Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse

Ernst Ludwig Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine Reign 13 March 1892 – 9 November 1918 Predecessor Ludwig IV Successor Grand Duchy abolished Spouse Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Eleonore of Solms-Hohensolms-Lich Issue Princess Elisabeth Hereditary Grand Duke George Donatus Prince Louis House House of Hesse-Darmstadt Father Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse Mother Princess Alice of the United Kingdom Born (1868-11-25)25 November 1868 Darmstadt Died 9 October 1937(1937-10-09) (aged 68) Langen

Grand Ducal Family of Hesse and by Rhine Ernest Louis Children    Princess Elisabeth    Hereditary Grand Duke Georg Donatus    Prince Louis Grandchildren    Prince Ludwig    Prince Alexander    Princess Johanna

Ernest Louis Charles Albert William (German: Ernst Ludwig Karl Albrecht 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".

Early life

Ernest with his grandmother Queen Victoria and sisters Victoria, Elizabeth, Irene and Alix two months after the deaths of his mother and younger sister. All are wearing mourning clothes.

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 Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna (née Alix of Hesse), empress consort of Tsar 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 when the younger boy fell through a window onto the balcony twenty feet below. At first, Friedrich seemed only shaken. However, Friedrich suffered from haemophilia, 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 14 December. Her death affected Ernest Louis for the rest of his life.

Marriage

On 9 April 1894, Ernest Louis married his first cousin, Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha ("Ducky"), in Coburg, on the encouragement of, and in the presence of, their mutual grandmother, Queen Victoria, an event which was overshadowed by the engagement of Ernst's youngest surviving sister, Alix to the Tsarevich Nicholas of Russia. The marriage was not a happy one. They had two children:

Ernest was still devastated by the memory of his daughter's death thirty years later. "My little Elisabeth," he wrote in his memoirs, "was the sunshine of my life."^[2]

• a daughter, Elisabeth, born in 1895, who died of typhoid fever at age eight,
• and a son, stillborn on 25 May 1900.

Queen Victoria was saddened when she heard of the trouble in the marriage from Sir George Buchanan, her chargé d'affaires, but because of their daughter, Elisabeth, she refused to consider permitting her grandchildren to divorce. Efforts to rekindle the marriage failed, and so when Queen Victoria died in January 1901 her significant opposition to the end of the marriage was removed. ^[3] The couple had 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:

• Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (1906–1937), who married Princess Cecilie of Greece, sister of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and had issue.
• Louis, Prince of Hesse and by Rhine (1908–1968), who married the Hon. Margaret Geddes daughter of Lord Geddes (Auckland Geddes, 1st Baron Geddes); no issue. Louis adopted Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse as his heir, thereby uniting the two lines of the Hesse family.

Grand Duke of Hesse

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 his four sisters, the Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna (Ella), Victoria Princess Louis of Battenberg and her daughter, Louise, and Princess Heinrich of Prussia accompanied by her husband. The remains of Grand Duke Ludwig IV, Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine along with their children 'Frittie' and 'May' were re-interred in the New Mausoleum.^[5]

First World War

During World War I, Ernest Louis served as an officer at Kaiser Wilhelm's headquarters. In July of 1918, roughly sixteen months after the February Revolution, which forced his brother-in-law, Nicholas II from his throne, Ernst's two sisters in Russia, Elizabeth, who had become a nun following the assassination of her husband, Grand Duke Sergei, in 1905, and Alexandra, the former tsarina, were killed by the Bolsheviks. At the end of the war, he lost his throne during the revolution of 1918, after refusing to abdicate.^[6]

Death

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]

Ancestry

References

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