(Silvia Renate Sommerlath [birth name]; Silvia Renate, Queen of Sweden; Silvia, Sveriges Drottning)
born on December 23, 1943 in Heidelberg, Germany
Swedish queen
80th birthday on December 23, 2023
Biography
In 1976 Silvia Renate was regarded as the perfect queen — “straight out of a fairy tale” — by a public thoroughly enchanted by the commoner's daughter who was now Queen of Sweden. Seelmann-Eggebrecht, an expert on the royals, spoke for many when he raved: “Silvia looks dazzling, she is smart and charming. And she behaves like a born queen, even though she is a merchant's daughter by birth.” By now Queen Silvia has been in office for 47 years and has exerted a decisive influence on the Swedish monarchy. She uses her popularity to promote diverse social causes and also expresses herself critically on topical issues, especially with regard to the sexual exploitation of children and the treatment of disadvantaged people.
Silvia Renate Sommerlath was born in Heidelberg as the daughter of Walther Sommerlath and the Brazilian Alice Soares de Toledo and grew up with three older brothers. She lived in São Paulo from 1947 to 1957, and then returned to Germany. After graduating from high school in Düsseldorf, she studied at the Sprachen- und Dolmetscherinstitut in Munich from 1965-69. In addition to her native languages German and Portuguese, she also speaks Spanish, English, French and Swedish. She is proficient in Swedish sign language as well.
In 1971 she began working for the Olympic Organizing Committee in Munich as Senior VIP Hostess. She was expected to wear a dirndl, generally promote a positive image of Germany, coordinate schedules for her 1648 colleagues, and attend to the guests of honor. During the opening ceremony of the Games on August 26, 1972, Silvia smiled at the Swedish crown prince. Later Carl Gustav was to describe his spontaneous reaction to her as the realization “at that very moment” that “it was to be her or no one. Click.” Silvia has been referred to as “the woman with the click” in Sweden ever since.
Carl Gustav and Silvia initially kept their liaison a secret. After the crown prince, who comes from the noble Bernadotte family, was crowned King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden in 1973 at the age of 27, nothing stood in the way of his marriage to a commoner. The wedding ceremony in Stockholm Cathedral on June 19, 1976 was broadcast live to 43 countries. The Swedish pop group ABBA wrote a song in Silvia's honor and performed “Dancing Queen” for the first time on the eve of the wedding.
Queen Silvia set up an office with an audience chamber in the Stockholm City Palace. In addition to her representative duties, she devotes herself to social causes on an honorary basis. The “Royal Couple's Wedding Fund”, which she founded to support sports research for disabled children, was the first of numerous social projects that are without exception all based on her own experience.
Daughter Victoria was born in 1977, and son Carl Philip in 1979. The family moved to Drottningholm Castle outside Stockholm, and Madeleine, who was born in 1982, grew up there. When the Swedish parliament extended the succession rules to include female descendants in 1980, it was clear that Victoria would succeed to the throne and that her daughter Estelle, born in February 2012, would one day succeed her.
Silvia has perfected the roles of “wife, mother and queen” – she considers that order crucial - to the point that she had no trouble “going from changing diapers straight to the state banquet.”
Despite etiquette and protocol and the constant escort of bodyguards, she tries to maintain a largely middle-class family life and to present an intact family to the tabloid press. But she speaks frankly of family problems: She has talked about her daughter Victoria's eating disorder as well as her mother's dementia. The royal family’s own website and its updated presence on Facebook are further evidence of this openness.
Silvia was extremely distressed when she was accused of having willfully concealed the NSDAP membership of her father that became public knowledge following his death, and of having played down his role in the Third Reich. She promised clarification and, with the help of historian Erik Norberg, she began investigating. In 2011, she released the investigative report that partially refuted the accusation that her father had ‘Aryanized,’ i.e. seized, a Jewish business, and had produced for the Wehrmacht.
When her mother developed dementia, she set up a familiar environment for her at Drottningholm Castle to make it easier for her to live with the disease. Based on this personal experience, she founded the foundation “Silviahemmet” in 1996, which supports people in the early stages of dementia and their relatives. In the meantime, the concept of “Silviahemmet” has become a model for numerous facilities for dementia patients in Germany as well.
The beginnings of her social commitment to children go back to her own childhood, when she experienced the misery of street children in São Paulo and campaigned for the children to be able to attend school. Queen Silvia therefore founded the World Childhood Foundation in 1999. The foundation, which works mainly in Brazil, supports 600 organizations and projects worldwide to protect children from sexual abuse, exploitation and child trafficking and to improve the living conditions of children at risk (www.childhood.org).
Although she is a “happy grandmother,” Queen Silvia is not thinking about retirement. “Because if you can help, if you can give a child a future, then that gives you strength,” she said in an interview where she also urged everyone to become active “whenever a child is in need.”
(Text from 2012; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2023.)
Please consult the German version for additional information (pictures, sources, videos, bibliography).
If you hold the rights to one or more of the images on this page and object to its/their appearance here, please contact Fembio.
