Alexandrine of Prussia was born in 1915 at the very top of European society.
She was the daughter of Prince Wilhelm and Princess Cecilie, and it was known from an early age that she had Down syndrome. In that world, intellectual disabilities were so shameful that even aristocratic families shut those children away from public life. Many disappeared from photographs and family events, as if they had never existed.
With her, it was the opposite. At home, they called her “Adini”, and she grew up alongside her siblings, with her place in every Hohenzollern family photo. Cecilie made sure she received an education suited to her needs. As a teenager, she attended a special school in Jena alongside other young people with disabilities.
Her life took another turn. When she was a child, her grandfather Wilhelm II abdicated and the German monarchy collapsed. She grew up watching the world she had been born to inherit crumble. She spent much of her life in Bavaria, far from politics and war, and died in 1980, at the age of 65.
What makes her special is not just that she was a princess with Down syndrome. It’s that her parents had every social reason to hide her, yet they let her be part of the family.
