The museum houses a decorative plate depicting Queen Louise of Prussia (1776–1810). In 1793, Duchess Luise Auguste Wilhelmine Amalie married future King Frederick William III. In Russian history, she is known as the grandmother of Emperor Alexander II of Russia.
From her very first days at the royal court in Berlin, the young Louise won the hearts of Prussians. Her unaffected manners and kind attitude to the people were not what one would expect from an aristocrat. She was intelligent, good-natured, and strong-willed at the same time. Her warm and sincere relationship with her husband and devotion to her children, which was unusual at that time, earned her the love of the people during her lifetime and a cult status after her death. The beautiful queen went down in history as the symbol of Prussia and the person who predetermined the future unification of Germany. Her daughter Prince Charlotte converted to Orthodoxy, took the name Alexandra Feodorovna, and married Grand Duke Nicholas Pavlovich, future Emperor Nicholas I of Russia.
After the Russian and Prussian armies were defeated by Napoleon’s troops in the Battle of Friedland (nowadays the Russian town of Pravdinsk), King Frederick William III of Prussia and his wife fled to Memel where they met Emperor Alexander I of Russia. Before undertaking an arduous journey along the Curonian Spit, Queen Louise visited Cranz and stayed at one of the town’s houses. Its current address is 10 Turgenev Street.
After Prussia was defeated by Napoleon, the
idealized image of a queen, who loved her people and strove to remain
optimistic, represented the struggles that the country faced during that
difficult period. Numerous books have been published, exploring the life of
Queen Louise. In German history, she is regarded as a brave patriot, a kind
angel who stood up for her humiliated country, unwilling to bow down before the
powerful Napoleon. The queen was determined to endure the hardships of being
exiled to Königsberg and later Memel alongside her husband and even met
Napoleon at Tilsit to plead for favorable terms after Prussia’s loss.
