Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine


Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, later known as Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia, was a German princess of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia, the fifth son of Emperor Alexander II of Russia and Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine.
A granddaughter of Queen Victoria and an older sister of Alexandra, the last Russian empress, Elisabeth became famous in Russian society for her dignified beauty and charitable works for the poor. Elisabeth married Grand Duke Sergei on 15 June 1884. The couple never had children of their own, but their Ilyinskoye estate was usually filled with parties that Elisabeth organized especially for children. They eventually became the foster parents of Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, Sergei's niece and nephew.
After the Socialist Revolutionary Party's Combat Organization assassinated her husband with a bomb in 1905, Elisabeth publicly forgave Sergei's murderer, Ivan Kalyayev, and unsuccessfully campaigned for him to be pardoned. She then left the royal society and became a nun. She opened the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent and spent time helping the poor of Moscow.
During the February Revolution of 1917, which ended the Tsar's rule in Russia, Elisabeth's brother-in-law, Czar Nicholas II, was forced to abdicate the throne. The political upheavals initially had no impact on life in the monastery. However, Elisabeth was worried about her relatives, who were under house arrest in the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo. She kept in touch with her sister Alexandra, even when she was in exile in Tobolsk, although under considerably more difficult conditions. In 1918, she was arrested and ultimately murdered by Bolsheviks. Elisabeth was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981 and in 1992 by the Moscow Patriarchate.

Early life

Elisabeth was born on 1 November 1864, as the second child of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, and Princess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria. Having named their firstborn Victoria, after her maternal grandmother, the parents named their second daughter in honour of two women named Elisabeth. She was given the names Elisabeth Alexandra Luise Alix: "Elisabeth" after both St. Elizabeth of Hungary and her paternal grandmother, Princess Elisabeth of Prussia.
At her christening on 28 November, the infantwhose godparents, or sponsors as they were known, included her grandmother Princess Charles, her great-uncle Alexander II of Russia, her aunts Alix, her mother's sister, Helena, and Anna of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, together with her uncles and Fritz received the names Elizabeth Alexandra Louise Alice. To her family, she would be known simply as Ella.
Alice brought up her daughters simply. An English nanny presided over the nursery, and the children ate plain meals of rice puddings and baked apples and wore plain dresses. Her daughters were taught how to do housework, such as baking cakes, making their own beds, laying fires and sweeping and dusting their rooms. Alice also emphasized the need to give to the poor and often took her daughters on visits to hospitals and charities.
The family was devastated in 1873 when Ella's hemophiliac younger brother Friedrich, nicknamed "Frittie", fell through an open window, struck his head on the balustrade, and died hours later of a brain haemorrhage. In the months following the toddler's death, Alice frequently took her children to his grave to pray and was melancholy on anniversaries associated with him.
On the afternoon of 7 November 1878, Victoria although complaining of a sore throat, sat down to read to her brother and sisters. Later that evening she began to run a fever and was put to bed. The following morning, when her daughter was no better, the Grand Duchess called for the family physician, Dr Eigenbrodt, who, to Alice's great concern, discovered a white membrane on both sides of Victoria's throat, the first sign of diphtheria. This was the most traumatic and tragic sequence of events in the lives of the grand ducal family. Of all six children, Ella remained unaffected.
Ella was moved out of Victoria's room. On 10 November Alix fell ill. On 13 November, in an attempt to keep Ella free of the disease, Alice sent her with her governess, Miss Jackson, to stay with her grandmother, Princess Charles. Elisabeth's sister Marie died on 16 November 1878, and her mother Alice died on 14 December. When Ella was finally allowed to return home, she described the meeting as "terribly sad" and said that everything was "like a horrible dream". At last Ella could see the family. "It was a terrible sad meeting", she wrote "no-one daring to speak of what was uppermost in their thoughts. Poor papa looked dreadfully."

Admirers and suitors

Charming and with a very accommodating personality, Elisabeth was considered by many historians and contemporaries to be one of the most beautiful women in Europe at that time. Her cousin Princess Marie of Edinburgh wrote that "one could never take one's eyes off " and that Ella's features were "exquisite beyond words, it almost brought tears to your eyes". Her older cousin Prince Wilhelm of Prussia called her "exceedingly beautiful, in fact she is the most beautiful girl I ever saw". Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, her sister's lady-in-waiting, reflected that she was "a very pretty girl, tall and fair, with regular features".
When Elisabeth was a young woman, her cousin Prince Wilhelm of Prussia fell in love with her. In April 1875, 16-year-old Wilhelm visited Darmstadt to celebrate Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine's 12th birthday and first expressed interest in 11-year-old Elisabeth. He wrote in a letter to his mother that "if God grants that I may live till then I shall make her my bride once if you allow it". When he was a student at Bonn University, he often visited his Aunt Alice and his Hessian relatives on the weekends. During these frequent visits, he fell in love with Elisabeth, but she declined.
Henry Wilson, later a distinguished soldier, also vied unsuccessfully for Elisabeth's hand.
The future Frederick II, Grand Duke of Baden, Wilhelm's first cousin, proposed to Elisabeth. Queen Victoria described him as "so good and steady" with "such a safe and happy position".
Other admirers included:
  • Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia, who wrote a poem about her first arrival in Russia and the general impression she made to all the people present at the time.
  • As a young girl, Queen Marie of Romania was very fascinated with her cousin Ella. In her memoirs, she wrote that "her beauty and sweetness was a thing of dreams".
  • The French Ambassador to the Russian court, Maurice Paleologue, wrote in his memoirs how Elisabeth was capable of arousing what he described as "profane passions".

    Engagement and marriage

Ella and Sergei celebrated their engagement with her family at Darmstadt in February 1884.
Sergei, for his part, was soon writing home to his brother Paul, "Ella is, if possible, even more beautiful. We both sit together a lot. In the mornings she is in my room, and I teach her some Russian, which is very funny. I even make her write. I also teach her the words to 'god save the tsar'. Now we often go out all over Darmstadt alone."
They were first cousins once removed and had known each other all their lives. There were hesitations on both sides, and Elisabeth first rejected his proposal of marriage. Queen Victoria, who had anti-Russian sentiments, opposed the marriage of her motherless granddaughter. Elisabeth and her surviving sisters were not pressured into following political marriages; they were allowed to follow their own inclination. After the couple spent some time together at Schloss Wolfsgarten in Darmstadt in September 1883, Elisabeth agreed to marry him. Their engagement was announced publicly on 26 February 1884 when Sergei returned to visit her in Darmstadt.
When he arrived at the Neues Palais that February, he had with him a wealth of jewels that he showered on his bride-to-be. Among the engagement presents Sergei brought with him to Darmstadt were ropes of jewelry and brooches of ores. Ella herself recalled how Sergei, having insisted that she put them all on at once, pinned each and every brooch onto her dress until she could hardly stand under the weight. 'I looked like a Christmas tree!' she wrote, 'And we had a terrible time getting them all off because we couldn't find the clasps'.
Sergei and Elisabeth married on 15 June 1884, at the Chapel of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. Upon her later conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, she took the name Elizaveta Feodorovna. It was at the wedding that Sergei's 16-year-old nephew, Tsarevich Nicholas, first met his future wife, Elisabeth's youngest surviving sister, Alix.

Grand Duchess of Russia

Elisabeth was not legally required to convert to Russian Orthodoxy from her native Lutheran religion, but she voluntarily chose to do so in 1891. Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Elisabeth's Lutheran sister-in-law who had not converted to Russian Orthodoxy, insisted that it was "a disgrace for a German Protestant princess to go over to the Orthodox faith". Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had once been in love with her, declared that she converted because of "an inordinate pursuit of popularity, a desire to improve her position at court, a great lack of intelligence, and also a want of true religiousness".
The new Grand Duchess made a good first impression on her husband's family and the Russian people. "Everyone fell in love with her from the moment she came to Russia from her beloved Darmstadt", wrote one of Sergei's cousins, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia. The couple settled in the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace in St. Petersburg; after Sergei was appointed Governor-General of Moscow by his elder brother, Tsar Alexander III, in 1892, they resided in one of the Kremlin palaces. During the summer, they stayed at Ilyinskoye, an estate outside Moscow that Sergei had inherited from his mother.
The viceregal role of governor-general of Moscow was one that was answerable only to the emperor. Grand Duke Sergei was a political hardliner who shared his brother's inalienable belief in strong, nationalist government. Sergei's tenure began with the expulsion of Moscow's 20,000 Jews. It started four weeks before he arrived in person, after the publication of an imperial ukase by the Minister of the Interior Ivan Durnovo, by which all Jews of lower social stance had to be expelled from Moscow. On 29 March, the first day of Passover, the city's Jewish population learned of the new decree that called for their expulsion. In three carefully planned phases over the next twelve months, Moscow's Jews were expelled. The first to go were the unmarried, the childless, and those who had lived in the city for less than three years. Next, it was the turn of apprentices, of families with up to four children, and those with less than six years residency. Last of all, it was the turn of the old Jewish settlers with large families and/or numerous employees, some of whom had lived in Moscow for forty years. Young Jewish women were made to register as prostitutes if they wanted to stay in the city.
During the expulsion in January 1892, homes were surrounded by mounted Cossacks in the middle of the night, with temperatures of, while policemen ransacked every house. The Brest station was packed with Jews of all ages and sexes, all in rags and surrounded by meager remnants of households goods, all leaving voluntarily rather than face deportation. Sergei as governor-general was petitioned by the police commissioners to stop the expulsions until the weather conditions improved. While he agreed, the order was not published until the expulsions were over. Some of the expelled Jews moved to southern and western regions of the empire, although there were many who decided to emigrate abroad. As a result of the expulsion, Moscow lost 100 million rubles in trade and production, 25,000 Russians employed by Jewish firms lost their livelihoods, while the manufacture of silk, one of the city's most lucrative industries, was all but wiped out.
In 1891, Ella and Sergei's arrival in Moscow was marred by tragedy that September, not long after Paul and Alexandra arrived at Ilyinskoye to spend the late summer with them. One afternoon, the 21-year-old grand duchess Alexandra, who was seven months pregnant with her second child, followed the path down from the back of the house to the waiting small boat and she suddenly collapsed. Her frantic husband, brother-and sister-in-law felt were helpless, and doctors were too far away. The midwife was called, Alexandra gave birth to a tiny premature baby boy but she died 6 days later. Alexandra's sudden death was crushing and an unbelievable a blow to Paul, Sergei and Ella.
Worse news was soon to follow when, during the first week of March 1892, Grand Duke Louis suffered a paralytic stroke that brought his family hurrying to his bedside, Ernie, Alix, Victoria, and Irene. He raised his whole face off the pillow, put out his hand, and stroked Ella's face. On the evening of 13 March, he lapsed into a coma and died.
The couple never had children of their own, but their Ilyinskoye estate was usually filled with parties that Elisabeth organized especially for children. It was rumoured that their childlessness was due to Grand Duke Sergei's homosexual tendencies. They eventually became the foster parents of Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, Sergei's niece and nephew. Maria wrote in her memoirs about her aunt Ella: "she and my uncle seemed never very intimate. They met for the most part only at meals and by day avoided being alone together. They slept, however, up to the last year of their life together, in the same great bed." Maria and Dimitri resented their aunt and uncle, blaming them for the forced separation from their real father, who had abandoned them.
Elisabeth was instrumental in the marriage of her nephew-by-marriage, Tsar Nicholas II, to her youngest sister Alix. Much to the dismay of Queen Victoria, Elisabeth had been encouraging Nicholas, then tsarevich, in his pursuit of Alix. When Nicholas did propose to Alix in 1894, and Alix rejected him on the basis of her refusal to convert to Orthodoxy, it was Elisabeth who spoke with Alix and encouraged her to convert. When Nicholas proposed to her again, a few days later, Alix then accepted.