Princess Ileana of Romania
Princess Ileana of Romania (5 January 1909 – 21 January 1991) was the youngest daughter of King Ferdinand of Romania, and his consort Queen Marie of Romania. She was born Her Royal Highness Ileana, Princess of Romania, Princess of Hohenzollern. After marriage she was known as Her Imperial and Royal Highness, Ileana, Archduchess of Austria, Princess Imperial of Austria, Princess Royal of Hungary and Bohemia, Princess of Tuscany, Princess of Romania, Princess of Hohenzollern.
Birth and early life
Ileana was born in Bucharest on 5 January 1909.
Girl Guiding
Before her marriage, Ileana was the organizer and Chief of the Romanian Girl Guide Movement
Later Princess Ileana was involved in Guiding in Austria and served as president of the Austrian Girl Guides[1][2] from 1935 until Girl Guiding and Scouting were banned in 1938 after the Anschluss
Other achievements
Ileana was the organizer of the Girl Reserves of the Red Cross, and of the first school of Social Work in Romania.
She was an avid sailor: she earned her navigator's papers, and owned and sailed the "Isprava" for many years.
Before King Michael's abdication
Marriage
In Sinaia on 26 July 1931, Ileana married the Archduke Anton of Austria, Prince of Tuscany. This marriage was encouraged by Ileana's brother, King Carol II, who was jealous of Ileana's popularity in Romania and wanted to get her out of the country.[3] After the wedding, Carol claimed that the Romanian people would never tolerate a Habsburg living on Romanian soil, and on these grounds refused Ileana and Anton permission to live in Romania.[3]
After her husband was conscripted into the Luftwaffe, Ileana established a hospital for wounded Romanian soldiers at their castle, Sonneburg, outside Vienna, Austria. She was assisted in this task by her friend Sheila Kaul. In 1944, she and the children moved back to Romania, where they lived at Bran Castle, near Brasov. Archduke Anton joined them but was placed under house arrest by the Red Army. Princess Ileana established and worked in another hospital in Bran village, which she named the Hospital of the Queen's Heart in the beloved memory of her mother Queen Maria of Romania.
After exile
After Michael I of Romania abdicated, Ileana and her family were exiled from the newly Communist Romania. They escaped by train to the Russian sector of Vienna, then divided into three parts. After that they settled in Switzerland, then moved to Argentina and in 1950, she and the children moved to the United States, where she bought a house in Newton, Massachusetts.
The years from 1950 to 1961 were spent lecturing against communism, working with the Romanian Orthodox Church in the United States, writing two books: I Live Again, a memoir of her last years in Romania,[4] and Hospital of the Queen's Heart, describing the establishment and running the hospital.
In 29 May 1954 Ileana and Anton officially divorced and she married secondly in Newton, Massachusetts, on 20 June 1954 Dr. Stefan Nikolas Issarescu (Turnu-Severin, 5 October 1906 – Providence, 21 December 2002), without issue.
In 1961, Princess Ileana entered the Orthodox Monastery of the Protection of the Mother of God, in Bussy, France. Her second marriage ended in divorce in 1965. On her tonsuring as a monastic, in 1967, Sister Ileana was given the name Mother Alexandra. She moved back to the United States and founded the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, serving as abbess until her retirement in 1981. She remained at the monastery until her death.
She visited Romania again in 1990, at the age of 81 in the company of her daughter, Sandi.
In January 1991, she suffered a broken hip in a fall on the evening before her eighty-second birthday, and while in hospital, suffered two major heart attacks. She died four days after the foundations had been laid for the expansion of the monastery.
Family history
Doubts about paternity
There is some doubt about Ileana's true paternity. It has been suggested that Ileana's biological father was actually Prince Barbu Ştirbey, but this, according to Hannah Pakula's biography of her mother, Queen Marie (The Last Romantic) appears to be simply rumour.
Children
Ileana and Anton had six children:
- Stefan of Austria (5 August 1932 – 12 November 1998)
- Maria Ileana of Austria (18 December 1933 – 11 January 1959); married Franz Josef Kottulinsky (3 January 1917 – 11 January 1959). Their child:
- Maria Ileana Kottulinsky (born 25 August 1958)
- Alexandra of Austria (born 21 May 1935); married Duke Eugen Eberhard, son of Princess Nadezhda of Bulgaria
- Dominic of Austria (born 4 July 1937)
- Maria Magdalena of Austria (born 2 October 1939); married Hans Ulrich von Holzhausen (born 1 September 1929), and had three children:
- Johannes Friedrich Anton von Holzhausen (born 29 July 1960 in Salzburg, Austria), married Brunilda Castejon-Schneider (born 14 July 1962 in Madrid, Spain) on 23 September 2001 in Wartberg, Germany, and had one son:
- Georg Ferdinand von Holzhausen (born 16 February 1962 in Salzburg, Austria), married Elena von und zu Hoensbroech (born 1 May 1965) on 30 April 1993 in Vienna, Austria, and had three children:
- Alexandra Maria von Holzhausen (born 22 January 1963 in Salzburg, Austria), married Christian Ferch (born 4 August 1959 in Salzburg, Austria) on 2 July 1985 in Salzburg, Austria, and had three children:
- Ferdinand Georg Botho Ferch (born 17 October 1986 in Salzburg, Austria)
- Leopold Anton David Ferch (born 18 August 1988)
- Benedikt Peter Ferch (born 22 March 1993)
- Elisabeth of Austria (born 15 January 1942), married Dr. Friedrich Josef Sandhofer (born 1 August 1934 in Salzburg, Austria) on 3 August 1964 in Mondsee, Austria, and had four children:
- Anton Dominic Sandhofer (born 26 October 1966 in Salzburg, Austria), married Katarzyna Marta Wojkowska (born 23 November 1962 in Warsaw, Poland) on 29 May 1983, and had one son:
- Margareta Elisabeth Sandhofer (born 10 September 1968 in Innsbruck, Austria), married Ernst Helmut Klaus Lux (born 13 September 1954 in Graz, Austria) on 20 June 1992, and had two sons:
- Andrea Alexandra Sandhofer (born 13 December 1969 in Innsbruck, Austria), married Jörg Michael Zarbl (born 25 September 1970 in Vienna, Austria) on 30 August 1996 and had two sons:
- Ferdinand Hans Friedrich Konstantin Maria Zarbl (born 8 December 1996 in Salzburg, Austria)
- Benedikt Bonifatius Maria Manfred Rainer Zarbl (born 19 February 1999)
- Elisabeth Victoria Madgalena Sandhofer (born 16 November 1971 in Innsbruck, Austria), unmarried and without issue.
Major family events
- In 1954, her marriage to Anton ended in divorce. Later that year, she married Dr. Stefan Nikolas Issarescu in Newton, Massachusetts.
- Eldest son Stefan suffered a debilitating illness in 1959 which required extensive nursing, which his wife and his mother provided.
- Eldest daughter Marie Ileana and her husband were killed in a plane crash in Brazil, along with their unborn second child. They left an orphaned daughter.
- Son Dominic was awarded retroactive rights to Bran Castle in May 2006 by the Romanian authorities as inheritance from his mother Ileana.
Ancestry
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References
- ^ Pribich, Kurt (2004) (in German). Logbuch der Pfadfinderverbände in Österreich. Vienna: Pfadfinder-Gilde-Österreichs. p. 279.
- ^ Pribich, Kurt (2004) (in German). Logbuch der Pfadfinderverbände in Österreich. Vienna: Pfadfinder-Gilde-Österreichs. p. 106.
- ^ a b Pakula, Hannah (1985). The last romantic : a biography of Queen Marie of Roumania. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0297785982.
- ^ Complete text of I Live Again from the Internet Archive
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Princess Regina of Saxe-Meiningen · Princess Margherita of Savoy · Princess Anne Eugénie of Arenberg · Princess Yolande of Ligne · Countess Xenia Czernicheva-Besobrasova · Princess Anna Gabriele of Wrede · Countess Helena of Toerring-Jettenbach · Countess Ludmilla of Gallen · Princess Laetitia of Arenberg** · Countess Margaret Kálnoky von Köröspatak** · Maria Espinosa de los Monteros^^** · Countess Valerie of Podstatzky-Lichtenstein** · Freiin Eva Antonia von Hofmann** · Princess Anna Amelie of Schönburg-Waldenburg** · Countess Hedwig of Lichem-Löwenburg** · Freiin Edith von Sternbach** · Princess Margaret of Hohenberg · Countess Marie Christine of Hatzfeldt-Dönhoff · Eugenia de Calonge^^ · Freiin Maria Theresia von Gudenus
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Estelle de Saint-Romain^^
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*also an infanta of Spain by marriage
**also a princess of Tuscany by marriage
***also a princess of Modena by marriage
^also an archduchess of Austria in her own right
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Princess Laetitia of Arenberg* · Countess Margaret Kálnoky von Köröspatak* · Maria Espinosa de los Monteros^* · Countess Valerie of Podstatzky-Lichtenstein* · Freiin Eva Antonia von Hofmann* · Princess Anna Amelie of Schönburg-Waldenburg* · Countess Hedwig of Lichem-Löwenburg* · Freiin Edith von Sternbach*
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^did not have a royal or noble title by birth
* also an archduchess of Austria by marriage
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| Persondata |
| Name |
Ileana Of Romania, Princess |
| Alternative names |
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| Short description |
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| Date of birth |
5 January 1909 |
| Place of birth |
Bucharest, Romania |
| Date of death |
21 January 1991 |
| Place of death |
Youngstown, Ohio, USA |