 Born in Germany, the queen had moved to southern Italy, establishing a residence on the resort island of Capri, from where she would visit Sweden in the summers.The queen had met Knut Giertz when she had taken ill during a royal tour in Umeå; on that occasion the elder Giertz had accompanied the queen on the train back to Stockholm.They met again in 1927 as convalescents in Rome some time after Knut Giertz had himself developed a heart defect through having been infected by a patient he had been treating for streptococcus.