinand II (King Pedro's father, former King Consort and Regent, widower of Queen Maria II);
- Infanta Maria Anna (who married Prince Goerg of Saxony and would become mother of Saxony's last King);
- Prince John (who also would die in 1861);
- Prince Luiz (future king; after his older brother's death) 

LOST LISBON, the book by Marina Tavares Dias 

has a volume VII section about "Dona Estefania: a Queen, a hospital, a neighborhood of Lisbon" 

and a volume VIII section about "Antónia, Portugal's Princess".

LISBON: THE LAST LIGHT IN EUROPE'S DARKNESS

In 1939, a few months after World War II began, a French advertisement distributed by the «Casa de Portugal em Paris» (The House of Portugal in Paris) seems to be premonitory. It recalls how Lisbon is the natural depart for the other side of the Atlantic and the rest of the world.
When, later, France herself was occupied by the nazi regime, hundreds of thousands of Europeans escaped through this «golden light city», where they were welcome and secure. Lisbonne, «Europe's harbour» between nightmare and safety.

Marina Tavares Dias has a book about the War Years in Lisbon.
It is called LISBOA NOS ANOS 40 | LONGE DA GUERRA.