ABSTRACT
The widow arrived in her capital to learn that the Wurttemberg Estates, determined to ignore the last wishes of Karl-Alexander, had already appointed Duke Karl-Rudolph, the uncle of the deceased, as regent. After the death of Karl-Rudolph in 1739 the Regency was continued by his cousin Frederick of Wurttemberg-Oels. Sophia Wilhelmina of Bayreuth, who visited her in July 1741, mentions in her Memoires the Court of Wurttemberg which she found ‘very boorish, full of ceremonies and compliments’. The Estates of Wurttemberg considered it prudent to remove the Crown Prince and his brothers from the tutelage of a mother who set such an unfortunate example of behaviour and at the same time gave them an education which was too Catholic and exclusively French. Frederick II, who had great hopes of a marriage between the Wurttemberg heir and his niece from Bayreuth, summoned the latter to Berlin.
