Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (1890-1958)

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For other uses, see Maria Pavlovna of Russia and Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Maria Pavlovna of Russia).
Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia

Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, 1912.
Born April 18, 1890
St. Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died December 13, 1958
Konstanz, Germany

Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia, known as "Maria Pavlovna the Younger" (In Russian Великая Княгиня Мария Павловна) (April 6/April 18, 1890 - December 13, 1958) was the daughter of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich and Alexandra Georgievna of Greece. She was usually called "Marie," the French version of her name.

Her paternal grandparents were Alexander II of Russia and Empress Maria Alexandrovna. Her maternal grandparents were George I of Greece and Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinovna of Russia, his queen consort.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Maria's mother, Alexandra Georgievna of Greece died soon after she had given birth to Maria's brother Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, when little Maria was under two years old. Their father was distraught at the funeral and had to be restrained by his brother, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia, when the lid was closed on Alexandra's coffin.[1] Sergei gave the premature Dmitri the baths prescribed by the doctors, wrapped him in cotton wool and kept him in a cradle filled with hot water bottles to keep his temperature regulated. "I am enjoying raising Dmitri," Sergei wrote in his diary.[2] The toddler Maria tapped Sergei on the shoulder and called him "pretty uncle" in English. "She is so cute," wrote Sergei.[2] After Paul recovered, he took the two children away with him, but they spent Christmases and later some summer holidays with the childless Sergei and his wife Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna.[1] The couple set aside a playroom and bedrooms for the youngsters at their home, Ilinskoe.[3] Until she was six, Maria didn't speak a word in Russian as all of her governesses spoke English. Later she had another governess, mademoiselle Hélène who taught her French and stayed with her until her marriage.

Grand Duke Sergei, who raised Maria after her father was exiled
Grand Duke Sergei, who raised Maria after her father was exiled

In 1902 her father married Olga Valerianovna Paley; as the marriage was unapproved by Nicholas II, he was exiled. Maria and Dmitri were upset by the loss of their father and wrote Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna a letter asking her to persuade Tsar Nicholas II to reverse his decision. "We are so sad and so grieved that that our dear Papa cannot come back," twelve-year-old Maria and eleven-year-old Dmitri wrote the dowager empress.[4] Maria and Dmitri were placed in the custody of Sergei and Elizabeth. "Towards Dmitri and me he displayed a tenderness almost feminine," Marie wrote in her memoirs. "Despite which he demanded of us, as of all his household or following, exact and immediate obedience ... In his fashion he loved us deeply. He liked to have us near him, and gave us a good deal of his time. But he was always jealous of us. If he had known the full extent of our devotion to our father it would have maddened him."[5] Maria had a somewhat strained relationship with her aunt, who was the only mother she had ever really known. Maria wrote in her memoirs that her aunt was somewhat cold with her during her childhood.[6] The teenage Maria was "full of life and very jolly," said her mother's sister, Grand Duchess Maria Georgievna of Russia, "but inclined to be self-willed and selfish, and rather difficult to deal with."[7]

[edit] Assassination of uncle

Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna as a nun after her husband's death
Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna as a nun after her husband's death

In 1905 her uncle was killed by a bomb during the 1905 Revolution. The bomber had refrained from an earlier attack because he saw that Grand Duchess Elizabeth, along with fifteen-year-old Maria and her younger brother Dmitri were in the carriage and didn't want to kill women and children.[8] A second attack a few days later succeeded in killing Sergei. Elizabeth and the teenagers, hearing the bomb, rushed out and saw Sergei's broken body in the snow. Maria described the scene later in her memoirs:

“ My aunt was on her knees beside the litter. Her bright dress shone forth grotesquely amid the humble garments surrounding her. I did not dare look at her. Her face was white, her features terrible in their stricken rigidity. She did not weep, but the expression of her eyes made an impression on me I will never forget as long as I live. Leaning on the arm of the Governor of the city, my aunt drew near the door slowly, and when she perceived us she stretched out her arms to us. We ran to her. "He loved you so, he loved you so," she repeated endlessly, pressing our heads against her. I noticed that low on her right arm the sleeve of her gay blue dress was stained with blood. There was blood on her hand, too, and under the nails of her fingers, in which she gripped tightly the medals that my uncle always wore on a chain at his neck.[9] ”

After the assassination, both children were emotionally distraught; particularly Dmitri. Dmitri was terrified that he would be sent back to live with his father, Elizabeth wrote. "Dmitri simply sobs and clings to me," she wrote. "His intense fright was the idea of having to leave me. He decided he must watch over me as Uncle is no more and clings to me to such a degree that the arrival of his father was more an anguish than a pleasure, the intense fear he would take him."[10] Elizabeth talked with the children and admitted that she had been unfair to them.[10] The Tsar made Elizabeth their guardian and gave Paul the right to visit Russia from time to time, though not to live there. Paul didn't want to take the children from Elizabeth, according to the diary of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia.[11]

[edit] Marriage and divorce

Maria Pavlovna and prince Wilhelm at the time of their marriage in 1908.
Maria Pavlovna and prince Wilhelm at the time of their marriage in 1908.

A year later Marie was engaged to Prince Wilhelm, Duke of Södermanland (June 17, 1884 - June 5, 1965), the second son of King Gustav V of Sweden and Victoria of Baden. Maria wrote later that she felt her aunt had rushed her into the marriage. However, at the time she enjoyed the attention and was eager to escape from the nursery. "Then we will be able to travel together," she wrote to Wilhelm after their engagement. "And to live just as we wish and to suit ourselves. I'm looking forward to a wonderful life -- a life full of love and happiness, just as you described to me in your last letters."[7] Maria's father initially refused to attend the wedding, which took place on May 3, 1908, because the Tsar refused to permit his wife to attend and because the children remained in the custody of the Tsar and of Grand Duchess Elizabeth. "As for the Swedish prince, what can I say about him?" wrote Paul to Tsar Nicholas II on May 12, 1907. "As the children are wards, the father doesn't have the opportunity of either meeting the fiancé or pronouncing himself for or against, or expressing his opinion that a girl of seventeen is too young to be given away in marriage. The wardship has decided so many questions without me that in reality the children have been distanced from me to the utmost possible degree.[12] Paul eventually was given an opportunity to come to Russia and meet Wilhelm, which made Maria "deliriously happy."[13] Maria and Wilhelm had a single son: Lennart, Duke of Småland and later Count Bernadotte af Wisborg (1909-2004).

In the beginning, the marriage looked successful.

Maria Pavlovna, Prince Wilhelm, and son Lennart in 1911.
Maria Pavlovna, Prince Wilhelm, and son Lennart in 1911.

Maria bought a house, Oak Hill, in Sweden, added Swedish to the other five languages she spoke, and became popular with the Swedes, who felt she worked harder than her husband did. She was well-liked by her father-in-law Gustaf VI, who appreciated her "effervescence, charm, and unconventionality."[14] She occasionally played with her son, who remembered sitting on her lap when they slid down a flight of steps on a large silver tray. She also wrote an illustrated alphabet book for Lennart that was later published.[14] However, the marriage eventually broke up when Maria discovered that there were as many restrictions on life at the Swedish court as at the Russian and that her husband Wilhelm, as a naval officer, had little time to spend with her.[7] She found him "cold, shy, and neglectful," and when she tried to approach him he walked away from her in tears.[14] On a five month trip to Siam in 1912, as representatives to the coronation of the King of Siam, Maria had an opportunity to meet other men and flirt with them, which she enjoyed. On another trip, to Germany in 1913, Marie told her husband she wanted a divorce.[15] Her father took her home with him. "If only you could see what the poor girl looked like when she arrived to us!" her father Paul wrote to the Tsar on October 21, 1913. "She was fainting every minute, she was white as a sheet, she could not eat or sleep, she was coughing dreadfully, and she still complains about her kidneys. She is only beginning to recover under the influence of our love and caress. It is unthinkable that she should return to Sweden and I beg your permission for us to begin negotiating a divorce.[16] The couple was divorced in 1914. Maria left her son behind in his father's custody. He was raised primarily by his paternal grandmother and saw his mother rarely in the years thereafter. In an interview as an adult, Lennart said his mother had a distant relationship with him and didn't know how to relate well to her grandchildren.[17]

[edit] World War I and Revolution

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov, around 1910.
Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov, around 1910.

Maria returned home to Russia, where she lived near her younger brother Dmitri, whom she was intensely close to. At a dance in Moscow, the two danced seven dances in a row and the Tsar sent an equerry to separate them. Troubled by the intensity of her need for him, Dmitri distanced himself somewhat from his sister, hurting her terribly.[15] During World War I Maria worked as a nurse in Pskov and reestablished ties with her father, who had provided her with three half-siblings. Her relationship with her aunt improved and she visited her regularly at the convent Elizabeth had established.[18] When she learned that Dmitri had participated in the murder of Grigori Rasputin on December 17, 1916, without telling her anything about the plot, she was horrified. "For the first time in my life," she wrote, "my brother appeared to me an individual standing apart from me, and this feeling of unaccustomed estrangement made me shiver."[19] Maria signed a letter along with other members of the royal family, begging Nicholas to reverse his decision to exile Dmitri to the Persian front.[20] The Tsar refused to reverse his decision. Dmitri's exile meant he was not among the Romanov grand dukes, including his father, who were murdered in the revolution that followed.

[edit] Exile

She married her second husband His Illustriousness Prince Sergei Mikhailovich Putiatin in September 1917. They had one son, His Illustriousness Prince Roman Sergeievich Putiatin (June 1918-1919). Maria's father, Grand Duke Paul, attended Roman's baptism on July 18, 1918, the same day, though they did not know it, that Maria's half-brother Prince Vladimir Paley was murdered by the Bolsheviks.[21] Maria's father was arrested by the Bolsheviks at the end of July 1918 and was later murdered on January 30, 1919.[22] Maria and her second husband left baby Roman in the care of his paternal grandparents when they fled the country, going first to Romania and the court of her first cousin, Queen Marie of Romania, and later to Paris and then to London. In 1919 she received a letter from her husband's parents telling her that baby Roman had died of an intestinal disorder. Her guilt that she had left him behind prevented her from telling her friends of the baby's existence.[23] Maria was reunited with her brother Dmitri in London. Her first years of exile were financed by the jewels she had had smuggled to Sweden before escaping Russia. She later opened a quality sewing and textile shop called "Kitmir" in Paris, becoming a successful entrepreneur in the Parisian fashion industry. She also wrote her memoirs of growing up in Russia.[24] Her marriage to Putiatin broke up "over a fundamental difference in attitude," though she continued to offer Putiatin and his relatives financial assistance.[25] During her years in exile, she lived mainly in Europe including Germany, Sweden and in Biarritz and in Spain on the invitation of the Spanish queen. She lived twelve years in the United States before moving to Argentina because the United States was a country that recognized Soviet Union. She lived in Buenos Aires and after World War II in Europe.

Maria told her adult son, Lennart, during a rare conversation with him, that she had felt lonely all of her life because of her rootless childhood. She spent much of her adulthood looking for love, having affairs, and finding it hard to fill the empty places inside of her.[26] She grieved over the death of her brother Dmitri, the only person she had really loved, in 1942.[27] She died at the age of sixty-eight in 1958 in the border town of Konstanz in Germany.[17]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Hugo Mager, Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia, Carroll Graf and Publishers Inc., 1998, p. 143
  2. ^ a b Perry, John Curtis, and Pleshakov, Constantine, The Flight of the Romanovs: A Family Saga, Basic Books, 1999, p. 43
  3. ^ Mager, p. 179
  4. ^ Perry, John Curtis, and Pleshakov, Constantine, The Flight of the Romanovs: A Family Saga, Basic Books, 1999, p. 74
  5. ^ Andrei Maylunas and Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra: Their Own Story, Doubleday, 1997, pp. 264-265
  6. ^ Mager, pp. 179-181
  7. ^ a b c Charlotte Zeepvat, The Camera and the Tsars: A Romanov Family Album, Sutton Publishing, 2004, p. 101
  8. ^ Maylunas, Andrei, and Mironenko, Sergei, A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra: Their Own Story, Doubleday, 1997, p. 258
  9. ^ Maylunas and Mironenko, pp. 262-263
  10. ^ a b Mager, p. 214
  11. ^ Maylunas and Mironenko, p. 271
  12. ^ Maylunas and Mironenko, p. 302
  13. ^ Perry and Pleshakov, p. 103
  14. ^ a b c Perry and Pleshakov, p. 104
  15. ^ a b Perry and Pleshakov, p. 105
  16. ^ Maylunas and Mironenko, p. 383
  17. ^ a b Perry and Pleshakov, p. 340
  18. ^ Maylunas and Mironenko, p. 443
  19. ^ Perry and Pleshakov, p. 135
  20. ^ Maylunas and Mironenko, p. 517
  21. ^ Zeepvat, p. 207
  22. ^ Zeepvat, pp. 207-208
  23. ^ Perry and Pleshakov, p. 259
  24. ^ Perry and Pleshakov, pp. 256-260
  25. ^ Perry and Pleshakov, p. 260
  26. ^ Perry and Pleshakov, p. 339
  27. ^ Perry and Pleshakov, pp. 311, 340

[edit] References

  • Grand Duchess Marie of Russia (ed Russell Lord), Education of a Princess - a Memoir, 1930, ASIN: B000K5SJJ4
  • Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, A Princess in Exile, 1932, ASIN: B000TG41CS
  • John Curtis Perry and Constantine Pleshakov, The Flight of the Romanovs, Basic Books, 1999, ISBN 0-46502462-9
  • Hugo Mager, Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia, Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 1998, ISBN 0-7867-0678-3
  • Andrei Maylunas and Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra: Their Own Story, Doubleday, 1997, ISBN 0-385-48673-1
  • Charlotte Zeepvat, The Camera and the Tsars: A Romanov Family Album, Sutton Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0-7509-3049-7
  • Genealogy of the Romanov Imperial House