She was brought up with simplicity, and her early life was peripatetic, spending summers in Mecklenburg and the rest of the year in Southern France.

[1] She spent most of her childhood in Schwerin, at the royal residences of Ludwigslust Palace and the Gelbensande hunting lodge, only a few kilometres from the Baltic Sea coast.

[3] Cecilie lived there in Mikhailovskoe on Kronstadt Bay, the country home of her maternal grandfather, Grand Duke Michael Nikolaevich of Russia.

[4] During the wedding festivities of her brother Frederick Francis IV, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in Schwerin in June 1904, the 17-year-old Duchess Cecilie got to know her future husband, Wilhelm, German Crown Prince.

The wedding of Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and the German Crown Prince Wilhelm took place on 6 June 1905 in Berlin.

Arriving from Schwerin at Berlin's Lehrter Station, the future Crown Princess was greeted on the platform with a gift of dark red roses.

She was greeted at Bellevue Palace by the entire German imperial family and later made a joyeuse entrée through the Brandenburg Gate to a gun salute in the Tiergarten.

Kaiser Wilhelm II greeted her at the palace and conducted her to the Knight's Hall where over fifty guests from different European royal houses awaited the young bride including Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, as well as representatives from Denmark, Italy, Belgium, Portugal and the Netherlands.

After the end of the wedding festivities, the crown princely couple made their summer residence at the Marble Palace in Potsdam.

Every year at the beginning of the court season in January, the couple would return to the Crown Prince Palace in Berlin on Unter den Linden.

On discovering that Dungern was also having an affair with another woman at court, she confessed to her husband who told him to resign with the words: "Only my consideration for his imperial majesty (his father, Kaiser William II) prevents me from grinding you into the dust.

On 6 December 1906, the crown princess christened at AG Vulcan Stettin the Lloyd Steamship, 'SS Kronprinzessin Cecilie'.

Cecilie's life back in Berlin was made up of a constant round of royal duties attending military parades, gala state banquets, official ceremonies and other courtly expectations including state visits to foreign courts, including that of the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef in Vienna.

Queen Mary was particularly fond of the imperial couple and maintained contact with the German crown princess until her death in 1953.

[9] Her children's tutor also left her service and as a result her two eldest sons, Princes Wilhelm and Louis Ferdinand, for the first time attended as day students at a nearby school.

With the election of Gustav Stresemann as chancellor of the Weimar Republic in August 1923, negotiations for the former crown prince commenced.

The years of separation and the behavior of Wilhelm had made the marriage now merely one in name only, but Cecilie was determined to keep things together even at a distance.

Cecilie remained active within several charity organizations such as the Queen Louise Fund, Chair of the Fatherland's Women Union and the Ladies of the Order of St. John, while keeping clear of any political involvement.

Her eldest son, Wilhelm forfeited his position as possible heir when he married Dorothea von Salviati on 3 June 1933.

Her third son, Hubertus, after spending a period of time farming joined the military and then the air force to become a pilot.

A period of relative calm for Cecilie's family and for Germany came to an end with the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.

Over 50,000 people lined the way to his final resting place in the Antique Temple near the remains of his grandmother, former Empress Auguste Viktoria.

The huge turnout in respect for a prince, who had died a hero's death, from the former ruling dynasty, alarmed and infuriated Adolf Hitler.

[13] As a result, no prince from a former German dynasty was allowed to serve at the front and in 1943 Hitler ordered that they all be discharged from the armed forces.

During this time, Cecilie and her husband increasingly retreated to Castle Oels to live a quiet life, far away from the dangers of Berlin.

With the war going badly, Cecilie and her family left the advancing danger of the Soviet Army to return to Potsdam where they celebrated Christmas in December 1944.

Cecilie fled the Soviet Army in February 1945 to the sanatorium of Dr. Paul Sotier (personal physician of Kaiser Wilhelm II) Fürstenhof in Bad Kissingen in Bavaria.

In an act of healing and friendship, the former Crown Princess Cecilie was received by King George V's widow, Queen Mary, in May 1952 during a visit to England.

Cecilie visited for the first time to attend the christening of her granddaughter, Princess Victoria Marina of Prussia, the daughter of her son Frederick.