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Viktor, Hereditary Prince of Schönburg-Waldenburg

1856–1888

Born
1 May 1856, Nice
Country of birth
Kingdom of Sardinia, today France
Died
18 Nov 1888, Potsdam
facts
5
sources
1
images and files
0

Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

  • Birth1 May 1856, NiceProbable1 source
  • Death18 Nov 1888, PotsdamProbable1 source

A life in time

  1. Born · Nice

    Birth, Nice

  2. Child born: Princess Sophie of Schönburg-Waldenburg

    Birth, Potsdam

  3. Died · Potsdam

    Death, Potsdam

What was it like?

The world around Nice, 1856: who ruled, who else was alive, how people lived. This is general history, not a record about the family, and every item shows where it comes from.

Viktor, was born the same year as L. Frank Baum, Giuseppe Martucci, and Henrique Lopes de Mendonça.

Born the same year

  • L. Frank Baum

    American author of children's books (1856–1919)

  • Giuseppe Martucci

    Italian musician (1856-1909)

  • Henrique Lopes de Mendonça

    Portuguese writer (1856–1931)

  • Sigmund Freud

    Austrian psychiatrist and founder of psychoanalysis (1856–1939)

  • Nikola Tesla

    Serbian-American engineer and inventor (1856-1943)

  • Woodrow Wilson

    28th President of the United States (1913–1921)

Fashion

Traditional rustic mastruca vests for men

Ordinary male peasants in Sardinia often wore the mastruca, a rustic vest made from four sheep or goat skins, a traditional garment that dates back to Roman times.

Cagliari bread seller gala dress

The gala dress of Cagliari bread sellers, or panattara, featured a massive skirt of blue silk satin worn over one or two petticoats to create a bell-shaped volume. It was completed by a striking red cloth head cloak known as a mantilla, decorated with silver thread embroidery.

Music

Songs at wool-carding gatherings

During social wool-carding gatherings, young men offered flowers to women accompanied by sung verses, with the women required to respond in kind.

The ballu tundu national dance

The ballu tundu, a circular chain dance, was the quintessential national dance of Sardinia, involving complex, secret hand pressures to coordinate movements.

Getting around

Challenges of early travel

Before railways were built, travel was often restricted to mule tracks or rudimentary roads, such as a 6-mile trip to Osilo that could only be made on horseback and took 6 hours.

Maritime travel to Sardinia

Steamers connecting Genoa to Sardinia typically took 24 to 26 hours to reach Porto Torres, and passengers landing in Cagliari were not subject to custom-house or police visits.

Daily life

Creative food preservation and tool recycling

Families preserved eggs for months by storing them in a mixture of four parts water and one part lime, leaving the storage pots permanently marked with white residue. Tools were also creatively repurposed, such as graters fashioned from old, unusable farm hoes pierced with a hot iron.

Modest homes and contaminated water supplies

In homes before electricity, families often lived in just a few square meters, using a ground floor room as a kitchen and an upstairs room for sleeping. Lacking public water pipes, residents relied on wells or public fountains, and their drinking water was often contaminated due to the absence of sewage systems.

Food

Daily Meals Based on Soup and Bread

Ordinary families typically relied on a single daily meal, often a soup (minestra) made of vegetables, potatoes, lard, or salted pork, frequently served with bread. For many, meat was an exceptional treat reserved for Sundays, holidays, or celebrations like weddings.

Frugal Breakfasts and Coffee Substitutes

Before true coffee became widespread, many families drank an infusion made from roasted chickpeas, wheat, barley, or even acorns. Breakfast was very frugal, consisting of little more than a piece of bread and occasionally a small amount of jam.

Prices and wages

Meat prices under the Second Empire

During the Second Empire, the price of a pound of meat increased from 49 to 68 centimes.

Rising cost of bread

Between 1850 and 1870, the cost of 2 kilograms of bread rose from 52 to 74 centimes.

Work

Laborer wages and living conditions

Young laborers in chemical plants earned 1.50 lire for a ten-hour workday, often living in crowded, shared dormitory halls where multiple people slept in a single bed.

Part-time mining and peasant labor

Sardinian miners were often peasants who kept their agricultural jobs, with mining wages in the late 19th century reaching about 2.60 lire per day for miners.

News and letters
Around 1858–1858

Travel time from Cagliari to Paris

A letter sent from Cagliari on August 28, 1858, arrived in Paris on September 3, 1858, using a combination of sea and land routes.

Weekly mail service to Corsica

The Marseille-Ajaccio route used French mail steamers to connect Corsica to the continent with a weekly frequency, taking one day for the crossing.

During their lifetime

  1. 1860

    Petroleum lamps replaced candles for lighting

    Starting in 1860, petroleum lamps replaced candles and tallow lights in German households, significantly improving home lighting.

  2. 1871

    The German Empire is proclaimed

    The German Empire was proclaimed in 1871, uniting various states under Kaiser Wilhelm I.

  3. 1873

    Economic crash triggers long crisis

    The Panic of 1873 began with a stock market crash, triggering a period of economic hardship known as the Great Depression.

  4. 1873

    Gründerkrise economic crash began

    In 1873, Germany experienced the Gründerkrise, a severe economic crisis that caused significant financial instability following a period of post-unification industrial boom.

  5. 1883

    First national health insurance introduced

    Germany became the first country to introduce a national social insurance system with the approval of a worker's health insurance plan.

  6. 1884

    Standardized time zones adopted globally

    In 1884, global standardized time zones were introduced, largely driven by the need to synchronize railway schedules and public life in the industrialized German Empire.

Family

Spouses

Children

Ancestors and children

Open the full tree

Four generations back to the right, the children to the left. The number beside a child counts the generations of descendants known after them.