Stubenarrest at the Court of the Kaiser
Stubenarrest was a form of house arrest the Kaiser would impose on anyone, royal or noble, who violated the smallest rules of court etiquette. I hadn’t heard of it until I got my hands on My Memories of Six Reigns. It was basically being “grounded,” in American terms. Princess Marie Louise says:
As we are on the subject of Stubenarrest, here is another story. The Empress’s younger sister, Louisa Sophia, had married Prince Frederich Leopold of Prussia, brother of the Duchess of Connaught. She did not very readily comply with the restrictive etiquette of the Berlin court. It was a very cold winter, the the River Spree was frozen. My cousin, Louisa Sophia, said she would go and skate. Unfortunately, her lady-in-waiting could not skate, so, poor soul, she had to sit on the bank shivering. Then an awful thing happened. My cousin fell through the ice, and was rescued by two workmen who helped her to the bank. One of these kindly workmen, like a Good Samaritan, gave her some schnapps from his own bottle. She then climbed into her carriage, and drove home, where she retired to bed.
Her sister, the Empress, came to call on her that very afternoon--most unfortunately--and she was told that Princess Friedrich Leopold was indisposed and gone to bed. The Empress said that she would go up and see her, and so the whole sad story had to be told to in confidence to the Empress, who was horrified. But it was not because my poor cousin had fallen through the ice and might have drowned; no, it was because she had skated when her lady in waiting was unable to accompany her on the ice, and that she had been given schnapps by a workman! This was too heinous a crime for a Princess of Prussia to commit.
This cousin of mine was guilty of another crime. She would bicycle in spite of being told that it was not seemly for a Princess of Prussia to do so. The Emperor sent for her husband, who, of course, appeared before him in full uniform, and walked him up and down the terrace of the Neues Palais for an hour, holding forth about how a Princess of Prussia should and should not behave. And at the end he said, “And now you and she are under stubenarrest for a fortnight; now go home.”
--Princess Marie Louise, My Memories of Six Reigns, pp. 68-9.
