Helga de La Brache - The Fraud

The Fraud

The exiled Gustav IV and Frederica of Baden had divorced in 1812, but Helga de la Brache claimed that they had married again, secretly, "in a convent in Germany", which resulted in her birth in Lausanne in 1820. She was later sent to be raised by her alleged father's aunt, Princess Sophia Albertine of Sweden. When the Princess died in 1829, she was taken to the Vadstena asylum, so that the secret of her birth would be concealed as she would be thought to be insane. She was saved in 1834 and taken to her family in Baden, where she was placed under house arrest. In 1837, upon seeing the news of her father's death in the paper, she forgot to hide her grief. She returned to Sweden, where she was again put in an asylum to prevent the secret of her birth to be revealed. She managed to escape from the asylum, and was taken under the care of charitable people, who supported her despite persecution, and soon, she was given a pension of 6,000 § from her mother's family in Germany. In 1850, the pension had ceased coming, and she was unable to continue the standard of life to which she of birth had been accustomed - and she was also forced to support her many faithful friends, who stood by her during her years of persecution: No smaller pension than 5,000 or 6,000 would be sufficient.

Her story was believed by many private people in Sweden and Finland. She received great financial support from private benefactors. Followed by her faithful companion, who was an educated and cultivated woman who supported her story, de la Brache performed with a simplicity and naivete which made people unable to suspect she was cunning enough to have made it all up, and sensible enough for people to think that she did not believe it because she was mad. Eventually, even the skeptics had to admit that the story was at least theoretically possible. One of the reasons to why such a story could be believed, was that all contact with the deposed former dynasty was forbidden in 19th-century Sweden, which made it hard to verify and examine what would be likely regarding their family relations.

She convinced the salon hostess Frances Lewin-von Koch (1804–1888), the British born spouse of the minister of justice, Nils von Koch, who housed her and provided her with a lawyer, and through her also her husband; the parliamentary Anders Uhr and the royal court chaplain Carl Norrby, but was seen as a fraud by Prime minister Louis De Geer and foreign minister Ludvig Manderström. The queen mother Josefina took an interest in her, and provided her with an allowance. The king did not take much interest but wanted to get the whole affair over and done with. She was granted a meeting with Charles XV who, afterward, remarked to the parliamentarians: "Why, she is just as sane as you or me".

In March 1861, the king allowed her an annual pension from the foreign department of 2,400 Swedish riksdaler a year, (the amount, from the beginning 1.200, was made larger in December 1869). He also promised to get her the furniture of a princess. She managed to continue this for years.

In 1870, however, an article in a newspaper by C. Norrby, one of her benefactors, appeared, resulting in an investigation.