Marie Aleksandrovna. Maria Alexandrovna Her Imperial Majesty
Darmstadt, the birthplace of the Landgraves, Electors, and then the Grand Dukes of Hesse and the Rhine, has long-standing dynastic ties to Russia. Four Hesse-Darmstadt princesses became part of Russian and German history - Natalya Alekseevna, the first wife of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich, later Emperor Paul I, Maria Alexandrovna, wife of Alexander II and mother of Alexander III, Elizaveta Fedorovna, wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, and finally , Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas II.
Two of them were crowned, and Elizabeth Feodorovna, whose 150th anniversary was celebrated last year, was canonized by the Church as a martyr.
Why Darmstadt? Is this an accident or was there some pattern in the choice of this small city at the German “bride fair”? It seems that both are true, if, of course, we classify love at first sight, which underlay (at least) three of the four Hesse-Darm-Stadt marriages of the heirs of the Russian throne, as accidents. But there were also more fundamental considerations. Since the time of Peter I, who put an end to the “blood isolation” of the Romanovs, motives of political expediency prevailed in the choice of a bride for the heir to the throne. If Peter married his son Alexei to Sophia-Charlotte of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, the sister of the future German Emperor Charles VI, then he looked for suitors for his daughters and nieces in the North German principalities, continuing the policy of mastering the Baltic coast, begun by the Northern War.
Catherine II departed from Peter's tradition of using dynastic marriages as a means of increasing Russian influence along the Baltic coast. The vector of her policy was aimed south - towards the Black Sea, Crimea, the Balkans, and Constantinople. Perhaps that is why both wives of her son Pavel Petrovich, as well as the wives of her grandchildren - Alexander and Konstantin, were chosen by Catherine in the principalities of Central and Southern Germany - Darmstadt, Württemberg, Baden and Saxe-Coburg. The relationship between the empress and the royal houses of Prussia, Denmark and Sweden also played a role.
Natalya Alekseevna: hostage of political struggle
Catherine entrusted the choice of a bride for Pavel Petrovich, who turned 19 years old in 1773 (“Russian coming of age”) to the Danish diplomat in the Russian service, Baron Asseburg. The task is not easy. And not only because the empress’s relationship with her son, who believed that his mother had usurped the throne that rightfully belonged to him, was never distinguished by mutual trust. The point is different: 1773 was perhaps the most difficult year in the 34-year reign of the Great Empress. The first partition of Poland, the Pugachev uprising, the war with Turkey that lasted for the fifth year, the conclusion of peace with which depended on relations with Prussia and Austria, which jealously followed Russia’s military successes. Of the German princesses suitable in age for the Grand Duke, Catherine's attention focused on Louise of Saxe-Coburg, but she refused to change her religion from Lutheran to Orthodox. Princess Sophia Dorothea of Württemberg, who later became Paul's second wife, was still a child - she was barely 13 years old. So the turn came to the daughters of Land Count Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt. The Landgrave, who served in the Austrian army, was a zealous Protestant, but his wife, Caroline Louise, nicknamed the Great Landgrave for her outstanding qualities, perfectly understood the benefits of a Russian marriage. The Prussian king Frederick II, whose nephew, Crown Prince of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm, was married to the Landgrave's eldest daughter, Frederica, also desired a marriage union between Hesse-Darmstadt and St. Petersburg.
In mid-June 1773, Caroline and her three daughters - Amalia, Wilhelmina and Louise - arrived in St. Petersburg. The wedding of the heir to the throne with his second daughter, named Natalya Alekseevna upon conversion to Orthodoxy, took place in September of the same year. The wedding was attended by Denis Diderot and Friedrich-Melchior Grimm, who had been in long-term correspondence with Semiramis of the North.
Catherine also associated far-reaching dynastic plans with the Darmstadt marriage. It was about creating a family pact between the sovereigns of Northern Europe - Russia, Prussia, Denmark and Sweden through the marriage of the daughters of the Landgrave of Hesse with the Danish king Christian VII and the brother of the Swedish king, Duke Karl of Südermandland. Under Catherine, the plan for a family pact, however, failed to be implemented.
The fate of Natalia Alekseevna was tragic. Taking to heart the humiliating position of her husband, who was not allowed by Catherine to participate in state affairs, she found herself closely involved in the struggle of political factions that unfolded at the foot of the Russian throne. Her reputation was ruined by Andrei Razumovsky, the son of the last hetman of Ukraine, who became so close to the grand ducal couple that he lived in their half in the Winter Palace. On April 15, 1776, Natalya Alekseevna died in childbirth. After her death, Catherine showed her son the intercepted intimate correspondence between Razumovsky and the Grand Duchess...
Maria Alexandrovna: wife of the liberator
Maria Alexandrovna was both in character and in relation to politics the complete opposite of the first wife of Paul I. Alexander II, while still heir to the throne, fell passionately in love with her when in 1838 he visited Darmstadt during a European trip. The Hesse-Darmstadt princess was not even on the list of brides approved by his father, Nicholas I. Alexandra Feodorovna, the wife of Nicholas I, took the ambiguous circumstances of her birth so close to her heart (since 1820, Maria Alexandrovna’s mother, Princess Wilhelmina of Baden, lived separately from her husband Ludwig II, her father was considered the Alsatian Baron Augustus de Grancy) that she herself went to Darmstadt to meet the bride. The wedding took place on April 16, 1841. Maria Alexandrovna gave birth to 8 children, 5 of them sons, solving the problem of succession to the throne for a long time.
Being the wife of a reforming king is not an easy cross. Having lived for 15 years in Nicholas Russia before her coronation, Maria Alexandrovna deeply felt the need for change and sympathized with the liberation of the peasants that followed on February 19, 1861. Having a wide circle of friends not only in court circles, but also among the intellectual elite of Russia (K. Ushinsky, A. Tyutcheva , P. Kropotkin), she knew how not to advertise her undoubted influence on her husband. Her maid of honor, Anna Tyutcheva, the daughter of the great poet, close to the Slavophiles, in vain sought from her in the tragic days of the end of the Crimean War at least an indirect condemnation of the Nicholas order, which led Russia to a military catastrophe. “She is either holy or wooden,” Tyutcheva wrote in despair in her diary. In fact, Maria Alexandrovna, like Elizaveta Feodorovna later, had the irreplaceable quality of being invisible, completely dissolving in her husband, and doing good in silence.
The name of Maria Alexandrovna in Russia is closely connected with the history of noble charity, the roots of which are directly related to the traditions of Darmstadt. In the formation of the spiritual appearance of Maria Alexandrovna, like other Darmstadt princesses, a special role was played by two remarkable women who lived in Hesse in the 12th-13th centuries - Hildegard from Bingen, abbess of the monastery in Rupertsberg, who saw in the Christian church a place where “the people are healed”, and St. Elisabeth of Thuringia, who founded the first hospital in Marburg. Maria Alexandrovna’s charitable activities combined the social service of Protestantism and the deep spirituality of Orthodoxy. The first chairman of the Russian Red Cross Society, founded by Alexander II after the Crimean War, she personally established 5 hospitals, 8 almshouses, 36 shelters, 38 gymnasiums, 156 vocational schools in Russia.
Maria Alexandrovna behaved with exceptional dignity in the difficult, sometimes critical circumstances of the last years of the reign of Alexander II. After the birth of his eighth child, the emperor started a second family. Ekaterina Dolgorukova, who bore him four children, lived in the Winter Palace on the floor above Maria Alexandrovna. Three months after the death of the empress in 1880, she obtained from the emperor the official registration of the marriage. Only the death of Alexander II from a terrorist bomb on March 1, 1881 prevented the implementation of the plan for the coronation of His Serene Highness Princess Yuryevskaya.
After the death of Maria Alexandrovna, her sons, including Emperor Alexander III, built the Church of St. in memory of her. Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane in Jerusalem. Now there is a Russian convent there, preserving the memory of two Darmstadt princesses - Maria Alexandrovna and Elizaveta Feodorovna, whose remains rest near the right choir. Maria Alexandrovna, who embraced Orthodoxy with all her heart, is not canonized, but the sisters pray to her along with Elizaveta Fedorovna. They believe that Maria Alexandrovna begged her husband from six attempts on his life, the seventh, which occurred after her death, became fatal for him.
Alexandra and Elizabeth: on the eve of disaster
The marriages of the last two Darmstadt princesses, Ella and Alice (the future Elizaveta Feodorovna and Alexandra Feodorovna), with the son and grandson of Maria Alexandrovna, were overshadowed by the inner nobility of this extraordinary woman. The wedding of Elizabeth Feodorovna and Sergei Alexandrovich took place in April 1884, 10 years before the marriage of her younger sister to Tsarevich Nicholas, the future Emperor Nicholas II. But the acquaintances of both grand dukes with the Darmstadt princesses were, as it were, written off from the first meeting of their father and grandfather with Maria Alexandrovna in Darmstadt. Nikolai met Alexandra Fedorovna at the wedding of her older sister Ella. Alexandra Feodorovna gave her consent to the marriage at the wedding of her older brother Ernst-Ludwig and Victoria-Melita in April 1884 in Coburg. Maria Alexandrovna became the guardian angel of their marriages, each of which was happy in its own way.
Elizaveta Feodorovna and Alexandra Fedorovna, deeply attached to each other, lived very similar, but at the same time very different lives. Both tried to the best of their ability to support and strengthen their Husbands. But if Sergei Alexandrovich was a convinced anti-liberal conservative, then Nicholas II was more a victim of historical circumstances than a monarch capable of directing the course of history in an era of deep crisis.
Elizabeth Feodorovna’s ideal in the critical circumstances in which Russia found herself in the period between the two revolutions was Joan of Arc, who combined deep spirituality with a readiness to self-sacrifice in the name of duty. In a letter to Nicholas II dated October 29, 1916, written after the murder of Rasputin , The Great Mother, as she was called in Russia, compared herself to the Maid of Orleans, who spoke to her king Charles VII in the name of God.For Alexandra Feodorovna, a sad example to follow, especially in the period from August 1915, when she sometimes had to take responsibility for Marie Antoinette made decisions in the family herself.The tragic situation with the illness of Tsarevich Alexei, which introduced an understandable, but no less irrational emphasis on her behavior, changed little on the merits of the matter.
In 1902, Sergei Alexandrovich and Elizaveta Fedorovna opposed the rapprochement of the imperial couple with the occultist Master Philippe from Lyon. Elizaveta Fedorovna's subsequent rejection of Rasputin finally separated the sisters. They were reconciled only on the last Easter of their lives, when the imperial couple was already in Yekaterinburg, and Elizaveta Feodorovna was on her way to Alapaevsk.
It seems that among the deep reasons that determined their fate was the completeness of Elizaveta Fedorovna and Alexandra Fedorovna’s perception of the spirit of Orthodoxy. It is known that Alexandra Fedorovna agreed to convert to the Orthodox faith after ten years of painful experiences, literally on the eve of the engagement, accelerated by the approaching death of Alexander III. Elizaveta Fedorovna accepted the Orthodox faith deeply consciously, of her own free will, seven years after her marriage. Back in 1888, during a trip to the Holy Land for the consecration of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, in which she was to rest, Elizaveta Feodorovna felt awkward, being deprived of the opportunity to receive communion from the same Chalice with her husband (at first she made a curtsey in front of Orthodox icons). It is hardly an exaggeration to say that along with her deeply religious husband, Maria Alexandrovna was Elizabeth Feodorovna’s guide to Orthodoxy. A great shrine was kept in the grand-ducal palace - the mantle of St. Seraphim of Sarov, given to Sergei Alexandrovich after the death of his mother.
Elizaveta Fedorovna continued the tradition of charity, which Maria Alexandrovna was so actively involved in. She opened the Elizabethan community of mercy after the Khodynka disaster in December 1896. Her charitable activities covered the whole of Russia - from the residence of the Grand Dukes near Moscow in Ilyinsky and Usov to Yekaterinburg and Perm. The Martha and Mary Convent of Mercy became a great monument to Elizabeth Feodorovna, which united the ideals of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia and Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, in whose name she was named upon accepting Orthodoxy.
Empress Alexandra Feodorovna was no less active in charity work. Under her patronage were maternity shelters and “homes of industriousness”, many of which she, not hoping for a public response, established with her own efforts and at her own expense. Thus, in Tsarskoe Selo, a “School of Nannies” appeared, and with it a shelter for orphans with 50 beds, an invalid home for 200 people, intended for disabled soldiers. A School of Folk Art was established in St. Petersburg. During the First World War, Alexandra Feodorovna and the four Grand Duchesses became sisters of mercy, and the Winter Palace turned into a hospital.
There is something providential in the fact that the life paths of the royal martyrs were tragically cut short almost on the same day - July 17 and 18, 1918 - and very close to each other - in Yekaterinburg and Alapaevsk. But their posthumous fates turned out to be different. Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna stepped into immortality on February 4, 1905, when she herself collected parts of her husband’s body torn by a terrorist bomb, and then visited him in prison and forgave his killer with the words of the Gospel - “for they do not know what they are doing.” In 1992, she and the nun Varvara (Yakovleva), who did not leave her, were glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church in the host of the New Martyrs of Russia.
And the final touch. In the tomb of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem, where the relics of Elizabeth Feodorovna rested for more than 60 years (before being transferred to the basement of the temple), since August 1988 the ashes of another Darmstadt princess have been located - Alice of Greece, daughter of Victoria of Battenberg. Having converted to Orthodoxy in Greece in 1920, Alice, the wife of the heir to the Greek throne, Prince Andrea, who spent her entire life imitating her aunt Elizaveta Feodorovna, tried to establish a community of deaconesses in Greece on the model of the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery. But I couldn't. It turned out that Elizaveta Feodorovna’s spiritual feat was possible only in Russia.
Help "Foma"
During the reign of Alexander II, Catherine II’s idea of establishing family ties of the Romanovs with the sovereigns of Northern Europe was realized, and through the same Hesse-Darmstadt house. The eldest daughter of Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse, Princess Victoria, was the wife of the Prince of Battenberg, Marquis of Milford Haven. Another daughter of the Duke, Elizaveta Feodorovna, became the wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the third - Princess Irena - the wife of Henry Albert William of Prussia, brother of the German Emperor Wilhelm II. And the youngest, Alice, who took the name Alexandra Feodorovna in Orthodoxy, married Nicholas II.
The Darmstadt marriages strengthened the Romanovs' ties with the English royal house, since Ludwig IV, the father of Alexandra Feodorovna and Elizabeth Feodorovna, was married to Alice, the daughter of Queen Victoria. His eldest son, Duke Ernst-Ludwig, was first married to Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna. After the divorce, Victoria-Melita married the eldest son of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich Kirill. After the revolution, he emigrated to France, where in 1924 he was proclaimed Emperor in Exile, and Victoria Melita - accordingly, Empress of All Russia.
Maria Alexandrovna(27 July (8 August) 1824, Darmstadt - 22 May (3 June) 1880, St. Petersburg) - princess of the House of Hesse, Russian empress, wife of Emperor Alexander II and mother of Emperor Alexander III.
Princess born Maximilian Wilhelmina Augusta Sophia Maria of Hesse and the Rhine(German: Maximiliane Wilhelmine Auguste Sophie Marie von Hessen und bei Rhein, 1824-1840), after accepting Orthodoxy on December 5 (17), 1840 - Maria Alexandrovna, after betrothal on December 6 (18), 1840 - Grand Duchess with the title of Imperial Highness, after the marriage on April 16 (28), 1841 - the Tsarevna and Grand Duchess, after the accession of her husband to the Russian throne - the Empress (March 2, 1855 - June 3, 1880).
Biography
Youth. Marriage
Princess Mary was born on July 27 (August 8), 1824 in the family of Duke Ludwig II of Hesse. Biographers of the mother of Princess Maria Wilhelmina of Baden, Grand Duchess of Hesse, are convinced that her younger children were born from a relationship with Baron Augustus of Senarklen de Grancy. Wilhelmina's husband, Grand Duke Ludwig II of Hesse, to avoid scandal and thanks to the intervention of Wilhelmina's high-ranking siblings, officially recognized Mary and her brother Alexander as his children. Despite the recognition, they continued to live separately in Heiligenberg while Ludwig II occupied the Grand Ducal Palace in Darmstadt.
In March 1839, while traveling around Europe, the heir to the Russian throne, the son of Emperor Nicholas I, Alexander, while in Darmstadt, fell in love with 14-year-old Maria. The first meeting of the Tsarevich and the princess took place in the opera house, where the Vestal Virgin was being staged. Previously, one of the princesses of Hesse-Darmstadt had already married a Russian crown prince, she was Natalya Alekseevna, the first wife of Paul I; in addition, the bride's maternal aunt was the Russian Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna (wife of Alexander I). Arriving in Russia, Alexander Nikolaevich decided to marry Maria; the girl’s scandalous origin did not bother him; he wrote to his mother in a letter: “Dear Mother, what do I care about the secrets of Princess Maria! I love her, and I would rather give up the throne than give up her. I will only marry her, that’s my decision!”
Empress Alexandra Feodorovna was embarrassed by the origins of her future daughter-in-law and she refused to bless her son’s marriage. Nevertheless, after the persuasion of Alexander and Nicholas I, the empress herself went to Darmstadt to meet Maria, which had never happened during the Romanov dynasty. Consent to the marriage was obtained. The attitude of the emperor and empress towards his daughter-in-law became very warm over time.
“Marie won the hearts of all those Russians who could meet her. Sasha [Alexander II] became more and more attached to her every day, feeling that his choice fell on a God-given one. Their mutual trust grew as they got to know each other. Pope [Nicholas I] always began his letters to her with the words: “Blessed be Thy Name, Mary.”<…>Dad watched with joy the manifestation of the strength of this young character and admired Marie's ability to control herself. This, in his opinion, balanced out the lack of energy in Sasha, which constantly worried him.”Olga Nikolaevna. Dream of youth. Memoirs of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna
In September 1840, the princess arrived in Russia. She shared her impressions of St. Petersburg in a letter to her family: “Petersburg is much more beautiful than I thought; The Neva contributes a lot to this; this is a wonderful river; I think it is difficult to find a more majestic city: at the same time it is lively; The view from the Winter Palace to the Neva is exceptionally good.”
On December 5 (17), 1840, the princess converted to Orthodoxy with the name “Maria Alexandrovna.” “The next day, December 6, was the betrothal of the Tsarevich to Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna. The main exit was with the same solemnity and luxury. The betrothal took place in the presence of the entire royal family, the entire court, the entire Russian nobility and many distinguished foreign guests and representatives of foreign states.”
Maria Alexandrovna (July 27 (August 8) 1824, Darmstadt - May 22 (June 3) 1880, St. Petersburg) - princess Hessian at home, Russian Empress, wife of Russian Emperor Alexander II and mother of Emperor Alexander III.
Born Princess Maximilian Wilhelmina Augusta Sophia Maria Hessian (German: Maximiliane Wilhelmine Auguste Sophie Marie von Hessen und bei Rhein, 1824-1840), after accepting Orthodoxy on December 5 (17), 1840 - Maria Alexandrovna, after betrothal on December 6 (18), 1840 - Grand Duchess with the title of Imperial Highness, after the marriage on April 16 (28), 1841 - the crown princess and grand duchess, after the accession of her husband to the Russian throne - the empress (March 2, 1855 - June 3, 1880).
Youth. Marriage
Princess Mary was born on July 27 (August 8), 1824 in the family of the Duke Ludwig II of Hesse . Biographers of the princess's mother Maria Wilhelmina of Baden, Grand Duchess of Hesse, are convinced that her youngest children were born from a relationship with Baron Augustus of Senarklen de Grancy. Wilhelmina's husband, Grand Duke Ludwig II of Hesse, to avoid scandal and thanks to the intervention of Wilhelmina's high-ranking siblings, officially recognized Mary and her brother Alexander as his children. Despite the recognition, they continued to live separately in Heiligenberg while Ludwig II occupied the Grand Ducal Palace in Darmstadt.
Named after Maria Alexandrovna
Mariinsky Posad (Chuvashia). Until 1856 - the village of Sundyr. On June 18, 1856, Emperor Alexander II renamed the village to the city of Mariinsky Posad in honor of his wife. On August 9, 2013, on Naberezhnaya Street in Mariinsky Posad, in the presence of the Head of Chuvashia, Mikhail Ignatiev, a monument to Empress Maria Alexandrovna was unveiled. Photo of the monument.
Mariinsk (Kemerovo region). Renamed in 1857 (former name - Kiyskoe). In 2007, a monument to Maria Alexandrovna by Tomsk sculptor Leonty Usov was unveiled here. The Empress sits on a bench and holds a dove in her hand - a traditional symbol of peace and the Holy Spirit. At the same time, there is a special place left on the bench for those who want to take a photo with her.
Mariehamn (Maarianhamn) is the main city of the Åland Islands, an autonomous territory within Finland. Founded in 1861. On November 2, 2011, a monument to the Empress on a round granite pedestal, the work of sculptor Andrei Kovalchuk, was inaugurated here. The Empress is depicted in full height.
Named in honor of Maria Alexandrovna[edit | edit wiki text]
Mariinsky Theater (St. Petersburg)
Mariinsky Palace (Kyiv)
Odessa Mariinsky Gymnasium
Mariinskaya street in Riga (Marijas iela)
In Jerusalem, in memory of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, the Church of St. Mary Magdalene was built and consecrated in 1888.
In addition, in March 2010, a bronze bust of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, donated by the authorities of St. Petersburg, was unveiled in San Remo, Italy. The monument was erected on the embankment, named after her “Boulevard of the Empress” (Corso Imperatrice).
Maria Fedorovna (wife of Alexander III)
Maria Fedorovna (Feodorovna) (born Marie Sophie Frederikke Dagmar (Dagmara), dated Marie Sophie Frederikke Dagmar; November 14 (26), 1847, Copenhagen, Denmark - October 13, 1928, Videre Castle near Klampenborg, Denmark) - Russian empress, wife of Alexander III (from October 28, 1866), mother of Emperor Nicholas II.
Daughter of Christian, Prince of Glücksburg, later Christian IX, King of Denmark . Her sister is Alexandra of Denmark, wife of the British King Edward VII, whose son George V bore a portrait resemblance to Nicholas II.
Alexandra Fedorovna (wife of Nicholas II)
Alexandra Feodorovna (Feodorovna, née Princess Victoria Alice Elena Louise Beatrice Hesse-Darmstadt, German Victoria Alix Helena Louise Beatrice von Hessen und bei Rhein, Nicholas II also called her Alix - a derivative of Alice and Alexandra; June 6, 1872, Darmstadt - July 17, 1918, Yekaterinburg) - Russian Empress, wife of Nicholas II (since 1894). Fourth daughter of Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and Rhine and Duchess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria of England
Victoria Fedorovna with her husband Kirill. Niece of Alexander III
Victoria Feodorovna, née Victoria Melita (November 25, 1876, Valletta, Malta - March 2, 1936, Amorbach, Germany) - née Princess of Great Britain, Ireland and Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duchess of Hesse, since 1907 Grand Duchess with the title of Imperial Highness ; according to the Kirillovites, since 1918 de facto and since 1924 de jure - an empress with the title of Imperial Majesty (the title is disputed by opponents of the Kirillovites).
Victoria Melita was the third child and second daughter of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna
Maria Alexandrovna (Grand Duchess) sister of Alexander III
Maria Alexandrovna with her husband Prince Alfred and first-born son Alfred
Maria Alexandrovna was born in Tsarskoe Selo. She was the second daughter of Emperor Alexander II (assassinated on March 1, 1881) and his wife, the Empress Maria Alexandrovna, who was the daughter of Grand Duke Ludwig II of Hesse. Maria Alexandrovna was the sister of Emperor Alexander III. Among her other brothers, the following stood out: Vladimir Alexandrovich - philanthropist, collector, president of the Academy of Arts, Sergei Alexandrovich, who was the Moscow governor and died as a result of a terrorist attack, and Alexey Alexandrovich, with the rank of admiral general, who led the Russian fleet in the Russo-Japanese War. Maria Alexandrovna was also the aunt of Emperor Nicholas II.
On 23 January 1874, at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Grand Duchess Mary married HRH Prince Alfred Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria. Her father gave her a dowry of £100,000, unheard of at the time, and on top of that an annual allowance of £20,000.
The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh arrived in London on 12 March. The marriage was unhappy, and London society considered the bride too arrogant. Emperor Alexander II insisted that his daughter be addressed as "Your Imperial Highness" and that she take precedence over the Princess of Wales. These statements simply infuriated Queen Victoria. The Queen stated that the title "Her Royal Highness", adopted by Maria Alexandrovna after her wedding, should replace the title "Her Imperial Highness", which belonged to her by birth. For her part, the newly made Duchess of Edinburgh was offended that the Princess of Wales, the daughter of the Danish king Christian IX, preceded her, the daughter of the Russian emperor. After her marriage, Mary was styled "Her Royal Highness", "Her Royal and Imperial Highness", and "Her Imperial and Royal Highness". Queen Victoria gave her first place after the Princess of Wales.
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha[edit | edit wiki text]
After Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha died on August 22, 1893, the free Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha passed to his youngest nephew, Maria Alexandrovna's husband, Prince Alfred, since his older brother, the Prince of Wales, abdicated the throne. He (apparently Alfred) refused the British allowance of 15,000 pounds a year, and seats in the House of Lords and the Home Consul, but retained the 10,000 pounds received from his marriage for the maintenance of his London estate, Clarence House. After Maria Alexandrovna's husband ascended the ducal throne, she began to be called the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, while retaining the title of Duchess of Edinburgh. Technically, as the consort of the reigning Duke of Germany, she was superior to all her sisters-in-law at Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
Their son, Crown Prince Alfred, was caught having an extramarital affair and attempted to shoot himself in January 1899, during his parents' 25th wedding anniversary. He survived, and his parents sent him to Merano, where the heir died two weeks later on February 6.
The Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha died of throat cancer on July 30, 1900 at Roseno Castle in Coburg. The ducal throne passed to his nephew, Prince Charles Edward, Duke of Albany. The Dowager Duchess Maria remained to reside in Coburg.
Irena of Hesse, sister of the wife of Nicholas II of Holstein-Gottorp
On 24 May 1888, Irena married her cousin Prince Henry of Prussia, son of Frederick III and Victoria of Great Britain, younger brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Elizaveta Fedorovna and Sergei Alexandrovich
Elizaveta Fedorovna (born Elizaveta Alexandra Louise Alice Hesse-Darmstadt, German . Elisabeth Alexandra Luise Alice von Hessen-Darmstadt und bei Rhein, her family name was Ella, officially in Russia - Elisaveta Feodorovna; November 1, 1864, Darmstadt - July 18, 1918, Perm province) - Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt; in marriage (to the Russian Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich) the Grand Duchess of the reigning house of Romanov.
Second daughter of Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse-Darmstadt and Princess Alice, granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England. Her younger sister Alice later, in November 1894, she became the Russian Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, marrying the Russian Emperor Nicholas II.
On June 3 (15), 1884, in the Court Cathedral of the Winter Palace, she married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, brother of the Russian Emperor Alexander III
Alexandra of Denmark, aunt of Nicholas II of Holstein-Gottorp
Her husband Albert Edward (diminutive Bertie), eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
First from left: Alexander III of Holstein-Gottorp with Elston alive in 1871. All of Paris is in the hands of the Reds.
In plain text: Russia, captured by Prussian troops, is under the German-Jewish Red Army occupation gray slave war crimes of Elston-Sumarokov. Before the Jewish era, as before 1903.
Darmstadt, the birthplace of the Landgraves, Electors, and then the Grand Dukes of Hesse and the Rhine, has long-standing dynastic ties to Russia. Four Hesse-Darmstadt princesses became part of Russian and German history - Natalya Alekseevna, the first wife of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich, later Emperor Paul I, Maria Alexandrovna, wife of Alexander II and mother of Alexander III, Elizaveta Fedorovna, wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, and finally , Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas II.
Two of them were crowned, and Elizabeth Feodorovna, whose 150th anniversary was celebrated last year, was canonized by the Church as a martyr.
Why Darmstadt? Is this an accident or was there some pattern in the choice of this small city at the German “bride fair”? It seems that both are true, if, of course, we classify love at first sight, which underlay (at least) three of the four Hesse-Darmstadt marriages of the heirs of the Russian throne, as accidents. But there were also more fundamental considerations. Since the time of Peter I, who put an end to the “blood isolation” of the Romanovs, motives of political expediency prevailed in the choice of a bride for the heir to the throne. If Peter married his son Alexei to Sophia-Charlotte of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, the sister of the future German Emperor Charles VI, then he looked for suitors for his daughters and nieces in the North German principalities, continuing the policy of mastering the Baltic coast, begun by the Northern War.
Catherine II departed from Peter's tradition of using dynastic marriages as a means of increasing Russian influence along the Baltic coast. The vector of her policy was aimed south - towards the Black Sea, Crimea, the Balkans, and Constantinople. Perhaps that is why both wives of her son Pavel Petrovich, as well as the wives of her grandchildren - Alexander and Konstantin, were chosen by Catherine in the principalities of Central and Southern Germany - Darmstadt, Württemberg, Baden and Saxe-Coburg. The relationship between the empress and the royal houses of Prussia, Denmark and Sweden also played a role.
From left to right: Grand Duchess Natalya Alekseevna, Empress Maria Alexandrovna, Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna
Natalya Alekseevna: hostage of political struggle
Catherine entrusted the choice of a bride for Pavel Petrovich, who turned 19 years old in 1773 (“Russian coming of age”) to the Danish diplomat in the Russian service, Baron Asseburg. The task is not easy. And not only because the empress’s relationship with her son, who believed that his mother had usurped the throne that rightfully belonged to him, was never distinguished by mutual trust. The point is different: 1773 was perhaps the most difficult year in the 34-year reign of the Great Empress. The first partition of Poland, the Pugachev uprising, the war with Turkey that lasted for the fifth year, the conclusion of peace with which depended on relations with Prussia and Austria, which jealously followed Russia’s military successes. Of the German princesses suitable in age for the Grand Duke, Catherine's attention focused on Louise of Saxe-Coburg, but she refused to change her religion from Lutheran to Orthodox. Princess Sophia Dorothea of Württemberg, who later became Paul's second wife, was still a child - she was barely 13 years old. So the turn came to the daughters of Landgrave Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt. The Landgrave, who served in the Austrian army, was a zealous Protestant, but his wife, Caroline Louise, nicknamed the Great Landgrave for her outstanding qualities, perfectly understood the benefits of a Russian marriage. The Prussian king Frederick II, whose nephew, Crown Prince of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm, was married to the Landgrave's eldest daughter, Frederica, also desired a marriage union between Hesse-Darmstadt and St. Petersburg.
In mid-June 1773, Caroline and her three daughters - Amalia, Wilhelmina and Louise - arrived in St. Petersburg. The wedding of the heir to the throne with his second daughter, named Natalya Alekseevna upon conversion to Orthodoxy, took place in September of the same year. The wedding was attended by Denis Diderot and Friedrich-Melchior Grimm, who had been in long-term correspondence with Semiramis of the North.
Catherine II
Catherine also associated far-reaching dynastic plans with the Darmstadt marriage. It was about creating a family pact between the sovereigns of Northern Europe - Russia, Prussia, Denmark and Sweden through the marriage of the daughters of the Landgrave of Hesse with the Danish king Christian VII and the brother of the Swedish king, Duke Karl of Südermandland. Under Catherine, the plan for a family pact, however, failed to be implemented.
The fate of Natalia Alekseevna was tragic. Taking to heart the humiliating position of her husband, who was not allowed by Catherine to participate in state affairs, she found herself closely involved in the struggle of political factions that unfolded at the foot of the Russian throne. Her reputation was ruined by Andrei Razumovsky, the son of the last hetman of Ukraine, who became so close to the grand ducal couple that he lived in their half in the Winter Palace. On April 15, 1776, Natalya Alekseevna died in childbirth. After her death, Catherine showed her son the intercepted intimate correspondence between Razumovsky and the Grand Duchess...
Maria Alexandrovna: wife of the liberator
Maria Alexandrovna was both in character and in relation to politics the complete opposite of the first wife of Paul I. Alexander II, while still heir to the throne, fell passionately in love with her when in 1838 he visited Darmstadt during a European trip. The Hesse-Darmstadt princess was not even on the list of brides approved by his father, Nicholas I. Alexandra Feodorovna, the wife of Nicholas I, took the ambiguous circumstances of her birth so close to her heart (since 1820, Maria Alexandrovna’s mother, Princess Wilhelmina of Baden, lived separately from her husband Ludwig II, her father was considered the Alsatian Baron Augustus de Grancy) that she herself went to Darmstadt to meet the bride. The wedding took place on April 16, 1841. Maria Alexandrovna gave birth to 8 children, 5 of them sons, solving the problem of succession to the throne for a long time.
Being the wife of a reforming king is not an easy cross. Having lived for 15 years in Nicholas Russia before her coronation, Maria Alexandrovna deeply felt the need for change and sympathized with the liberation of the peasants that followed on February 19, 1861. Having a wide circle of friends not only in court circles, but also among the intellectual elite of Russia (K. Ushinsky, A. Tyutcheva , P. Kropotkin), she knew how not to advertise her undoubted influence on her husband. Her maid of honor, Anna Tyutcheva, the daughter of the great poet, close to the Slavophiles, in vain sought from her in the tragic days of the end of the Crimean War at least an indirect condemnation of the Nicholas order, which led Russia to a military catastrophe. “She is either holy or wooden,” Tyutcheva wrote in despair in her diary. In fact, Maria Alexandrovna, like Elizaveta Feodorovna later, had the irreplaceable quality of being invisible, completely dissolving in her husband, and doing good in silence.
Wedding ruble for the wedding of the heir Alexander Nikolaevich and Maria Alexandrovna. 1841
The name of Maria Alexandrovna in Russia is closely connected with the history of noble charity, the roots of which are directly related to the traditions of Darmstadt. In the formation of the spiritual appearance of Maria Alexandrovna, like other Darmstadt princesses, a special role was played by two remarkable women who lived in Hesse in the 12th–13th centuries - Hildegard of Bingen, abbess of the monastery in Rupertsberg, who saw in the Christian church a place where “the people are healed”, and St. Elisabeth of Thuringia, who founded the first hospital in Marburg. Maria Alexandrovna’s charitable activities combined the social service of Protestantism and the deep spirituality of Orthodoxy. The first chairman of the Russian Red Cross Society, founded by Alexander II after the Crimean War, she personally established 5 hospitals, 8 almshouses, 36 shelters, 38 gymnasiums, 156 vocational schools in Russia.
Maria Alexandrovna behaved with exceptional dignity in the difficult, sometimes critical circumstances of the last years of the reign of Alexander II. After the birth of his eighth child, the emperor started a second family. Ekaterina Dolgorukova, who bore him four children, lived in the Winter Palace on the floor above Maria Alexandrovna. Three months after the death of the empress in 1880, she obtained from the emperor the official registration of the marriage. Only the death of Alexander II from a terrorist bomb on March 1, 1881 prevented the implementation of the plan for the coronation of His Serene Highness Princess Yuryevskaya.
After the death of Maria Alexandrovna, her sons, including Emperor Alexander III, built the Church of St. in memory of her. Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane in Jerusalem. Now there is a Russian convent there, preserving the memory of two Darmstadt princesses - Maria Alexandrovna and Elizaveta Feodorovna, whose remains rest near the right choir. Maria Alexandrovna, who embraced Orthodoxy with all her heart, is not canonized, but the sisters pray to her along with Elizaveta Fedorovna. They believe that Maria Alexandrovna begged her husband from six attempts on his life, the seventh, which occurred after her death, became fatal for him.
Alexandra and Elizabeth: on the eve of disaster
The marriages of the last two Darmstadt princesses, Ella and Alice (the future Elizaveta Feodorovna and Alexandra Feodorovna), with the son and grandson of Maria Alexandrovna, were overshadowed by the inner nobility of this extraordinary woman. The wedding of Elizabeth Feodorovna and Sergei Alexandrovich took place in April 1884, 10 years before the marriage of her younger sister to Tsarevich Nicholas, the future Emperor Nicholas II. But the acquaintances of both grand dukes with the Darmstadt princesses were, as it were, written off from the first meeting of their father and grandfather with Maria Alexandrovna in Darmstadt. Nikolai met Alexandra Fedorovna at the wedding of her older sister Ella. Alexandra Feodorovna gave her consent to the marriage at the wedding of her older brother Ernst-Ludwig and Victoria-Melita in April 1884 in Coburg. Maria Alexandrovna became the guardian angel of their marriages, each of which was happy in its own way.
Nicholas II with his family in Hesse-Darmstadt with relatives
Elizaveta Feodorovna and Alexandra Fedorovna, deeply attached to each other, lived very similar, but at the same time very different lives. Both tried to the best of their ability to support and strengthen their Husbands. But if Sergei Alexandrovich was a convinced anti-liberal conservative, then Nicholas II was more a victim of historical circumstances than a monarch capable of directing the course of history in an era of deep crisis.