Andrew Dehler
Dehler, who is also listed as a thirty-year-old in the 1841 resident list of Buckingham Palace, got to know his future wife exactly there. On 30th March 1842, two years after his arrival in England, he married Eunice Stegglas. At the same age as Dehler, she served as a maid in the Royal Household. The marriage certificate reveals that Andreas Dehler’s father, Lorenz Dehler, was a musician and Eunice’s father, William Stegglas, a carpenter. A John Andrew Dehler was registered for birth in the parish of Saint George Hanover Square in Westminster in the fourth quarter in 1843. More information about the family could not be found in official English documents. The reason for this was that Dehler soon returned to Coburg with his wife and son. At the end of April 1847, he had made a short visit to Coburg, probably already looking for accommodation. On 11th May Baron Stockmar wrote to Albert:
“… Dehler, who has already found and taken lodgings, is surprised and worried about the prices and has shared his concerns for the future. I have calculated the budget necessary for him and found that, with a wife and 7 children and with 600 fl. [Gulden = florins], he will have to make do very scarcely, if not even poorly. Therefore, I promised him, to consult Your Royal Highness once more on the subject, and believe I must advise in the interest of both the Lord and the servant, that 700 fl. will be given to him in any case and to avoid future, perhaps founded complaints, to be quite sure that 750 fl. to 800 fl. will be granted. The orderly existence of Dehler’s household must, as always, be established at once, as must the chance to get through the first year without debts. Therefore, if you do not give him sufficient means to do so now, financial problems and a request for help will inevitably arise later, and there is a probability that in the end this will have cost you more than a proper increase in his salary from the start. Since Dehler has already served you for 10 years, and the reason for his removal is not due to his services, you should not want to give rise to the impression over here that the return from England to the fatherland happened without the necessary means of subsistence. …”
On 29th May 1847 Prince Albert reported that Dehler had delivered all of Stockmar’s dispatches. Dehler was to be replaced by Löhlein. In the same letter Albert wrote:
“… I don’t want to be miserly against Dehler and I’ll accept your reasons. But I don’t want to complicate the situation too much for myself. Now Benda who has heard of Dehler’s pension wants to retire himself and to go to Koburg without any motive, and he says I won’t give to him, who has performed well, less than someone who has performed badly. Anson, who is happy to get rid of yet another German, encourages him, I believe, secretly in his stupid desire. …”
This reveals that the German employees were not always welcome in the English Royal Household.
