Maximiliane Wilhelmine Auguste Sophie Marie (Hessen und bei Rhein) Romanov (1824 - 1880)

Born 8 Aug 1824 in Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany

Ancestors

Wife of Александр Николаевич Romanov — married 28 Apr 1841 in St. Petersburg, Russia

Descendants

Died 22 May 1880 at age 55 in St. Petersburg, Russia

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Biography

Marie (Hessen und bei Rhein) Romanov is Notable.

Empress Marie Hessen und bei Rhein was a member of the aristocracy in Europe.

The wife of Tsar Alexander II and grandmother of Russia's last Tsar, Nicholas II, Marie of Hesse began her life on 8 August 1824 as a little German princess with a very long name: Maximiliane Wilhelmine Auguste Sophie Marie, Princess von Hessen und bei Rhine.

While such a long name may seem overly dramatic today, it was perfectly in keeping with the German Romantic spirit of her age, the period of Beethoven and Schubert, Wagner and Schiller, when little girls were launched like operatic valkyries into the storm of life, with high hopes in the hearts of their parents that they might prove to be angels in the midst of life's stormy battles.

Princess Marie of Hesse fulfilled all her mother's highest hopes, leading a truly dramatic life as Empress of all the Russias.

Marie was legally born as the child of Ludwig II, Grand Duke von Hessen und bei Rhein, and his wife Wilhelmine, Princess of Baden, but when she arrived in August 1824 at Darmstadt her parents had been separated for many years and it was generally understood at court that her true father was probably Baron August Ludwig von Senarclens-Grancy, the gentleman riding-master of the Grand Duke's stables.

Marie's mother, Wilhelmine of Baden, was a beautiful, strong-willed woman and the youngest sister of Russia's empress, Elizabeth Alexeivna, known in Germany as Louise of Baden (1779 - 1826), the wife of Tsar Alexander I.

After Empress Louise's death in 1826, Germany's diplomats understood very clearly that an important tie to the Russian court had just been severed. Alarmed, they did not wish to offend Russia in any way. Remembering clearly the Napoleonic Wars, they strove to maintain good trade relations, and a strong military alliance.

Princess Wilhelmina therefore tended to be granted whatever she wished by the Grand Duke Ludwig, who knew better than to stand in the way of his romantic wife -- who was truly in love with the Baron Grancy. Respecting that love, he stood aside, and, rather than cause a social scandal, he gave his consent to grant little Marie his name and noble title.

Wilhelmina's daughter, the little Princess Marie was clearly a very important person. As the niece of Tsar Alexander I and Empress Elizabeta Alexeievna of Russia, she, too, was granted a great deal of social deference by the noble families of Hesse.

But, compared to Wilhemina, Marie seemed positively angelic. By all accounts, Marie was shy by nature. She proved to be a quiet, submissive and pious young woman, genuinely intelligent and good-natured -- surprisingly so, considering all of the opportunities she had been given to behave like a spoilt brat.

Marie's quiet and shy personality has been attributed to the fact that she was the youngest of seven children and given a good education by her tutors at Heiligenberg castle, a comfortable but austere mountain estate which used to be a nunnery.

The window of her rooms overlooked the quaint village of Jugenheim, just 20 kilometers from Darmstadt. Her early childhood was a happy one, like that of a country girl, spent amongst brothers, sisters and playmates while learning lessons at school from private tutors.

At the age of 11, Marie's mother died of tuberculosis and the children left Heiligenberg, joining their father's family at court in Darmstadt, where Marie's probable aunt, Marianne von Senerclens de Grancy, soon took over her upbringing and education.

In 1838, at the age of 14, Marie was presented to the Tsarevich of Russia, the Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich Romanov, who paid a long summer visit to Darmstadt while making a grand tour of Europe.

Alexander was clearly shopping for a wife.

It is said that when they were first introduced, Marie, who never expected to be called forward, had been eating from a bowl of cherries and had to spit the pits quietly into her hand, before stepping forward to curtsey. Blushing, she made a very good impression on the Tsarevich and heir to the Russian throne, and after several conversations they soon became fast friends. After a long courtship, they were engaged to wed.

MARRIAGE IN 1841

Alexander married Marie on 16 April 1841, even though he was well aware of the "irregularity" of her birth. His mother Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna objected, but Alexander insisted.

Marie of Hesse and by Rhine became Empress of Russia on 7 September 1855 under the name Maria Alexandrovna (Russian: Мария Александровна) as the wife of Emperor Alexander II.

As she was very shy, she was regarded as stiff, austere, and with no taste in dress, no conversation, no charm. The damp climate of St. Petersburg did not agree with the delicate chest Marie had inherited from her mother, so that she often had a racking cough and recurring fever.

Nevertheless, she became the mother of eight children -- six sons and two daughters:

1. Grand Duchess Alexandra Alexandrovna of Russia (30 August 1842 – 10 July 1849), nicknamed Lina, died of infant meningitis in St. Petersburg at the age of six
2. Nicholas Alexandrovich, Tsesarevich of Russia (20 September 1843 – 24 April 1865), engaged to Princess Dagmar of Denmark
3. Emperor Alexander III (10 March 1845 – 1 November 1894) he married Princess Dagmar of Denmark on 9 November 1866. They had six children.
4. Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia (22 April 1847 – 17 February 1909) he married Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin on 28 August 1874. They had five children.
5. Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich (14 January 1850 – 14 November 1908) he married Alexandra Zhukovskaya in 1870. They had one son.
6. Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia (17 October 1853 – 24 October 1920) she married Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on 23 January 1874. They had six children.
7. Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia (11 May 1857 – 17 February 1905) he married Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine on 15 June 1884. They had no children.
8. Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia (3 October 1860 – 24 January 1919) he married Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark on 17 June 1889. They had two children. He remarried Olga Karnovich on 10 October 1902. They had three children.

It is important to note here that on 1 July 1862, Princess Alice of Great Britain, the third child and second daughter of Queen Victoria, married to Louis of Hesse und bei Rhine, and became a member of Marie's German family. The letters which princess Alice wrote to her mother, Queen Victoria, therefore give a very clear English-language window into the relations between the House of Hesse and the Romanov family during the 1860s.

The Empress Marie of Hesse's only surviving daughter by Tsar Alexander II, the Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna Romanova (1853 - 1920) married into the British royal family in January of 1874, and this wedding solidified the strong triangular bond between the British royal family, the House of Hesse, and the Romanovs. Marie the younger married to Queen Victoria's son Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, and this additional royal marriage bond played an important role in tilting Britain towards an alliance with the Romanovs during World War I.

As one might imagine, raising eight royal Romanov children was no small task for Marie of Hesse. By all accounts she was a devoted mother, yet her complete devotion to her children and her disinterest in politics undermined her political power at court.

The Empress Marie's pregnancies together with ill health kept her away from many Court festivities, which brought great temptations to her husband in the form of beautiful young Russian ladies.

Marie knew Alexander was unfaithful and had many lovers. Indeed, all of St. Petersburg society knew, for Tsar Alexander II made not the slightest pretense of fidelity -- he brazenly allowed his favorite mistress, Princess Catherine Dolgoruki, and all three of her children to move into the Imperial Palace during the period of Marie's final illness.

Those who later wrote memoirs of their years at the court of Tsar Alexander II say that, as she lay dying, Marie was tormented by the sound of the Tsar's illegitimate children running about in their rooms nearby, laughing and playing.

The Tsar's callous treatment of Marie caused a scandal in St. Petersburg, and the news of this scandal certainly travelled to Hesse. The insult given to Marie made the Tsar no friends in Hesse, and it cast a shadow on the fate of the Romanov family. Members of the Tsar's own bodyguard were reportedly so offended in their Prussian principles of honor by the Tsar's unseemly behavior toward Empress Marie that they may have allowed an attempt to kill Tsar Alexander II.

According to Wikipedia:

On the evening of 5 February 1880 Stephan Khalturin, from Narodnaya Volya, set off a timed charge under the dining room of the Winter Palace, right in the resting room of the guards a story below, killing 11 people and wounding 30 others. The New York Times (4 March 1880) reported "the dynamite used was enclosed in an iron box, and exploded by a system of clockwork used by the man Thomas in Bremen some years ago." However, dinner had been delayed by the late arrival of the tsar's nephew, the Prince of Bulgaria, so the tsar and his family were not in the dining room at the time of the explosion and were unharmed.

DEATH AND BURIAL

Empress Maria Alexandrovna died of consumption (tuberculosis) on 3 June 1880 (aged 55) at the Winter Palace, in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

She was buried with full honors at the Peter and Paul Cathedral, St. Petersburg, Russian Empire.

To the shock and dismay of their son, the Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov (who later became Tsar Alexander III), Marie's husband Tsar Alexander II spent very little time mourning the loss of Empress Marie and entered almost immediately into a morganatic marriage with Princess Catherine Dolgoruki, on 18 July [O.S. 6 July] 1880.

Alexander II's decision to grant titles, palaces and a small fortune to the children of his mistress, Ekaterina Dolgoruki, also caused serious consternation amongst the courtiers who surrounded the Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich.

Rumors had begun to circulate that Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich himself was involved in the bomb plot of June, which was clearly an attempted coup d'etat. In response, Tsar Alexander II, profoundly shocked, may have planned to pass over the expected heir, deciding instead to grant the imperial crown to his newly ennobled son, the Prince George Yuryevsky.

These newspaper rumors caused alarm throughout the courts of Europe, and a very serious disturbance amongst the friends and hangers-on who populated the court of the Tsarevich, for it meant that they, too, might soon be swept from power.

When Tsar Alexander II was successfully assassinated by a bomb-throwing anarchist on 13 March 1881, the investigation that followed uncovered a trail of evidence that indicates the Tsar's own guard units failed to provide adequate protection. Despite the bombing of June 1880, they failed to vary his imperial majesty's regular Sunday travel itinerary, allowing the Tsar's regular Sunday route and location to be predicted by Narodna Volya, the terrorist group called "The People's Will."

When the first bomb thrown actually missed the Tsar, the bodyguards unreasonably allowed the Tsar to exit his bulletproof carriage and failed to remove the Tsar immediately from the street.

As Tsar Alexander II returned to his carriage to help the injured, he was successfully killed by a second bomb thrower, Ignacy Hryniewiecki,

When Tsar Alexander III acceded to the throne of Russia he certainly lost no time in removing Catherine Dolgoruki and her children from the royal palace. The Princess Dolgoruki was forbidden to attend the funeral of Tsar Alexander II and, later, sent into exile.

Peter Rachkovsky, head of Tsar Alexander III's Okhrana or secret police, later reported that this branch of exiled Romanovs living in Nice and Paris mounted more than one effort to assassinate Tsar Alexander III and his son, Tsar Nicholas II.

The assassination of Tsar Alexander II had set off a feud within the Romanov family.

The strange story of the secret plots to murder or overthrow Nicholas II are told in Alex Butterworth's book The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists & Secret Agents (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), a work based on the files of the Okhrana, which are now stored at the Hoover Institute in California.

It seems that the sibling rivalries that first began with hard feelings over the way that Alexander II had treated his first wife Marie, the gentle and shy princess of Hesse und bei Rhine, eventually fractured the Romanov dynasty itself.

The Romanov court became polarized between two camps: Those who were pro-German, and strong supporters of the House of Hesse, and those who were anti-German, and more inclined to support the British royal family, or turn against the House of Hesse.

GHOST

In later years Nicholas II’s eldest daughter, the Grand Duchess Olga, claimed to have seen the ghost of her great-grandmother, the Empress Maria Alexandrovna as a small child, according to her nanny, Miss Margaretta Eagar.

But it might be said that the Tsar's sister Olga, herself a plain and shy girl, more closely embodied the spirit of Empress Marie.

Eschewing the pomp and circumstance of Romanov court life, the Tsar's plain-Jane sister Olga, like her grandmother, lived the quiet life of a nun. During the war years, Olga ran a Red Cross nursing station near the front lines, and after the war she married for love to a common soldier named Kulikovsky.

The Kulikovskys moved to Canada, and Olga ended her final days making beautiful watercolor paintings of landscapes and nature scenes.

In her own small and plain way, Marie's granddaughter Olga Kulikovsky, who spent her final years living above a small drygoods store at 566 Girard Street in Toronto, managed to weather the storm and the downfall of three royal dynasties.

This, after all, was the highest ideal of German romanticism, once embodied by Schiller's Ode to Joy: For the passionate artist, despite all human opposition, to master and perfect her art, using its power to celebrate both the amazing, everlasting beauty of nature and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

Sources

• The Peerage Marie Prinzessin von Hessen und bei Rhein
• Grand Duchy of Hesse - Wikipedia
• Wikipedia Maria Alexandrovna Marie of Hesse and by Rhine
• Wikipedia Мария Александровна (императрица)
• Russian Wikisource

Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Letters to Her Majesty the Queen (London: J. Murray, 1885).

All About History (Number 60) - The Romanovs, 1613 - 1917 - Archive.org. See especially the illustrated family tree pp. 8-9 and "Alexander II: Liberating Russia" pp. 90-94.

Banks, E.C.S. Road to Ekaterinburg: Nicholas and Alexandra's Daughters 1913–1918 (SilverWood Books, 2012).

Corti, Count Egon Caesar. The Downfall of Three Dynasties (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1970)

Gelardi, Julia P. From Splendor to Revolution: The Romanov Women, 1847 - 1928 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2011), provides a family tree showing Marie's descendants, pp. 8 to 9.

Hughes, Lindsey. The Romanovs: Ruling Russia, 1613 - 1917 (London, New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2008). See Ch. 8 Reform and Reaction, 1855 - 1894, pp. 177 and ff.

Linton, S.E. The Crowned Heads of Europe in Family Groups: No. 1 The Royal Family of Great Britain, It's Saxon Ancestors and Alliances (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1893) p. 11 A4 Prince Alfred of Great Britain, Duke of Edinburgh, illustrates clearly the marriage between Marie's daughter, G.D. Marie Alexandrovna Romanova and the Duke of Edinburgh. listing their children. This marriage created a firm alliance between the Russian royal family and the British royal family, and therefore played an important role in maintaining the international alliances between Russia and Britain in World War I and World War II.

Massie, Robert K. and Jeffrey Finestone. The Last Courts of Europe: A Royal Family Album 1860 - 1914 (New York: Greenwich House, distributed by Crown Publishers, 1983).

Radzinski, Edvard. Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar (New York: Free Press, 2005),

Zeepvat, Charlotte. The Camera and the Tsars: The Romanov Family in Photographs (Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2004). See Marie on p. 41.

See also:

• Wikidata: Item Q155585
• Maria Alexandrovna Romanova on Find A Grave: Memorial #9798881 retrieved 6 sep 2016
• Category: Portrait paintings of Maria Alexandrovna - Wikmedia Commons
• Category: Marie of Hesse by Year - Wikimedia Commons
• Maria Alexandrovna, Empress - a collection of photographs at Pinterest
• The Hesse-Darmstadts (House of Hesse and Bei Rhein) - Alexander Palace Time Machine

Acknowledgements

First-hand information as remembered by Sir William Arbuthnot, Friday, September 26, 2014.