Queen Silvia's Education and Career

[iowabelle]

I'm interesting in writing a brief comparison of Queen Silvia's education and career history versus that of Princess Diana, since they were both commoners who married into royal families at about the same time.

Do any of you have any information you share? The most I've found is in wikipedia and it's pretty vague. Thanks!

[Boris]

I don’t know how productive it will be to compare the two…
Completely different backgrounds (bourgeois foreigner versus old nobility from the same country), and not exactly the same time frame either, as the relationship of Silvia Sommerlath and (then) Crown Prince Carl Gustaf began in summer 1972 when Silvia was already 28, and Diana’s and Charles' started in late 1980 when Diana was only 19...
But anyway:
After growing up bi-lingual in Brazil and returning with her family to Germany in 1956, Silvia graduated High School in Heidelberg in 1963 and then moved away to the big city Munich. Originally wanting to become an elementary school teacher, she decided otherwise, went to an interpreter school and started working as a translator and interpreter.
In the late 1960s, she worked for the Argentinean consulate in Munich in that function, before she landed the job as trainer for hostesses for the Olympic Summer Games in 1972. She never was, as popular myth would have it, a mere Olympic hostess herself. Additionally though, she acted as one of the ‘faces’ for the upcoming Olympics, actually promoting the Games in PR films, in TV shows and photo shoots.
During the Summer Games, she met the then Crown Prince of Sweden, after two other long term relationships she had before, one with a lawyer, the other one with a businessman.
She had by then established good relations with the Vice President of the International Olympic Committee Willi Daume and became deputy chief of protocol for the Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck/Austria, planning the schedules of events and guest lists protocol-wise in advance, and of course during the actual Games in early 1976.
Her engagement with the King was announced a little more than a month after she finished that job.
Her career path was actually ahead of the time back then for a woman of her conservative, bourgeois background. The usual expectation in early 60s Germany would have been to maybe start some studies and even begin work as a teacher, but be married with kids before reaching thirty and probably also to stay at home as wife and mother.
As I said, the biographies of Princess Diana and Queen Silvia are quite different.

[sgl]

Boris, thank you for this information. I have never known much about Queen Silvia, and am now very impressed with her background. Since she lived in Brazil, I would assume that she speaks Portugese. Does she also speak Spanish? She and Diana have backgrounds that are as different as night and day.

[Boris]

Queen Silvia is half Brazilian (her mother Alice's maiden name is de Toledo), and from the age of three to thirteen, she grew up bi-lingual (German and Potuguese) in Sao Paulo / Brazil, where her father worked for a Swedish (!) company.
Queen Silvia speaks German, Portuguese, Spanish, English, French and Italian.

[HRHofNothing]

Originally Posted by Boris

Queen Silvia is half Brazilian (her mother Alice's maiden name is de Toledo), and from the age of three to thirteen, she grew up bi-lingual (German and Potuguese) in Sao Paulo / Brazil, where her father worked for a Swedish (!) company.
Queen Silvia speaks German, Portuguese, Spanish, English, French and Italian.

I hope she has managed to learn Swedish in the three decades she has been Queen of Sweden!

[Boris]

Indeed she does...
I was thinking of her education, studies and jobs, and as far as I know Swedish is a language she didn't speak before meeting Carl Gustaf.

[IloveCP]

I had no idea she wanted to become a teacher!

Thank you Boris.I was wondering what her education background was.

[Aurora Australis]

As far as her Portuguese is concerned, she speaks it fluently and without any hint of accent, and I really mean it from a native speaker's perspective. Due to the lack of daily practice, since her mother has passed away, she commits very minor misspellings every now and then, which are practically unnoticeable by an average native speaker. Anyway, nothing to discredit her amazing skills in the language, though.

[Blog Real]

In 1963, Miss Sommerlath graduated from the Luisenschule school in Düsseldorf. From 1965 to 1969, she studied as an interpreter at the Munich Institute of Language and Interpretation, qualifying in Spanish. She then worked at the Argentinian consulate in Munich.

From 1971 to 1973, Silvia Sommerlath worked as a training manager for Olympic hostesses at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, and in 1973 she became Head of Protocol for the Organising Committee for the 1976 Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria.

It was during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games that Silvia Sommerlath met the then Crown Prince of Sweden.

It was during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games that Silvia Sommerlath met the then Crown Prince of Sweden.

https://www.kungahuset.se/english/ro...e/hm-the-queen