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Ernest Louis Charles Albert William (de: Ernst Ludwig Karl Albert Wilhelm), (25 November 1868 – 9 October 1937) was the last Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine from 1892 until 1918.[1] His nickname was "Ernie".
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Ernest Louis was the fourth child and eldest son of Grand Duke Louis IV and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, daughter of Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. He was an older brother to Alexandra of Hesse, Empress Consort of Nicholas II of Russia.
Ernest Louis's early life was shrouded with death. When he was five, his younger brother Friedrich, died. The two boys had been playing a game in their mother's bedroom when the younger boy fell through an unlatched window onto the balcony twenty feet below. It was not a great distance, and at first, Friedrich seemed only shaken. However, Friedrich was suffering from hemophilia, and had begun bleeding in the brain. He lapsed into unconsciousness that afternoon and died.
Ernest Louis was inconsolable. "When I die, you must die too, and all the others. Why can't we all die together? I don't want to die alone, like Frittie," he was telling his nurse. To his mother he said, "I dreamt that I was dead and was gone up to Heaven, and there I asked God to let me have Frittie again and he came to me and took my hand." The younger child's grave became a place of regular pilgrimage for the family, with Ernest Louis becoming obsessed with thoughts of death and dying alone.
In 1878, an epidemic of diphtheria swept through Darmstadt. All the children (except Princess Elisabeth who was sent to stay with their paternal grandmother Princess Elizabeth of Prussia) and their father fell ill.
Princess Alice cared for her sick husband and children, but on 16 November, the youngest of them, Princess May, died. Alice kept the news from her family for several weeks, until Ernest Louis, who was devoted to little May, asked for his sister. When his mother revealed May's death, Ernest Louis was overcome with grief. In comforting her grieving son, Alice kissed him, and within a week, she fell ill and soon died, on December 14. Her death affected Ernest Louis for the rest of his life.
On 19 April 1894, Ernest Louis married his first cousin, Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha ("Ducky"), in Coburg, on the encouragement of their mutual grandmother, Queen Victoria. The marriage was not a happy one, due to his homosexuality. They had two children, a daughter, Elisabeth, born in 1895, who died of typhoid fever at age eight, and a stillborn son, on 25 May 1900.
Queen Victoria was saddened when she heard of the trouble in the marriage from Sir George Buchanan, her chargé d'affairs, but refused to consider permitting her grandchildren to divorce because of their daughter, Elisabeth. Efforts to rekindle the marriage failed and, when Queen Victoria died in January 1901, significant opposition to the end of the marriage was removed. [2] The couple became estranged and were divorced 21 December 1901 on grounds of "invincible mutual antipathy" by a special verdict of the Supreme Court of Hesse.
Ernest Louis remarried, in Darmstadt, on 2 February 1905, to Princess Eleonore of Solms-Hohensolms-Lich (17 September 1871 – 16 November 1937), with whom he had two sons:
In 1892, Ernest Louis succeeded his father as Grand Duke.
Throughout his life, Ernest Louis was a patron of the arts,[4] founding the Darmstadt Artists' Colony, and was himself an author of poems, plays, essays, and piano compositions.
Ernest Louis commissioned the New Mausoleum in 1903. It was consecrated on 3 November 1910, in the presence of the Grand Duke and his immediate family, that is to say, his wife Eleonore, Tsar Nicholas II and the Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna (Ella), Victoria Princess Louis of Battenberg and her daughter, Louise, and Prince and Princess Heinrich of Prussia. The remains of Grand Duke Ludwig IV, Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine and their children 'Frittie' and 'May' were re-interred in the New Mausoleum.[5]
Ernest Louis served in the German military during World War I. At the end of the war, he lost his throne during the revolution of 1918, despite his refusal to abdicate.[6]
In October 1937, Ernest Louis died at Schloß Wolfsgarten, near Darmstadt in Hesse. He received what amounted to a state funeral on 16 November 1937 and was buried next to his daughter, Elisabeth, in a new open air burial ground next to the New Mausoleum he had built in the Rosenhöhe park in Darmstadt.[7]
Even after the Grand Duke died, his childhood wish to not die alone echoed into the next generation. Shortly after his father's death, Prince Louis was to marry the Hon. Margaret Campbell-Geddes, daughter of Lord Geddes, in England. Prince Louis' older brother, the Hereditary Grand Duke Georg Donatus, and the rest of the family, planned to take a plane from Hesse to England. However, the plane never reached its destination. Georg Donatus, his mother Grand Duchess Eleonore, his wife, Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark, their two young sons Louis and Alexander, the children's nurse and one family friend, as well as the plane's pilot and two crew members, all died when their plane crashed near Ostend. Georg Donatus' wife Cecilie was pregnant with their fourth child at the time of the crash; the stillborn infant was found among the remains, indicating that the mother had gone into labor.
Georg Donatus and Cecilie's youngest child, Johanna, who was not on the plane, was adopted by her uncle Louis (who was to remain childless). The little girl died in 1939 of meningitis, surviving her parents and brothers by eighteen months.
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Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
Born: 25 November 1868 Died: 9 October 1937 |
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| Regnal titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Louis IV |
Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine 1892–1918 |
Vacant |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by Louis IV as Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine |
Head of State of Hesse-Darmstadt 1892–1918 |
Succeeded by Carl Ulrich as President of the People's State of Hesse |
| Titles in pretence | ||
| Loss of title |
— TITULAR — Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine 1918–1937 |
Succeeded by Georg Donatus |
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