Queen Juliana

She was the only child of the Dutch ruling couple of Queen Wilhelmina and Heinrich Duke of Mecklenburg. Through her mother, Juliana is Princess of Orange-Nassau; Through her father she holds the title of Duchess of Mecklenburg. After school, Juliana began studying law at Leiden University in 1927, which awarded her an honorary doctorate two years later. In 1930 she received her doctorate in Leiden. phil. Juliana married the German officer and Prince Bernhard von Lippe-Biesterfeld in 1937, with whom she had four daughters Beatrix (1938), Irene (1939), Margriet (1943) and Christina (1947). When the troops of National Socialist Germany invaded, the family fled from the Netherlands to England in the spring of 1940. From London she later came to Canada. After the end of the war, they returned home in 1945. On August 31, 1948, Juliana was made Queen of the Netherlands, succeeding her abdicating mother. In this role, Juliana demonstrated a great ability for reconciliation and peaceful conflict resolution in the years and decades that followed. At the end of 1949, after 400 years of Dutch colonial rule over Indonesia, she released the Southeast Asian island state into freedom. In the course of settling scores with collaborators who had worked with the German occupation, the young queen prevented the execution of death sentences in the post-war period. Juliana exerted a not insignificant influence on politics in the Netherlands, although the public also viewed the royal family ambivalently. The marriage of the heir to the throne, Wilhelmina Armgard Beatrix, to the German diplomat Claus von Amsberg in 1966 caused a particular stir. Juliana died on March 20, 2004 in Soestdijk. On December 1, 2004, she was succeeded by her husband, Prince Bernhard, who died of cancer.