title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Victoria tried to convince her husband to accept his father's abdication. However, the prince did not agree with his wife and supported his father, saying that he would stand firm before the Landtag. For Frederick, the abdication of a monarch after a conflict with the Parliament would create a dangerous precedent and weaken his successors. The crown prince also judged that his support of his father's abdication in his favour would be a serious dereliction of his duties as a son.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Finally, William I chose not to abdicate and appointed Count Otto von Bismarck as Prime Minister of Prussia on 22 September. Leader of the Conservative Party, the politician was willing to rule without a parliamentary majority and even without an authorised budget. The king was pleased with the situation, but his wife, the liberal Queen Augusta, and especially his son and daughter-in-law, harshly criticised the decision. However, Bismarck remained at the head of the Prussian government and subsequently of the German government until 1890 and was instrumental in the isolation of the Crown Prince and his wife.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: With the outbreak of the Prussian constitutional conflict, the opposition between liberals and conservatives in Berlin reached its peak. Suspected of supporting parliamentarians against William I, the Crown Prince and his wife were subjected to harsh criticism. The trip that the couple made to the Mediterranean in October 1862 aboard Queen Victoria's yacht served as a pretext for conservatives to accuse Frederick of abandoning his father in a time of great political tension. They also emphasised the fact that the Crown Prince traveled aboard a foreign vessel escorted by an English warship.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Following the announcement of the engagement between Victoria's brother the Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra of Denmark, daughter of the future King Christian IX and representative of a rival Prussian state, Victoria's position in the Berlin court was further weakened. The German public was of the opinion that the Crown Princess was responsible for encouraging the union between Denmark and the United Kingdom.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Frederick caused an incident when he openly criticised the policy of his father and Bismarck. During the official visit to Danzig, the Crown Prince publicly rejected an order issued by Bismarck on 1 June 1863 that allowed the Prussian authorities to prohibit the publication of a newspaper whose content was considered inappropriate. Enraged by the speech of his son, William I accused him of disobedience and threatened to suspend him from his military duties and even to exclude him from the succession to the throne. In conservative circles, which demanded exemplary punishment, few joined the voices of Prince Charles, the king's younger brother, and General Edwin von Manteuffel, who believed that Frederick should be tried in a court-martial.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Naturally, Victoria was not immune to these criticisms from conservatives. In fact, many suspected that she was behind the words of the heir's speech in Danzig.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Severely criticised in Germany, the couple saw their behaviour praised in Great Britain. "The Times" noted:


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: The support of the British newspaper became a new source of problems for Frederick and Victoria. The article contained everyday details suggesting that Victoria revealed certain confidential information to the press. The authorities opened an investigation against her, and because of this pressure, Victoria's personal secretary, Baron Ernst von Stockmar, resigned his position.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: In the international arena, Bismarck tried to build German unity around Prussia. His plans were to end the Austrian influence in the German Confederation and impose Prussian hegemony in Germany. Faithful to his objectives, Bismarck involved Prussia in the War of the Duchies against Denmark in 1864. However, the prime minister counteracted with the help of Austria in the conflict.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Despite the familial relations of the Prince of Wales with Copenhagen, the British government refused to intervene in the war between the German Confederation and Denmark. That had a certain importance in the royal family, which was deeply divided by the conflict. In addition, many in Berlin suspected that the Crown Princess was unhappy over the Prussian military successes against the country of her sister-in-law Alexandra.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Despite criticism and distrust, Victoria supported German troops. Following the example of Florence Nightingale, who had helped to improve the medical care of British soldiers in the Crimean War, the Crown Princess became involved in the aid of wounded soldiers. During the birthday celebrations of William I, Victoria, along with her husband, created a social fund for the families of soldiers killed or seriously injured.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: During the war, Frederick joined the Prussian army and was part of the fighting under the command of Field Marshal Friedrich von Wrangel. He distinguished himself with his courageous valour in the Battle of Dybbøl (7–18 April 1864) that marked the defeat of Denmark by the Austro-Prussian coalition. Pleased with the German victory, Victoria expected the military success of her husband would encourage people to understand that she was the wife of the heir apparent. In a letter to Frederick, she complained of the constant criticism and being considered too British in Prussia and too Prussian in Great Britain.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: With the final victory over Denmark and the Treaty of Vienna (signed on 30 October 1864), it was decided that the Duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg would be administered by a joint Prussian-Austrian government. However, this new division became a source of conflict between Vienna and Berlin.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: After the War of the Duchies, Germany experienced a short period of peace. The Gastein Convention, signed by the two winners on 14 August 1865, placed the former Danish provinces under Prussian-Austrian control and both countries occupied a part of the Duchies. However, differences of opinion concerning the administration of the provinces quickly triggered a conflict between the former allies. On 9 June 1866, Prussia occupied Holstein, which was administered by Austria. In the meanwhile, Vienna asked the Diet of Frankfurt for a general mobilisation of the German states against Prussia, which took place on 14 June.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Considering the mobilisation illegal, Prussia proclaimed the dissolution of the German Confederation and invaded Saxony, Hanover and Hesse-Kassel, effectively starting the so-called Austro-Prussian War. During the Battle of Königgrätz (3 July 1866) in which Crown Prince Frederick was instrumental, Austria suffered a heavy defeat and ended up capitulating. Finally, with the Peace of Prague (23 August 1866), Vienna withdrew from the German union. Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, the Duchy of Nassau and the city of Frankfurt were annexed by Prussia.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Shortly after the Prussian victory at Königgrätz, Bismarck asked the Parliament for more money for the army, which raised a new controversy between the liberal parliamentarians. Frederick welcomed the creation of the North German Confederation, which joined Prussia and some Germanic principalities, because he saw that it was the first step toward German unification. However, the Confederation was far from adopting the liberal ideas of the Crown Prince. Despite being democratically elected, the Reichstag did not have the same powers as a British Parliament. In addition, local sovereigns were more interested in maintaining their prerogatives, and the new German constitution gave many powers to Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Less enthusiastic than her husband, Victoria saw the North German Confederation as an extension of the Prussian political system, which she hated. Nevertheless, she remained hopeful that the situation was temporary and that a united and liberal Germany could be created.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: During the Austro-Prussian War, Victoria and Frederick received a hard blow. Sigismund, their fourth child, died of meningitis at 21 months on 18 June 1866, just a few days before the Battle of Königgrätz. The tragedy devastated the Crown Princess, who received no comfort from her mother or her in-laws. Queen Victoria, still mourning the loss of Prince Albert, did not understand her daughter's feelings and believed that the loss of a child was much less severe than that of a husband. Queen Augusta demanded that her daughter-in-law quickly resume her official duties.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: With peace restored in Germany, the Crown Prince frequently traveled abroad to represent the Berlin court. Victoria rarely accompanied her husband on the trips, mainly because they tried to keep their expenses to a minimum. In addition, the Crown Princess did not want to leave her children for long periods of time. After Sigismund's death, the royal family grew with the arrival of four new children between 1866 and 1872. While the elder children (Wilhelm, Charlotte and Henry) were left in the care of governesses, the younger ones (Sigismund, Victoria, Waldemar, Sophie and Margaret) were raised personally by Victoria, which was a point of conflict with both her mother and mother-in-law.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: In Berlin, Victoria's situation remained difficult, and her relationship with Queen Augusta, who also had liberal ideas, continued to be tense. Any gesture from her was a pretext for the worst criticism from her mother-in-law; for example, Augusta disapproved when Victoria chose to use a landau instead of a traditional barouche with two horses. The opposition between the two women grew so much that Queen Victoria had to intercede for her daughter with William I.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: On 19 July 1870 the Franco-Prussian War began, and it would lead to the fall of the Second French Empire. As in previous conflicts against Denmark and Austria, Frederick participated actively in the fight against the French. At the head of the 3rd German army, he had a decisive role in the battles of Wissembourg (4 August 1870) and Wörth (6 August 1870), and also had a notorious role in the Battle of Sedan (1 September 1870) during the siege of Paris. Jealous of the military success of the heir to the throne, Bismarck tried to undermine his prestige. The chancellor used the late arrival of the Third German Army to Paris to accuse the Crown Prince of trying to protect France under pressure from his mother and his wife. During an official dinner, Bismarck accused the queen and the Victoria of being ardently francophile, an incident that was soon known by the newspapers.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Victoria's commitment to the wounded soldiers had no impact in the German press. In Hamburg, she had built a military hospital, running it regardless of costs, in addition to visiting the war-wounded soldiers in Wiesbaden, Biberach, Bingen, Bingerbrück, Rüdesheim and Mainz. However, Victoria was accused of performing tasks normally attributed to the queen, prompting the wrath of her in-laws. Finally, William I ordered her to stop that "theater of charity" and return to Berlin to represent the royal family.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: On 18 January 1871 (the anniversary of the accession of the Hohenzollern dynasty to the royalty in 1701), the princes of the North German Confederation and those of South Germany (Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg and Hesse-Darmstadt) proclaimed William I as hereditary German emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. Then they symbolically united their states within a new German Empire. Frederick and Victoria became German crown prince and crown princess, and Otto von Bismarck was appointed imperial chancellor.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Subsequently, the Catholic states of South Germany that were previously bound to Prussia by a "Zollverein" (Customs Union), were officially incorporated into Unified Germany by the treaties of Versailles (26 February 1871) and Frankfurt (10 May 1871).


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Despite being named field marshal because of his military performance in the wars of the 1860s, Frederick did not receive the command of any troops after the Franco-Prussian war. In fact, the emperor did not trust his own son and tried to keep him away from state affairs because of his "too English" ideas. The crown prince was appointed "Curator of the Royal Museums", a task that raised some enthusiasm in his wife. Following the advice of her father, Victoria had continued her intellectual formation after arriving in Germany: she read Goethe, Lessing, Heine and Stuart Mill and frequented intellectual circles with her husband. The writer Gustav Freytag was a close friend of the couple and Gustav zu Putlitz was appointed Frederick's Chamberlain for some time. Despite the indignation of her mother, Victoria was also interested in the Theory of Evolution of Darwin and the ideas of British geologist Lyell. The German astronomer Wilhelm Julius Foerster reported that she visited the Berlin Observatory frequently and took keen interest in his astronomical work, and in the growth of the German Society for Ethical Culture. Eager to understand the principles of socialism, she read the work of Karl Marx and encouraged her husband to frequent the salon of Countess Marie von Schleinitz, a place known for being a meeting point of Bismarck's opponents.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Unlike many of their contemporaries, Victoria and Frederick rejected antisemitism. In a letter to her mother, Victoria harshly criticised the essay "Das Judenthum in der Musik" (Judaism in Music) by Richard Wagner, whom she considered ridiculous and unfair. As for Frederick, he did not hesitate to make public appearances in synagogues when manifestations began of hatred against the Jews in Germany, especially in the early 1880s. In 1880–1881, there was a campaign waged by the "Völkisch" movement to disemancipate German Jews, led by the Lutheran Pastor Adolf Stoecker and the historian Heinrich von Treitschke, leading to a quarter of a million Germans signing a petition asking the government to ban all Jewish immigration, forbid Jews from holding public office, to work as teachers, and from attending universities, which was a mere prelude to the ultimate goal of the "völkisch" activists: stripping Jews of their German citizenship. Both Stoecker and Treitschke were very popular and well respected men in Germany, and their anti-Semitic campaign attracted much support from the Prussian Army officer corps, university students, and the court, but Victoria was fearless in attacking the anti-Semitic leaders and wrote, "Treitschke and his supporters are lunatics of the most dangerous sort". In another letter, Victoria suggested that Stoecker and his followers belonged in a lunatic asylum since so much of what he had to say reflected an unbalanced mind. In yet another letter, she wrote that she had become ashamed of her adopted country as Stoecker and Treitschke "behave "so hatefully" towards people of a different faith and another race who have become an integral part (and by no means the worst) of our nation!".


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Victoria and her husband, the latter wearing the uniform of a Prussian field marshal, attended a synagogue service in Berlin in 1880 to show support for the German Jews threatened by what Victoria called Treitschke's "disgraceful" attacks. In 1881, they attended a synagogue service in Wiesbaden "to demonstrate as clearly as we can what our convictions are" just as the "Reichstag" was beginning to debate the issue of Jewish disemancipation. Her mother, Queen Victoria, was proud of her daughter and son-in-law's efforts to stop the "völkisch" campaign and wrote to Frederick to say she was happy that her daughter had married a man like him, who was prepared to stand up for the rights of the Jews. In both the Kronprinzenpalais and Neues Palais in Potsdam, the crown princely couple received many commoners, including some Jewish personalities, which inevitably led to the disapproval of the emperor and the court. Among their guests were the physicians Hermann von Helmholtz and Rudolf Virchow, the philosopher Eduard Zeller, and the historian Hans Delbrück. The reactionary and anti-Semitic Field Marshal Alfred von Waldersee felt so threatened by the prospect of Frederick becoming emperor and Victoria empress that he planned, were Frederick to ascend to the throne, to have the military stage a coup d'état in favor of his son Prince Wilhelm; to have Victoria expelled back to Britain and to have her executed if she ever returned to Germany; to end universal manhood suffrage for the "Reichstag"; and to have Germany launch a war to "take out" France, Austria, and Russia (the fact that Germany was allied to the last two did not matter to Waldersee). Only the fact that Frederick was already dying of cancer when he become emperor in 1888 kept Waldersee from going ahead with his plans for a "putsch".


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: An art lover, Victoria appreciated and practised painting, receiving classes from Anton von Werner and Heinrich von Angeli. She also supported education and was a member of the association founded by Wilhelm Adolf Lette in 1866, whose objective was to improve women's education. Beginning in 1877, Victoria founded schools for girls (the ""Victoriaschule für Mädchen"") directed by British teachers, in addition to nursing schools (the ""Victoriahaus zur Krankenpflege"") based on the English model.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Victoria's eldest son went through various treatments to cure his atrophied arm. Strange methods, such as the so-called "animal baths" in which the arm was immersed in the entrails of recently dead rabbits, were performed with some regularity. In addition, William also underwent electroshock sessions in an attempt to revive the nerves passing through the left arm to the neck and also to prevent his head tilting to one side. Victoria insisted that he become a good rider. The thought that he, as heir to the throne, should not be able to ride was intolerable to her. Riding lessons began when William was eight and were a matter of endurance for him. Over and over, the weeping prince was set on his horse and compelled to go through the paces. He fell off time after time but despite his tears was set on its back again. After weeks, he finally got it right and maintained his balance. William later wrote: "The torments inflicted on me, in this pony riding, must be attributed to my mother."


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: For Victoria, her son's disability was a disgrace. Her letters and her diary show her grief for her son's arm and her guilt for having given birth to a disabled child. During a visit to her parents in 1860, she wrote about her eldest son:


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Sigmund Freud speculated that Victoria, being unable to accept the illness of her child, distanced herself from her first-born, which made a great impact on the behaviour of the future William II. However, other authors, such as the historian Wolfgang Mommsen, insist that the she was very affectionate with her children. According to him, she wanted her children to be like the idealised figure of her own father and tried, as best she could, to follow the educational precepts of Prince Albert. In 1863, Victoria and Frederick bought a cottage in Bornstedt so that their children could grow up in an environment similar to that of Osborne House. However, Victoria's influence on her offspring had an important limitation: like all the Hohenzollerns, her sons received a military training from a very young age, and she feared that such education would undermine their values.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Willing to give their children the best education possible, Victoria and her husband entrusted this task to the bright, strict Calvinist philologist Georg Ernst Hinzpeter. Reputedly a liberal, Hinzpeter was in fact a staunch conservative who made William and Henry undergo a rigorous and puritanical upbringing, without praise or incentives. To complete their education, the princes were sent to a school in Kassel despite the opposition of the king and court. Finally, William was enrolled at the University of Bonn, and his younger brother, who did not show the same intellectual interests, was sent to the navy at 16 years old. The education received by the children did not allow them to have the open and liberal personalities that their parents wanted.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: While her two eldest sons were approaching adulthood, Victoria suffered another blow with the death of her 11-year-old son, Waldemar, on 27 March 1879 of diphtheria. Without having recovered from the death of Sigismund, the Crown Princess was devastated with the loss of another child especially since he died of the same disease that had taken her sister Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine and her niece Princess Marie just a few months earlier. Victoria, however, tried to keep her suffering secret because, except for her husband, no other family member was willing to comfort her.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: If her sons were sources of great concern, Victoria's daughters rarely caused problems. The only exception was Charlotte, the eldest of the princesses. A girl with slow growth and a difficult education, she was regularly prone to fits of rage during her childhood. Growing up, her health became delicate, and in addition to her capricious personality, she also revealed an irritable character. Today, several historians (like John C. G. Röhl, Martin Warren and David Hunt) defend the thesis that Charlotte suffered from porphyria as did her maternal ancestor King George III. This could explain the gastrointestinal problems, migraines and nervous crises that tormented the princess. The same historians believe that the headaches and skin rashes that Victoria treated with doses of morphine were also a consequence of porphyria, albeit in a weaker form than that suffered by Charlotte.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: As her children became adults, Victoria began to seek suitors for them. In 1878, Charlotte married her paternal second cousin Bernhard, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Meiningen, which delighted the Berlin court. Three years later, Victoria began negotiations to marry William to Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, provoking outrage in conservative German circles. Chancellor Bismarck criticised the project because the princess belonged to the family who was dethroned by Prussia with the annexation of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein in 1864. The Hohenzollerns considered Augusta Victoria unworthy to marry the heir apparent to the German Empire because her family lacked sufficient rank. After several months of negotiations, Victoria got what she wanted but soon became disappointed when she saw that her daughter-in-law did not have the liberal personality that she expected.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: The Crown Princess, however, was not so lucky with the marriage plans for her daughter Viktoria. In 1881 she fell in love with Prince Alexander I of Bulgaria and her mother tried to obtain permission from the emperor for the engagement. Despite being a sovereign, the Bulgarian prince was born of a morganatic marriage, which placed him in a position of inferiority in front of the proud House of Hohenzollern. In addition, Alexander's policy in his Principality of Bulgaria was greatly disliked by Russia, a traditional ally of Prussia. Bismarck feared that marriage between a German princess and an enemy of Tsar Alexander III of Russia would represent a blow to the League of the Three Emperors, i.e. the Austro-German-Russian alliance. The chancellor, in the meanwhile, gained the disapproval of William I to the union, much to the dismay of Victoria and Frederick.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: This new conflict between father and son resulted in the emperor replacing the Crown Prince with Prince William at official ceremonies and major events. On several occasions, it was the grandson of William I who represented the Berlin court abroad.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: In 1887, the health of the 90-year-old William I declined rapidly, indicating that the succession was close. However, the crown prince was also ill. Increasingly sickly, Frederick was told that he had laryngeal cancer. To confirm his suspicions, Frederick was examined by British physician Morell Mackenzie, who after a biopsy did not find any sign of illness.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: With the agreement of his physicians, Frederick went with his wife to Great Britain for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in June 1887. On that trip, the couple secretly brought to Windsor Castle three boxes full of personal documents that they wanted to keep away from the eyes of Bismarck and the Hohenzollerns. Always eager to harm the Crown Prince, the imperial chancellor continued his intrigues against Victoria. With the help of Chamberlain Hugo von Radolin and the painter Götz de Seckendorff, he tried to prepare a final report against her.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Because the health of the crown prince did not improve, Mackenzie advised him to go to Italy to undergo treatment. Frederick and Victoria went to San Remo in September 1887, causing outrage in Berlin because, despite the continued deterioration in the emperor's health, the couple didn't return to the capital. In early November, Frederick completely lost the use of speech and German doctors were summoned by Victoria to San Remo for further examinations. Finally, he was diagnosed with a malignant tumour and the only possible treatment was the removal of his larynx, but the crown prince refused. Victoria supported her husband in his decision, which caused a serious argument with her son William, who shortly before had arrived in Italy and accused his mother of being happy with Frederick's disease.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: In Berlin, the agony of William I lasted several months until, on 9 March 1888, the first German emperor finally died. His son succeeded him as king of Prussia and German emperor under the name of Frederick III.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Immediately after accession, Emperor Frederick III appointed his wife as Lady of the Order of the Black Eagle, the highest order of chivalry in the Kingdom of Prussia. However, after her return to Berlin, she realised that she and her husband in fact were really "shadows ready to be replaced by William".


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Gravely ill, Frederick III limited his political actions to some symbolic measures, such as declaring an amnesty to all political prisoners and the dismissal of the reactionary Interior Minister Robert von Puttkamer. He also awarded the Order of the Black Eagle to various people who had supported and advised him when he was still Crown Prince, like Justice Minister Heinrich von Friedberg and Frankfurt Parliament President Eduard von Simson.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: She tried to use her new status to promote the marriage of her daughter Viktoria to Prince Alexander I of Bulgaria (abandoned since 1886). However, given the difficulties caused by the project, she advised her daughter to give up on the marriage.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Frederick III died about 11:00 on 15 June 1888. Once the emperor's death was announced, his son and successor William II ordered the occupation of the imperial residence by soldiers. The chambers of Frederick and Victoria were carefully checked for incriminating documents. However, the search was unsuccessful because all the couple's correspondence had been taken to Windsor Castle the previous year. Several years later, William II stated that the purpose of this research was to find state documents. Currently, however, many historians (as Hannah Pakula and Franz Herre) suggest that what the emperor wanted was to recover documents that could threaten his reputation.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: The funeral of Frederick III came shortly after in Potsdam, without major pomp. Victoria, now empress dowager, didn't appear at the ceremony in the Friedenskirche of Sanssouci, but attended a mass in memory of her husband in the Royal Estate of Bornsted. From the death of her husband, Victoria became known as Empress Frederick.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: In the following weeks, William II purged all institutions and people close to Frederick III and Victoria. The home of the lawyer Franz von Roggenbach was searched and the widow of Ernst von Stockmar, former private secretary of Victoria, was questioned by the police. Friedrich Heinrich Geffcken, Frederick III's counsellor for years, was tried for high treason for publishing excerpts from the diary of Emperor Frederick. Finally, Heinrich von Friedberg was dismissed as Justice Minister.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Once widowed, the empress dowager had to leave the Neues Palais in Potsdam because her son wanted to settle his residence there. Unable to settle in Sanssouci, she acquired a property in Kronberg im Taunus, in the old Duchy of Nassau. There, Victoria built a castle that was named Friedrichshof in honour of her husband. Having inherited several million marks after the death of the wealthy Maria de Brignole-Sale, Duchess of Galliera, the empress dowager was able to finance the construction and expansion of her residence. With the completion of the works in 1894, she spent most of the year in the property with her younger daughters, and left only when she travelled abroad. Contrary to the desires of the emperor, who preferred that she leave Germany permanently, Victoria formed her own court and maintained close relations with liberal circles.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: In October 1889, Princess Sophia, Victoria's penultimate daughter, married the future King Constantine I of Greece, leaving the maternal residence. The following year, Princess Viktoria, after the ending of her hopes to wed the ruler of Bulgaria, in the end married Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe, the future regent of the Principality of Lippe. Finally, in 1893, Princess Margaret married Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse, who in 1918 was elected to the throne of the ephemeral Kingdom of Finland. Although satisfied with these marriages, the empress dowager felt increasingly isolated following the departure of her daughters.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: In fact, Victoria was completely sequestered from public life by Wilhelm II. With the death of her mother-in-law, the Empress Dowager Augusta in 1890, Victoria had hopes to succeed her as patron of the German Red Cross and the "Vaterländischer Frauenverein" (Association of Patriotic Women). However, it was her daughter-in-law, Empress Augusta Victoria, who assumed the presidency of these entities, which caused a deep bitterness in Victoria.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: The empress dowager didn't hesitate to harshly criticise the policies and behaviour of her son. When the emperor wrote in the guestbook of the city of Munich the words ""Suprema lex regis voluntas"" (The will of the king is the supreme law"), she indignantly wrote to her mother:


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: Victoria devoted part of her final years to painting and to visit the artists' colony of Kronberg, where she regularly met with the painter Norbert Schrödl. In her last days, she used to walk in the morning and spent long hours writing letters or reading in the library of her castle.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: In late 1898, physicians diagnosed the empress dowager with inoperable breast cancer, forcing her to stay in bed for long periods. Cancer had spread to her spine by the autumn of 1900, and as she worried about her personal letters (in which she detailed her concern over Germany's future under her son) falling into the hands of the emperor, she requested that the letters be brought back to Great Britain in a cloak-and-dagger operation by her godson Frederick Ponsonby, the private secretary of her brother, Edward VII, who was making his final visit to his terminally ill sister in Kronberg on 23 February 1901. These letters were later edited by Ponsonby and put into context by his background commentary to form the book that was published in 1928.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: The empress dowager died in Friedrichshof on 5 August 1901, less than seven months after the death of her mother.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: She was buried next to her husband in the royal mausoleum of the Friedenskirche at Potsdam on 13 August 1901. Her tomb has a recumbent marble effigy of herself on top. Her two sons who died in childhood, Sigismund and Waldemar, are buried in the same mausoleum.


title: Victoria, Princess Royal

text: With her style of Princess Royal, Victoria was granted use of the royal arms, as then used: with an escutcheon of the shield of Saxony, the whole differenced by a label argent of three points, the outer points bearing crosses gules, the central a rose gules.


title: Boris Becker

text: Boris Franz Becker (, ; born 22 November 1967) is a German former world No. 1 tennis player. Becker was successful from the start of his career, winning the Wimbledon Championships at the age of 17. He ultimately won six Grand Slam singles titles: three Wimbledon Championships, two Australian Opens and one US Open. Becker also won three year-end championships, 13 Masters titles and an Olympic gold medal. In 1989, he was voted the Player of the Year by both the ATP and the ITF.


title: Boris Becker

text: After his playing career ended Becker became a tennis commentator and media personality, his personal relationships were discussed in news outlets. He has engaged in numerous ventures, including coaching Novak Djokovic for three years, playing poker professionally and working for an online poker company.


title: Boris Becker

text: In October 2002, the Munich District Court gave Becker a suspended two-year prison sentence for tax evasion. He declared bankruptcy in the UK in 2017. In April 2022, he was sentenced by UK courts to two and a half years in prison for hiding assets and loans that the court required him to disclose to creditors and the bankruptcy trustee. On 15 December, he was released from prison early, having served eight months, and was immediately deported to Germany by UK authorities.


title: Boris Becker

text: Boris Becker was born in Leimen, a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, the son of Elvira and Karl-Heinz Becker. Named after the Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak, young Becker was raised Catholic. His father Karl-Heinz, an architect, founded a tennis centre in Leimen, where Becker learned to play tennis. He received his secondary education at Helmholtz-Gymnasium in Heidelberg. His mother Elvira Becker, née Pisch was from the Moravian village of Kunewald (Kunín).


title: Boris Becker

text: In 1974, Becker joined TC Blau-Weiß Leimen tennis club and began training under Boris Breskvar. By 1977, he was a member of the junior team of the Baden Tennis Association. He went on to win the South German championship and the first German Youth Tennis Tournament.


title: Boris Becker

text: In 1978, he was chosen for the German Tennis Federation's top junior team by Richard Schönborn. According to Schönborn, the funding for Becker's training was put up by the German Tennis Federation at an expense of over 1.3 million DM. In 1981, he was included in the Federation's first men's team. In 1982, he won the doubles at the Orange Bowl International Tennis Championships.


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker turned professional in 1984, under the guidance of Romanian-born coach Günther Bosch and Romanian manager Ion Ţiriac, and won his first professional doubles title that year in Munich. As a teenager, Becker won the Tennis World Young Masters at the NEC in Birmingham in 1985, before taking his first top-level singles title in June that year at Queen's Club. Two weeks later, on 7 July, he became the first unseeded player and the first German to win the Wimbledon singles title, defeating Kevin Curren in four sets. Becker was at that time ranked 20th in ATP ranking, and was unseeded, as at that time Wimbledon did not seed players beyond the top 16. He was the youngest ever male Grand Slam singles champion at (a record later broken by Michael Chang in 1989, who won the French Open when he was ). Two months after his triumph, Becker became the youngest winner of the Cincinnati Open. Becker has since said that "the plan from my parents for me was to finish school, go to university, get a proper degree and learn something respectful. The last thing on everyone's mind was me becoming a tennis professional."


title: Boris Becker

text: In 1986, Becker successfully defended his Wimbledon title, defeating No. 1 Ivan Lendl in straight sets in the final. In 1987 Becker, then ranked 2, lost in the second round of Wimbledon to Peter Doohan, ranked 70. In the Davis Cup that year, Becker and John McEnroe played one of the longest matches in tennis history. Becker won 4–6, 15–13, 8–10, 6–2, 6–2 (at that time, there were no tiebreaks in the Davis Cup). The match lasted 6 hours and 22 minutes.


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker contested the Wimbledon final in 1988, where he lost in four sets to Stefan Edberg in a match that marked the start of one of Wimbledon's great rivalries. Becker also helped West Germany win its first Davis Cup in 1988. He won the year-end Masters title in New York City, defeating five-time champion Lendl in the final. The same year he also won season ending WCT Finals for the rival World Championship Tennis tour, defeating Edberg in four sets.


title: Boris Becker

text: In 1989, Becker won two Grand Slam singles titles, the only year he won more than one. After losing to Edberg in the French Open semifinals, he defeated Edberg in the Wimbledon final, and then beat Lendl in the US Open final. He also helped West Germany retain the Davis Cup, defeating Andre Agassi in the semifinal round. As a result, Becker was named Player of The Year by the ATP Tour. The No. 1 ranking, however, still eluded him.


title: Boris Becker

text: In 1990, Becker met Edberg for the third consecutive year in the Wimbledon final, but this time lost in a long five-set match. He failed to successfully defend his US Open title, losing to Agassi in the semifinals. Becker reached the final of the Australian Open for the first time in his career in 1991, where he defeated Lendl to claim the No. 1 ranking. Another loss to Agassi in the French Open semifinals kept him from winning the first two Grand Slam tournaments of the year. He was ranked No. 1 for 12 weeks during 1991, though he never managed to finish a year with that ranking. Becker was ranked No. 2 during Wimbledon in 1991 and reached his fourth consecutive final there. However, he lost in straight sets to fellow German and No. 7 Michael Stich. Becker and Stich developed a fierce rivalry, however, Becker and Stich teamed up in 1992 to win the men's doubles gold medal at the Olympic Games in Barcelona.


title: Boris Becker

text: In 1992, Becker won seven tour titles including his second ATP Tour World Championships defeating Jim Courier in four sets.


title: Boris Becker

text: By 1993, issues back home over his courtship of and marriage to Barbara Feltus, whose mother was German and father was African-American, and tax problems with the German government, had caused Becker to slide into a severe mid-career decline.


title: Boris Becker

text: By 1995 Becker had been in continual decline for half a decade. That year he reached the Wimbledon final for the seventh time, defeating Agassi in the semifinals. In the final, however, Becker, further fatigued after gruelling baseline contests with Cédric Pioline and then with Agassi, lost in four sets to Pete Sampras. He won the year-end ATP Tour World Championships for the third and last time in Frankfurt with a straight-set win over Michael Chang in the final. Becker's sixth and final Grand Slam title came in 1996 when he defeated Chang in the final of the Australian Open. After winning the Queen's Club Championships for the fourth time, Becker was widely expected to mount a serious challenge for the Wimbledon title in 1996, but his bid ended abruptly when he damaged his right wrist during a third-round match against Neville Godwin and was forced to withdraw.


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker defeated Sampras in October 1996 in a five-set final in Stuttgart Masters. "Becker is the best indoor player I've ever played", said Sampras after the match. Becker lost to Sampras in the final of the 1996 ATP Tour World Championships in Hanover. Becker saved two match points in the fourth set and held serve 27 consecutive times until he was broken in the penultimate game. Later that year he won the Grand Slam Cup defeating Goran Ivanišević in the final. In 1997, Becker lost to Sampras in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. After that match, he vowed that he would never play at Wimbledon again. However, Becker played Wimbledon one more time in 1999, this time losing in the fourth round to Patrick Rafter.


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker was most comfortable playing on fast-playing surfaces, particularly grass courts and indoor carpet (on which he won 26 titles). He reached a few finals playing on clay courts, but never won a clay-court tournament in his professional career. His best performances at the French Open were when he reached the semifinals in 1987, 1989, and 1991. Becker was close to winning a clay-court tournament in his last final on the surface, when he led Thomas Muster by two sets to love in the 1995 Monte Carlo Open final, and double-faulted on set point in the fourth-set tiebreaker.


title: Boris Becker

text: Over the course of his career, Becker won 49 singles titles and 15 doubles titles. Besides his six Grand Slam titles, he was also a singles winner in the year-end Masters / ATP Tour World Championships in 1988, 1992, and 1995, the WCT Finals in 1988 and at the Grand Slam Cup in 1996. He won a record-equalling four singles titles at London's Queen's Club. In Davis Cup, his career win–loss record was 54–12, including 38–3 in singles. He also won the other two major international team titles playing for Germany, the Hopman Cup (in 1995) and the World Team Cup (in 1989 and 1998). He is the first male player to appear in 7 Wimbledon finals in the Modern Era, tied with Sampras and Djokovic, and behind the record 12 Wimbledon finals appearances by Federer.


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker won singles titles in 14 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Qatar, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States. In 2003, he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. He occasionally plays on the senior tour and in World Team Tennis. He has also worked as a commentator at Wimbledon for the BBC.


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker's game was based on a fast and well-placed serve, that earned him the nicknames "Boom Boom", "Der Bomber" and "Baron von Slam", and great volleying skills at the net. He could supplement his pure serve-and-volley game with brilliant athleticism at the net, which included the diving volley that was considered a trademark of the young German, and which endeared him to his fans. His heavy forehand and return of serve were also very significant factors in his game.


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker occasionally deviated from his serve-and-volley style to try to out-hit, from the baseline, opponents who normally were at their best while remaining near the baseline. Even though Becker possessed powerful shots from both wings, this strategy was often criticized by commentators.


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker had frequent emotional outbursts on court. Whenever he considered himself to be playing badly, he often swore at himself and occasionally smashed his rackets. In 1987, he was fined $2000 following a series of outbursts during the Australian Open in Melbourne, including breaking three rackets, "twice throwing the ball in an offensive manner at the umpire, hitting the umpire's chair on one occasion, spitting water in the direction of the umpire, and hitting three balls out of the court." Becker's highly dramatic play spawned new expressions such as the "Becker Blocker" (his trademark early return shot), the "Becker Hecht" (a flying lunge), the "Becker Faust" ("Becker Fist"), the "Becker Shuffle" (the dance he sometimes performed after making important points), and "Becker Säge" ("Becker Saw" – referring to the way in which he pumped his fists in a sawing motion).


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker, one of the most effective players in his era on grass courts and carpet courts, had less success on clay. He never won a top-level singles title on clay, coming closest when holding two match points against Thomas Muster in the final of the 1995 Monte Carlo Open. Becker did, however, team up with Michael Stich to win the 1992 men's doubles Olympic gold medal on clay.


title: Boris Becker

text: In 2012, Becker described his approach to retirement. "I had won so much by 22, a number of Wimbledon titles, US Open, Davis Cup, World number one. You look for the next big thing and that isn't in tennis."


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker was found guilty by the Munich District Court of deliberately making false statements regarding his place of residence on his personal income tax filings in order to save DM3.3 million.


title: Boris Becker

text: A criminal investigation into his tax affairs began in December 1996 while he was still an active professional tennis player. By the time German prosecutors filed charges of tax evasion against the tennis star in July 2002, Becker had already retired from the sport. The retired tennis player, who had earned over US$25 million in prize money plus millions in endorsements, was originally charged with withholding taxes of DM10.4 million (US$5 million), however, the trial ended up being for the considerably lower sum of DM3.3 million (€1.6 million) for which prosecutors believed they had evidence. Throughout late summer and early fall 2002, leading up to the publicized trial that was to focus on where Becker lived between 1991 and 1993 (his tax filings claimed Monaco while the prosecution had evidence of the player in fact spending majority of that time in the Munich area), most observers predicted the star would make a deal with the Munich public prosecutor's office—admitting guilt in exchange for a lighter sentence.


title: Boris Becker

text: As predicted, at his day in court on 23 October 2002, 34-year-old Becker admitted to living in Munich between 1991 and 1993 despite being officially registered in Monaco, however, maintaining he could not be accused of withholding income or engaging in criminal machinations. At the same time, as part of his defence, Becker emphasized that his property where he stayed in Munich was not a standard apartment but a "spartan flat with just a bed and no refrigerator". It also came out that he had been warned against purchasing the Munich apartment, but ignored the warnings. The player also told the court that the financial investigations that had begun in December 1996 played a role in his decision to retire from tennis due to "countless raids of [his] house and office" and that he "hasn't won any tournaments since then and ended [his] career".


title: Boris Becker

text: Simultaneously with Becker's testimony, his lawyer presented the court with evidence that a week prior to his court date, Becker had paid around €3 million in back taxes, far exceeding the DM3.3 million (€1.6 million) amount he was in the dock for. Despite the admission, as well as the payment, both seen as part of an attempt to settle the six-year process with a lighter sentence, the prosecution still asked the court for a sentence of three years and six months in jail.


title: Boris Becker

text: One day later, on 24 October 2002, in a courtroom with public gallery packed with Becker's fans, the Munich District Court judge Huberta Knöringer gave Becker a two-year prison sentence, the execution of which was suspended. Additionally, his sentence included a fine of €300,000 and another €200,000 to various charitable institutions.


title: Boris Becker

text: Since 2000, Becker has been the principal owner of the tennis division of Völkl Inc., a tennis racquet and clothing manufacturer.


title: Boris Becker

text: Also in 2000, Becker partnered up with the German IT company Pixelpark AG for a joint dot-com investment: Sportgate.de, a German-language website covering local, regional and national sporting scene in Germany. The venture shut down during summer 2001, less than a year into its operation, amid reports of Becker's business partner, Pixelpark's CEO Paulus Neef who owned a 35% stake in Sportgate, failing to come up with a promised £1m cash injection. Paulus countered with a lawsuit against Becker in the Munich regional court for feeling "conned".


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker's autobiography, "Augenblick, verweile doch..." (en: "The Player") was published in 2003. Its release made global headlines due to the tennis star's divulgence of details surrounding his publicized divorce from Barbara Feltus, including an account of his 1999 sexual encounter with the Russian waitress Angela Ermakova that triggered the eventual end of his marriage to Feltus. Other personal disclosures in the book include revelations of addiction to painkillers and sleeping pills early into his tennis playing career as well as admission about promiscuity and excessive alcoholic intake as a way of coping with loneliness while on the road. The book made "The Sunday Times" bestseller list.


title: Boris Becker

text: In May 2009, Becker announced the launch of online media platform "Boris Becker TV". The website, in English and German, features clips from his career and footage of his daily life.


title: Boris Becker

text: In June 2015, prior to the Wimbledon Championship that was the 30th anniversary of his first Wimbledon win, another Becker autobiography, "Boris Becker's Wimbledon: My Life and Career at the All England Club", was published with a foreword by the world's number 1 player and reigning Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic whom Becker coached at the time.


title: Boris Becker

text: Since 2002, Becker has been a commentator for the BBC at Wimbledon (apart from the 2014, 2015, and 2016 seasons when he coached Novak Djokovic). During BBC's coverage of the 2022 Wimbledon, which the German was absent from due to his incarceration over financial transgressions, imprisoned Becker received on-air messages of support from former broadcasting colleagues Andrew Castle, John McEnroe, and Sue Barker.


title: Boris Becker

text: From October 2005 to June 2006, the German was a team captain on the British TV sports quiz show "They Think It's All Over" on BBC One. He furthermore appeared on the second episode of series 16 of the BBC's car show "Top Gear" as the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car.


title: Boris Becker

text: From 2017, as Becker was getting back into tennis punditry on television following a 3-year stint coaching Djokovic, the German began appearing on Eurosport regularly as part of its English-language Grand Slam coverage, often alongside the network's other retired-tennis-players-turned-TV-personalities such as Mats Wilander and Barbara Schett or on his own German-language commentary show "Matchball Becker" alongside commentator .


title: Boris Becker

text: As of 2017, Becker is also an analyst on Fox Sports Australia's Wimbledon magazine program "The Daily Serve".


title: Boris Becker

text: After retiring from playing tennis, Becker has been on the economic advisory board of Bayern Munich for ten years.


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker is a noted poker player and has appeared in the European Poker Tour and the World Poker Tour; by 2013 he had won more than €90,000 in career earnings from poker. From November 2007 to mid-May 2013, Becker was a member of the celebrity team for the online poker platform PokerStars, where he participated in professional poker tournaments. Becker made his first appearance as a poker amateur at a tournament in Monte Carlo in April 2008. In mid-April, he entered the Main Event of the World Poker Tour at the Bellagio and finished the tournament in 40th place, winning more than $40,000 in prize money. In August 2011, he came 97th at the European Poker Tour in Barcelona, winning €8,000. In April 2013 he again took part in the EPT Main Event, this time in Berlin, coming 49th with a win of €15,000. As of August 2018, Becker has made tournament earnings of over $100,000 and was ranked 132,133rd in the Global Poker Index. He has become an ambassador for the partypoker online poker platform, playing under the nickname Boris__Becker.


title: Boris Becker

text: In December 2013, Novak Djokovic announced on his website that Boris Becker would become his head coach for the 2014 season. As a result, Becker gave up his commentating job with the BBC. In December 2016, Djokovic and Becker parted ways. Over the three seasons they worked together, Becker contributed to Djokovic's six Grand Slam titles and 14 Masters 1000 titles. Djokovic also won the French Open in 2016 – the only Grand Slam singles title which Becker never won himself.


title: Boris Becker

text: On 21 June 2017, Becker was declared bankrupt by the Bankruptcy and Companies Court in London. The order arose when a 2015 debt—centered around an unpaid loan on Becker's estate in Mallorca, Spain—owed to private bank Arbuthnot Latham for nearly $14 million was not paid in full before an assigned deadline, and there was no realistic expectation that it would be paid. Becker denied to the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" that he was "broke" or that he owed former business adviser Hans-Dieter Cleven any money; Cleven filed suit in a Switzerland court claiming he was owed $41 million.


title: Boris Becker

text: In June 2018, Becker's lawyers claimed their client had diplomatic immunity in the bankruptcy case owing to his appointment as the Central African Republic's (CAR) "Attaché for Sports/Humanitarian/Cultural Affairs in the European Union". Charles-Armel Doubane, the CAR's Foreign Minister, countered that Becker was "not an official diplomat for the Central African Republic", that the role of attaché for sports "does not exist", and that the CAR passport produced by Becker was one of a batch that had been stolen in 2014. In September 2019, the German businessman Stephan Welk who provided the passport was detained for possible fraud.


title: Boris Becker

text: On 21 May 2019, Smith & Williamson announced that it had instructed its agent Wyles Hardy to auction Becker's trophies and memorabilia on 11 July 2019. On 24 June 2019, it was reported that Becker was forced to auction off 82 collectables from his personal collection, including a "Goldene Kamera" award and his trophy from the 1989 US Open, in order to pay creditors. On 11 July 2019, an online auction was held of Becker's memorabilia, raising £687,000, according to the company dealing with his bankruptcy.


title: Boris Becker

text: On 5 November 2019, the bankruptcy restrictions were extended for an additional 12 years, until 16 October 2031, after Becker was judged to have been hiding assets and transactions worth over £4.5 million.


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker was charged with illegally failing to hand over assets and trophies with a value of £2.5 million to repay debt during his bankruptcy, and on 21 March 2022, his trial began at Southwark Crown Court, London. On 8 April 2022, Becker was found guilty of four charges under the Insolvency Act. On 29 April 2022, he was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment for the offences. His incarceration commenced at HM Prison Wandsworth within the London Borough of Wandsworth before he was transferred to HM Prison Huntercombe, a facility used to detain foreign criminals. Becker was released from prison on 15 December 2022 having served 8 months. The same day he took a private jet to Germany, as he was eligible for automatic deportation having received a custodial sentence of more than 12 months.


title: Boris Becker

text: "The Guardian" reported in 2009 that in addition to properties in Munich, Monaco and Schwyz, Becker had an apartment in Wimbledon, and possibly still maintained a residence in Miami, to be near his children. As of 2017, Becker lived in Wimbledon, within walking distance of the championship grounds.


title: Boris Becker

text: After a relationship from 1988 to 1991 with Karen Schultz, and from 1991 to 1992 with Cassandra Hepburn, he began a relationship with Barbara Feltus, whom he married on 17 December 1993, when she was eight months pregnant, at the registry office of his hometown of Leimen.


title: Boris Becker

text: On 18 January 1994, their son Noah Gabriel, named after Becker's friends Yannick Noah and Peter Gabriel, was born. Their second child, Elias Balthasar, was born on 4 September 1999. Before the marriage, they shocked some in Germany by posing nude for the cover of "Stern" in a picture taken by her father.


title: Boris Becker

text: After Becker asked Barbara for a separation in December 2000, she flew to Miami, Florida, U.S.A., with Noah and Elias and filed a divorce petition in Miami-Dade County Court, sidestepping their prenuptial agreement which had entitled her to a single $2.5 million payoff. Barbara left for Florida after being contacted by a woman claiming to be pregnant with Becker's child. In his autobiography, Becker stated that he admitted to his wife that he had had a one night stand with another woman while Barbara was pregnant with their second child. He wrote that Barbara struck him during an argument after he flew to Florida to meet her and discuss the break up of their marriage. The pretrial hearing in January 2001 was broadcast live to Germany. The couple had dinner together every night during the hearing. Becker was granted a divorce on 15 January 2001: Barbara received a $14.4 million settlement, their condominium on Fisher Island, Florida, and custody of their children.


title: Boris Becker

text: In February 2001, Becker acknowledged paternity of a daughter, Anna, with Russian waitress Angela Ermakova, after media reported that he had a child as a result of a sexual encounter in 1999. The episode allegedly took place at London's Nobu restaurant. Becker initially denied paternity, claiming he only had oral sex with Ermakova. His lawyers claimed that Ermakova had stolen his sperm and used it to inseminate herself after the encounter. Subsequently, he reversed his stance and accepted fatherhood. Some time after that, a DNA test confirmed he was the father. In November 2007, he obtained joint custody of Anna after expressing concerns over how Ermakova was raising her.


title: Boris Becker

text: Becker was briefly engaged to in 2008. Her father, Axel Meyer-Wölden, was Becker's former adviser and manager. The couple broke up in November 2008.


title: Boris Becker

text: In February 2009, Becker announced on the German TV show "Wetten, dass..?", that he and Dutch model Sharlely "Lilly" Kerssenberg were to be married. The wedding took place on 12 June 2009 in St. Moritz, Switzerland. In August, they announced that they were expecting a child. Their son, Amadeus Benedict Edley Luis Becker, was born in London on 10 February 2010. In May 2018, Lilly and Becker announced that they had separated after nine years of marriage.


title: Boris Becker

text: In July 2019, reports appeared that Becker was dating British model Layla Powell. At the time of his 2022 conviction, he was in a relationship with Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, formerly known as Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc. until 2007, is an American film distribution studio within the Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution division of The Walt Disney Company. It handles theatrical and occasional digital distribution, marketing and promotion for films produced and released by the Walt Disney Studios, including Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Studios; the Searchlight Pictures label operates its own autonomous theatrical distribution and marketing unit.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: The company was originally established in 1953 as Buena Vista Film Distribution Company, Inc. (later renamed to Buena Vista Distribution Company, Inc. and Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc.). It took on its current name in 2007.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: Before 1953, Walt Disney's productions were distributed by M.J. Winkler Pictures (1924–1926), Film Booking Offices of America (1926–1927), Universal Pictures (1927–1928), Celebrity Productions (1928–1930), Columbia Pictures (1930–1932), United Artists (1932–1937, 1943), and RKO Radio Pictures (1937–1956).


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: A dispute in 1953 over the distribution of "The Living Desert", Disney's first full-length film in the "True-Life Adventures" series, led Walt and his older brother Roy O. Disney to form its wholly owned subsidiary, the Buena Vista Film Distribution Company, Inc. (BVDC), to handle North American distribution of their own products. RKO refused to distribute the film. The name "Buena Vista" came from the street in Burbank, California, where the Disney Studios was located (and remains to this day). Buena Vista's first release was the Academy Award-winning live-action feature "The Living Desert" on November 10, 1953, along with "Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom", Buena Vista's first animated release. Notable subsequent releases include the foreign films, "Victoria in Dover", "Princess Yang Kwei Fei" ("Most Noble Lady"), released in US theaters in September 1956, "The Missouri Traveler" in March 1958, and "The Big Fisherman" in July 1959 (the first third-party production financed by Disney).


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: By July 5, 1957, RKO Japan, Ltd. was sold to Disney Productions and British Commonwealth Film Corporation. In allocating the foreign film licenses to the company, Disney would use 5 and Commonwealth 8.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In April 1960, the company dropped "Film" from its name. In 1961, Disney incorporated Buena Vista International (BVI), distributing its first PG-rated film, "Take Down", in January 1979. The low-budget movie was not produced by the Disney studios and was acquired from an independent studio, making "The Black Hole" the first PG-rated Disney film. In July 1987, Buena Vista changed its name to Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc. (BVPD).


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: Late in the 1980s, Disney purchased a controlling stake in one of Pacific Theatres' chains leading to Disney's Buena Vista Theaters and Pacific to renovate the El Capitan Theatre and the Crest by 1989. The Crest was finished first while El Capitan opened with the premiere of "The Rocketeer" film on June 19, 1991.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In 1992, Buena Vista made production loans totaling $5.6 million to Cinergi Pictures for its film "Medicine Man" and its 1994 films "Renaissance Man" and "Color of Night" and were distributing Cinergi's films. The corporation purchased a 12.8% share in Cinergi with its initial public offering in 1994. Soon, BVPD signed a 25 picture distribution deal with Cinergi.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: The Gaumont Film Company and Disney formed Gaumont Buena Vista International, a joint venture in French distribution, in 1993. In August 1996, Disney and Tokuma Shoten Publishing agreed that Disney would distribute Studio Ghibli animated films and provide 10% of the production cost of the studio's current in-production film, "Spirited Away". Disney would go on to produce the English dubs and distribute 15 of Ghibli's films, through the Walt Disney Pictures, Buena Vista Home Video, Miramax and Touchstone Pictures banners.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In September 1996, following Disney's acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC, Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc. was merged into ABC, Inc., the parent company of that group.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: For the November 1995 premiere of "Toy Story", Disney rented the Hollywood Masonic Temple—adjacent to the El Capitan Theatre—for "Totally Toy Story", a multimedia funhouse and a promotional event for the movie. On July 17, 1998, Buena Vista Pictures Distribution purchased the Hollywood Masonic Temple building to continue using it as a promotional venue.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: By 1997, BVPD's share in Cinergi dropped to 5%. After nine films were delivered under the agreement, Cinergi sold Disney on November 22, 1997, all of its 12-film library except for "Die Hard with a Vengeance" plus $20 million in exchange for Disney's Cinergi share holdings, production advances of $35.4 million and other loans. In 2002, Disney signed a four animated film deal with Vanguard Animation; however, only one film was released under that negotiation.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In 2004, BVI and Gaumont dissolved their French distribution joint venture, Gaumont Buena Vista International. Buena Vista International agreed to a distribution deal with MegaStar Joint Venture Company Limited in April 2006 for the Vietnam market.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: On April 25, 2007, Disney discontinued the usage of the Buena Vista brand in its distribution branding.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In 2009, Disney entered a distribution agreement with a reorganized DreamWorks; the deal called for an estimated 30 films over a five-year period from DreamWorks and they would be released through the Touchstone Pictures label. In 2011, GKIDS acquired the North American theatrical distribution rights of the Ghibli films, with Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment retaining the home video rights until July 2017. However, Disney only handles home video distribution of the company's films in Japan, Taiwan and China.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: Disney's distribution deal with DreamWorks expired in August 2016, after the two studios decided to not renew their agreement on December 16, 2015, with Universal Pictures replacing Disney as DreamWorks' distributor. By the end of the deal, Disney had distributed 14 of DreamWorks's original 30-picture agreement; thirteen through Touchstone and one through Walt Disney Pictures. Disney took complete ownership rights of those 14 DreamWorks films from Amblin Partners in exchange for loans made to that company. "The Light Between Oceans", the final film in that distribution deal, was also the last film released under the Touchstone banner.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company announced plans to purchase 21st Century Fox, which included 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures. On March 20, 2019, the acquisition of 21st Century Fox was completed. Following the reorganization and renaming of the acquired film units, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures began distributing 20th Century Studios films, while Searchlight Pictures continued to operate their autonomous distribution unit.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In late 2020 and early 2021, Disney reorganized the studio, placing Theatrical Distribution under Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution unit which also oversees distribution to Disney+. Under this structure, the Theatrical Distribution unit will oversee the domestic and international films produced by all the studios within the Walt Disney Studios umbrella — Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, Blue Sky Studios and Searchlight Pictures.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: Walt Disney Studios has distributed 33 films that have received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture: fifteen from its former Miramax division, four from Walt Disney Pictures, six from Touchstone Pictures, three from Searchlight Pictures, two each from both 20th Century Studios and Hollywood Pictures, and one from Marvel Studios. Of those nominated films, five films ("The English Patient", "Shakespeare in Love", "Chicago", "No Country for Old Men", and "Nomadland"), have won Best Picture.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures currently distributes films from across all units of Walt Disney Studios with the exception of Searchlight Pictures, which maintains its own autonomous distribution and marketing operations. Other Disney film units and some third-party studios including:


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International was formed in 1961 as Buena Vista International. On May 4, 1987, despite being industry rivals, Disney signed a theatrical distribution agreement with Warner Bros. International for the release of Disney and Touchstone films in many overseas markets except in Australia and New Zealand, where distribution went through Roadshow Distributors instead, with Disney retaining full control of all distribution and marketing decisions on their product (one notable practice in this policy is obscuring Warner references in posters and it is credited only in very small text with the exception of some UK posters where sometimes the full logo is shown). Warner previously had an overseas distribution partnership with Columbia Pictures, but it was dissolved in 1988.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In 1992, Disney opted to end their joint venture with Warner Bros. to start autonomously distributing their films in these aforementioned overseas markets beginning with "Aladdin" and at the same period, Warner Bros. established the "Family Entertainment" label to self-distribute family-friendly films under the Warner umbrella. In those territories from 1993 to 2007, Disney reactivated the Buena Vista International name, and also sent distribution under it in countries that did not have any current arrangements with other companies.. Disney would then continue its overseas film distribution relationship with Warner Bros. through a home video distribution deal in Europe and Australia in which Warner Home Video distributed select Disney material on DVD from 1999 to 2002, when Disney opted to self-distribute DVDs in these aforementioned territories.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: Italia Film, a Lebanese film distribution and production company, is Disney's exclusive theatrical film distribution partner for various Middle East and North Africa (MENA) markets since 1993, after making a deal directly with Buena Vista International at the time. Prior to this, Warner Bros. originally handled said MENA markets except in Israel where Buena Vista handled theatrical distribution by themselves.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In Taiwan, MGM first handled Disney's distribution, with 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. later taking over. A local distributor called Era Communications took over distribution from 1992 to 1995. At that time, Buena Vista began its Taiwanese operations. Columbia ended its joint distribution unit with Fox and switched to Buena Vista in 1999.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: Rights to Disney's films in West Germany were originally released by MGM (under CIC in the early 1970s) and later to 20th Century Fox, and then to United International Pictures' German division before the Warner Bros. joint venture. In September 2004, Buena Vista International Germany announced they would begin to start theatrically distributing certain films from Universum Film (mainly family-friendly releases) beginning in February 2005, replacing a previous deal with United International Pictures. The deal ended after Universum was sold by the RTL Group to Tele München Group, who began to self-distribute releases afterwards under the Leonine Distribution name.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In Spain, Filmayer S.A. originally released Disney's movies, with Warner Española S.A. later taking over.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In the United Kingdom, Disney's movies were released through Rank Film Distributors under the "UK Film Distributors Ltd." name before the Warner Bros. joint venture.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In Italy and Brazil, Disney's movies were distributed by Cinema International Corporation and United International Pictures before the Warner Bros. joint venture.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In Australia and New Zealand, Disney's movies were distributed by 20th Century Fox under its joint ventures with CIC and UIP (named CIC-Fox and UIP-Fox respectively) before distribution switched to Greater Union Film Distributors until the latter merged with Village Roadshow in 1987 and Roadshow Entertainment took over distribution.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In some other countries in Europe, such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, Disney's movies were instead released through local distributors, such as in Poland, in Hungary and Guild Film Distribution in the Czech Republic respectively.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: Disney and Sony Pictures formed in 1997 a film distribution joint venture in Southeast Asia. By December 2006, 14 joint distribution ventures with Sony Pictures Releasing International were formed and exist in countries including Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. In January 2007, their fifteenth such partnership began operations in Russia and CIS. In February 2017, Sony starting leaving the Southeast Asia venture with the Philippines. On August 14, 2017, Sony terminated the joint venture agreement for their own operations. On January 31, 2019, in anticipation of the then-pending acquisition of the most 21st Century Fox assets (which includes 20th Century Fox), Disney agreed to sell its stake in the Mexican joint venture named Walt Disney Studios Sony Pictures Releasing de México to Sony Pictures Releasing.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In Greece and Cyprus, Disney's movies are distributed through local distributor Feelgood Entertainment, which also distributes Sony Pictures films in those territories.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: In China, due to its regulated policies on international film distribution, all of Disney's films in China are distributed by China Film Co., Ltd. and/or Huaxia Film Distribution.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: On October 3, 2017, it was announced that Disney would be handling international distribution of M. Night Shyamalan's "Glass", released in early 2019, through the Buena Vista International banner. The film is a sequel to his earlier films "Unbreakable" (distributed by Disney through Touchstone) and "Split" (distributed by Universal Pictures). Through an arrangement made with Disney, Universal retained domestic rights to the film, while Disney distributed in international territories under the label. The UK-produced film "Patrick" was also released in 2018 by Disney under the Buena Vista International label in the UK. "Missing Link" was also released by Disney under Buena Vista International in Latin America, Russia and some countries in Asia. In addition, Buena Vista International currently handles theatrical distribution of 20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures films internationally outside North America since 2020, while 20th Century Studios' North American distribution unit was absorbed into WDSMP. In 2020, Buena Vista International also produced the German film "Vier zauberhafte Schwestern". In 2021, Buena Vista International also co-produced the Brazilian Netflix film "Just Short of Perfect".


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: On February 11, 2022, the Latin American branch of Buena Vista International was renamed to Star Distribution, as the Star branding replaced the Buena Vista International name.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: On November 3, 2022, the Brazilian branch of Buena Vista International was also renamed to Star Distribution following the Latin American branch of Buena Vista International was retired on February 15, 2022.


title: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

text: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures has released the most films that have crossed the $1 billion mark (twenty-five, in worldwide grosses among major Hollywood studios), with thirteen of the twenty highest-grossing films of all time being distributed by Disney. This includes the highest-grossing film in North America (""). Of those twelve films, three of them have crossed the $2 billion mark in worldwide grosses, the most for any studio. In addition, Disney is the first of only three studios that have released at least two billion-dollar films in the same year (the others being Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures). Furthermore, Disney is the only studio that has achieved this seven times, in 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. 2016 included four $1 billion releases, and 2019 included seven $1 billion releases, both records for any studio. Eight of the top ten highest-grossing animated films have been released by Disney, as well as sixteen of the twenty highest-grossing G-rated films. In addition, four of the top five opening weekends were Disney releases. In 2015, Disney achieved its largest yearly box-office gross worldwide and in North America. In 2016, Disney surpassed $7 billion in worldwide yearly box-office gross—the first of any major studio—surpassing the previous 2015 record. In 2019, Disney became the first studio ever to have seven releases cross $1 billion each in a single year. In the same year, Disney broke the previous records by making an unprecedented $13.2 billion at the global box office.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% from the 2020 Census, making it Alabama's third-most populous city after Huntsville and Montgomery. The broader Birmingham metropolitan area had a 2020 population of 1,115,289, and is the largest metropolitan area in Alabama as well as the 50th-most populous in the United States. Birmingham serves as an important regional hub and is associated with the Deep South, Piedmont, and Appalachian regions of the nation.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Birmingham was founded in 1871, during the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, through the merger of three pre-existing farm towns, notably, Elyton. It grew from there, annexing many more of its smaller neighbors, into an industrial and railroad transportation center with a focus on mining, the iron and steel industry, and railroading. Birmingham was named for Birmingham, England, one of that nation's major industrial cities. Most of the original settlers who founded Birmingham were of English ancestry. The city may have been planned as a place where cheap, non-unionized, and often African-American labor from rural Alabama could be employed in the city's steel mills and blast furnaces, giving it a competitive advantage over industrial cities in the Midwest and Northeast.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: From its founding through the end of the 1960s, Birmingham was a primary industrial center of the South. The pace of Birmingham's growth during the period from 1881 through 1920 earned its nicknames "The Magic City" and "The Pittsburgh of the South". Much like Pittsburgh, Birmingham's major industries were iron and steel production, plus a major component of the railroading industry, where rails and railroad cars were both manufactured in Birmingham. In the field of railroading, the two primary hubs of railroading in the Deep South were nearby Atlanta and Birmingham, beginning in the 1860s and continuing through to the present day. The economy diversified during the later half of the twentieth century. Though the manufacturing industry maintains a strong presence in Birmingham, other businesses and industries such as banking, telecommunications, transportation, electrical power transmission, medical care, college education, and insurance have risen in stature. Mining in the Birmingham area is no longer a major industry with the exception of coal mining. Birmingham ranks as one of the most important business centers in the Southeastern United States and is also one of the largest banking centers in the United States. In addition, the Birmingham area serves as headquarters to one Fortune 500 company: Regions Financial, along with five other Fortune 1000 companies.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: In higher education, Birmingham has been the location of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine (formerly the Medical College of Alabama) and the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry since 1947. Since that time it has also obtained a campus of the University of Alabama, University of Alabama at Birmingham (founded circa 1969), one of three main campuses of the University of Alabama System. It is also home to three private institutions: Samford University, Birmingham-Southern College, and Miles College. Between these colleges and universities, the Birmingham area has major colleges of medicine, dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, law, engineering, and nursing. Birmingham is also the headquarters of the Southeastern Conference, one of the major U.S. collegiate athletic conferences.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Birmingham was founded on June 1, 1871, by the Elyton Land Company whose investors included cotton planters, bankers and railroad entrepreneurs. It sold lots near the planned crossing of the Alabama & Chattanooga and South & North Alabama railroads including land formerly a part of the Benjamin P. Worthington Plantation. The first business at that crossroads was the trading post and country store operated by Marre & Allen. The site of the railroad crossing was notable for the nearby deposits of iron ore, coal, and limestone – the three main raw materials used in making steel.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Birmingham is the only place worldwide where significant amounts of all three minerals can be found in close proximity. From the start the new city was planned as a great center of industry. The founders, organized as the Elyton Land Company, borrowed the name of Birmingham, one of England's main industrial cities, to advertise that point. The growth of the planned city was impeded by an outbreak of cholera and a Wall Street crash in 1873. However, it began to develop shortly afterward at an explosive rate.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: The town of Elyton, Alabama, and several other surrounding towns were absorbed into Birmingham in 1911. The start of the 20th century brought the substantial growth that gave Birmingham the nickname "The Magic City", as the downtown area developed from a low-rise commercial and residential district into a busy grid of neoclassical mid-rise and high-rise buildings and busy streetcar lines. Between 1902 and 1912 four large office buildings were constructed at the intersection of 20th Street, the central north–south spine of the city, and 1st Avenue North, which connected the warehouses and industrial facilities stretching along the east–west railroad corridor. This impressive group of early skyscrapers was nicknamed "The Heaviest Corner on Earth".


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Birmingham was hit by the 1916 Irondale earthquake (magnitude 5.1). A few buildings in the area were slightly damaged. The earthquake was felt as far as Atlanta and neighboring states.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: While excluded from the best-paying industrial jobs, blacks joined the migration of residents from rural areas to the city for its opportunities. The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Birmingham especially hard as sources of capital that were fueling the city's growth rapidly dried up at the same time that farm laborers, driven off the land, made their way to the city in search of work. New Deal programs put many city residents to work in WPA and CCC programs, making important contributions to the city's infrastructure and artistic legacy, including such key improvements as Vulcan's tower and Oak Mountain State Park.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: The wartime demand for steel and the post-war building boom gave Birmingham a rapid return to prosperity. Manufacturing diversified beyond the production of raw materials. Major civic institutions such as schools, parks and museums, were able to expand their scope.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Despite the growing population and wealth of the city, its residents were markedly underrepresented in the state legislature. Although the state constitution required redistricting in accordance with changes in the decennial census, the state legislature did not undertake this until the early 1970s, when forced by a federal court case to enforce "one man, one vote". In addition, the geographic basis of the senate, which gave each county one seat, gave undue influence to rural counties. Representatives of rural counties also had disproportionate power in the state house, and failed to provide support for infrastructure and other improvements in developing urban population centers such as Birmingham. At this time, the General Assembly ran county governments as extensions of the state through their legislative delegations.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: In the 1950s and 1960s Birmingham received national and international attention as a center of the civil rights struggle for African-Americans. Locally the movement's activists were led by Fred Shuttlesworth, a fiery preacher who became legendary for his fearlessness in the face of violence, notably a string of racially motivated bombings that earned Birmingham the derisive nickname "Bombingham".


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: A watershed in the civil rights movement occurred in 1963 when Shuttlesworth requested that Martin Luther King Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which Shuttlesworth had co-founded, come to Birmingham, where King had once been a pastor, to help end segregation. Together they launched "Project C" (for "Confrontation"), a massive assault on the Jim Crow system. During April and May daily sit-ins and mass marches organized and led by movement leader James Bevel were met with police repression, tear gas, attack dogs, fire hoses, and arrests. More than 3,000 people were arrested during these protests, almost all of them high-school age children. These protests were ultimately successful, leading not only to desegregation of public accommodations in Birmingham but also the Civil Rights Act of 1964.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: While imprisoned for having taken part in a nonviolent protest, Dr. King wrote the now famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, a defining treatise in his cause against segregation. Birmingham is also known for a bombing which occurred later that year, in which four black girls were killed by a bomb planted at the 16th Street Baptist Church. The event would inspire the African-American poet Dudley Randall's opus, "The Ballad of Birmingham", as well as jazz musician John Coltrane's song "Alabama".


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: In 1998 the Birmingham Pledge, written by local attorney James Rotch, was introduced at the Martin Luther King Unity Breakfast. As a grassroots community commitment to combating racism and prejudice, it has since then been used for programs in all fifty states and in more than twenty countries.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: In the 1970s, urban-renewal efforts focused around the development of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which developed into a major medical and research center. In 1971 Birmingham celebrated its centennial with a round of public-works improvements, including the upgrading of Vulcan Park and the construction of a major downtown convention center containing a 2,500-seat symphony hall, theater, 19,000-seat arena and exhibition halls. Birmingham's banking institutions enjoyed considerable growth as well and new skyscrapers started to appear in the city center for the first time since the 1920s. These projects helped the city's economy to diversify, but did not prevent the exodus of many of the city's residents to independent suburbs. In 1979 Birmingham elected Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. as its first African-American mayor.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: The population inside Birmingham's city limits has fallen over the past few decades, due in large part to "white flight" from the city of Birmingham proper to surrounding suburbs. The city's formerly most populous ethnic group, non-Hispanic white, has declined from 57.4 percent in 1970 to 21.1 percent in 2010. From 340,887 in 1960, the population was down to 242,820 in 2000, a loss of about 29 percent. By 2009 Census estimates placed Birmingham's population at 230,650. That same period saw a corresponding rise in the populations of the suburban communities of Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Alabaster, and Gardendale, none of which were incorporated as municipalities until after 1950.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Today, Birmingham has begun to experience something of a rebirth. New resources have been dedicated in reconstructing the downtown area into a 24-hour mixed-use district. The market for downtown lofts and condominiums has increased while restaurant, retail and cultural options are also beginning to expand. In 2006, the visitors bureau selected "the diverse city" as a new tag line for the city. In 2011, the Highland Park neighborhood of Birmingham was named as a 2011 America's Great Place by the American Planning Association. Birmingham hosted the 2022 World Games in July 2022. In 2015 the International World Game Executive Committee selected Birmingham over Lima, Peru and Ufa, Russia, for the 2021 World Games, but the event was delayed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even with this resurgence, by the 2020 census Birmingham had lost its long-standing status as Alabama's largest city; Huntsville had overtaken Birmingham in population.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Birmingham occupies Jones Valley, flanked by long parallel mountain ridges (the tailing ends of the Appalachian foothills – see Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians) running from north-east to south-west. The valley is drained by small creeks (Village Creek, Valley Creek) which flow into the Black Warrior River. The valley was bisected by the principal railroad corridor, along which most of the early manufacturing operations began.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Red Mountain lies immediately south of downtown. Many of Birmingham's television and radio broadcast towers are lined up along this prominent ridge. The "Over the Mountain" area, including Shades Valley, Shades Mountain and beyond, was largely shielded from the industrial smoke and rough streets of the industrial city. This is the setting for Birmingham's more affluent suburbs of Mountain Brook, Vestavia Hills, Homewood, and Hoover. South of Shades Valley is the Cahaba River basin, one of the most diverse river ecosystems in the United States.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Sand Mountain, a smaller ridge, flanks the city to the north and divides Jones Valley from much more rugged land to the north. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad (now CSX Transportation) enters the valley through Boyles Gap, a prominent gap in the long low ridge.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Ruffner Mountain, located due east of the heart of the city, is home to Ruffner Mountain Nature Center, one of the largest urban nature reserves in the United States.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which, is land and (1.34%) is water.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Birmingham has an abundance of suburbs. Most of the metropolitan area lives outside of the city itself. In 2007, the metropolitan area was made up of 7 counties, 102 cities, and 21 school districts. Since then Alabaster and Pelham have broken away from the Shelby County School System to form their own school systems. Some argue that the region suffers from having so many suburbs because companies can receive large incentives to move a short distance to another city, with no net gain in the area's economy.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Birmingham has a humid subtropical climate, characterized by hot summers, mild winters, and abundant rainfall. January has a daily mean temperature of , and there is an average of 47 days annually with a low at or below freezing, and 1.4 where the high does not surpass freezing. July has a daily mean temperature of ; highs reach or exceed on 65 days per year and on 2. Precipitation is relatively well-distributed throughout the year, sometimes falling in the form of snow during winter; however, fell on March 13, 1993, during the 1993 Storm of the Century, which established the highest daily snowfall, one-storm, and winter season total on record. Normal snowfall for 1981–2010 is , but, for the same period, median monthly snowfall for each month was zero.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: The summer months are hot, with high humidity. Most of the precipitation that falls in the summer are from thunderstorms, most of which occur in the afternoon and evening hours.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: The spring and fall months are pleasant but variable as cold fronts frequently bring strong to severe thunderstorms and occasional tornadoes to the region. The fall season (primarily October) features less rainfall and fewer storms, as well as lower humidity than the spring, but November and early December represent a secondary severe weather season. Birmingham is located on the heart of a Tornado Alley known as the Dixie Alley due to the high frequency of tornadoes in Central Alabama. The greater Birmingham area has been hit by two F5 tornadoes; one in Birmingham's northern suburbs in 1977, and second in the western suburbs in 1998. The area was hit by an EF4 tornado which was part of a larger outbreak in April 2011. In late summer and fall months, Birmingham experiences occasional tropical storms and hurricanes due to its proximity to the Central Gulf Coast.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: The record high temperature is , set on July 29, 1930, and the record low is , set on February 13, 1899.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: The Birmingham area is not prone to frequent earthquakes; its historical activity level is 59% less than the US average. Earthquakes are generally minor and the Birmingham area can feel an earthquake from the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone. The magnitude 5.1 Irondale earthquake in 1916 caused damage in the Birmingham area and was felt in the neighboring states and as far as the Carolinas. The 2003 Alabama earthquake centered in northeastern Alabama (magnitude 4.6–4.9) was also felt in Birmingham, Atlanta, Tennessee, Kentucky, and both Carolina states.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: As of the 2020 United States census, there were 200,733 people, 93,300 households, and 46,816 families residing in the city.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: Based on the 2000 census, there were 242,820 people, 98,782 households, and 59,269 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 111,927 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 62.46% Black, 35.07% White, 0.17% Native American, 0.80% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 0.62% from other races, and 0.83% from two or more races. 1.55% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: There were 98,782 households, out of which 27.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.1% were married couples living together, 24.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 40.0% were non-families. 34.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: In the city, the population is spread out, with 25.0% under the age of 18, 11.1% from 18 to 24, 30.0% from 25 to 44, 20.4% from 45 to 64, and 13.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 85.7 males.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: The median income for a household in the city was $31,898, and the median income for a family was $38,776. Males had a median income of $36,031 versus $30,367 for females. The city's per capita income was $19,962. About 22.5% of families and 27.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 41.9% of those under the age of 18 and 18.3% of those age 65 or over.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: The Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies published data showing that in 2010, among metro areas with a greater than one million population, Birmingham had the second highest ratio of Christians, and the greatest ratio of Protestant adherents, in the United States.


title: Birmingham, Alabama

text: The Southern Baptist Convention has 673 congregations and 336,000 members in the Birmingham Metro area. The United Methodists have 196 congregations and 66,759 members. The headquarters of the Presbyterian Church in America had been in Birmingham until the early 1980s; the PCA has more than 30 congregations and almost 15,000 members in the Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan area with megachurches like Briarwood Presbyterian Church. The National Baptist Convention has 126 congregations and 69,800 members.