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Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (1890-1958)
Encyclopedia
Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia, known as "Maria Pavlovna the Younger" (In Russian Великая Княгиня Мария Павловна) (St. Petersburg, – Konstanz
, 13 December 1958) was the daughter of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich and Alexandra Georgievna of Greece by marriage Princess of Sweden
(1908–1914). 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.
, when the lid was closed on Alexandra's coffin. 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. The toddler Maria tapped Sergei on the shoulder and called him "pretty uncle" in English. "She is so cute," wrote Sergei. 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
. The couple set aside a playroom and bedrooms for the youngsters at their home, Ilinskoe. 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.
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. 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." 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. 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."
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." Elizabeth talked with the children and admitted that she had been unfair to them. 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
.
A year later Marie was engaged to Prince Vilhelm, Duke of Södermanland (17 June 1884 – 5 June 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 Vilhelm 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." Maria's father initially refused to attend the wedding, which took place in Tsarskoye Selo
on 3 May 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 12 May 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". Paul eventually was given an opportunity to come to Russia and meet Wilhelm, which made Maria "deliriously happy." 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 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 V, who appreciated her "effervescence, charm, and unconventionality." 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. 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 Vilhelm, as a naval officer, had little time to spend with her. She found him "cold, shy, and neglectful", and when she tried to approach him he walked away from her in tears. 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. 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 21 October 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. 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.
Maria worked as a nurse in Pskov
and re-established 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. When she learned that Dmitri had participated in the murder of Grigori Rasputin
on 17 December 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." Maria signed a letter along with other members of the Imperial family, begging Nicholas to reverse his decision to exile Dmitri to the Persian front. 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.
was murdered by the Bolsheviks. Maria's father was arrested by the Bolsheviks at the end of July 1918 and was later murdered on 30 January 1919. 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. 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. Her marriage to Putiatin broke up in 1923 "over a fundamental difference in attitude," though she continued to offer Putiatin and his relatives financial assistance. 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 the 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. She grieved over the death of her brother Dmitri, the only person she had really loved, in 1942. She died at the age of sixty-eight in 1958 in the border town of Konstanz
in West Germany and was buried beside her brother Dimitri in the vault of the church in Mainau
, a possession of her son Lennart.
Konstanz
Konstanz is a university city with approximately 80,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the south-west corner of Germany, bordering Switzerland. The city houses the University of Konstanz.-Location:...
, 13 December 1958) was the daughter of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich and Alexandra Georgievna of Greece by marriage Princess of Sweden
Swedish Royal Family
The Swedish Royal Family since 1818 consists of a number of persons in the Swedish Royal House of Bernadotte, closely related to the King of Sweden. They are entitled to royal titles and style , and some perform official engagements and ceremonial duties of state...
(1908–1914). She was usually called "Marie," the French version of her name.
Her paternal grandparents were Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
and Empress Maria Alexandrovna. Her maternal grandparents were George I of Greece
George I of Greece
George I was King of Greece from 1863 to 1913. Originally a Danish prince, George was only 17 years old when he was elected king by the Greek National Assembly, which had deposed the former king Otto. His nomination was both suggested and supported by the Great Powers...
and Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinovna of Russia, his queen consort.
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 RussiaGrand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia
Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia was a son of Emperor Alexander II of Russia...
, when the lid was closed on Alexandra's coffin. 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. The toddler Maria tapped Sergei on the shoulder and called him "pretty uncle" in English. "She is so cute," wrote Sergei. 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
Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna
Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia canonized as St. Elizabeth Romanova was a German princess of the House of Hesse, and the wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia, fifth son of Emperor Alexander II of Russia and Princess Marie of Hesse and the Rhine...
. The couple set aside a playroom and bedrooms for the youngsters at their home, Ilinskoe. 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.
In 1902 her father married Olga Valerianovna Paley
Olga Valerianovna Paley
Princess Olga Valerianovna Paley , was the second wife of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia. -Early life and first marriage:...
; 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. 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." 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. The teenage Maria was "full of life and very jolly," said her mother's sister, Grand Duchess Maria Georgievna of Russia
Princess Maria Georgievna of Greece and Denmark
Maria or Marie Georgievna, Princess of Greece and Denmark , was the fifth child and second daughter of George I of Greece and Olga Konstantinovna of Russia and thus a family member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.-Early life and family: She was born in Athens as a younger...
, "but inclined to be self-willed and selfish, and rather difficult to deal with."
Assassination of uncle
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. 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: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." Elizabeth talked with the children and admitted that she had been unfair to them. 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
Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia
Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich of Russia was a grandson of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, and a poet and playwright of some renown...
.
Marriage and divorce
A year later Marie was engaged to Prince Vilhelm, Duke of Södermanland (17 June 1884 – 5 June 1965), the second son of King Gustav V of Sweden and Victoria of Baden
Victoria of Baden
Victoria of Baden was a Queen consort of Sweden by her marriage to King Gustaf V of Sweden. She was politically active in a conservative fashion during the development of democracy and known as a pro-German during the First World War.-Birth:Princess Viktoria was born on 7 August 1862 at the castle...
. 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 Vilhelm 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." Maria's father initially refused to attend the wedding, which took place in Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye Selo is the town containing a former Russian residence of the imperial family and visiting nobility, located south from the center of St. Petersburg. It is now part of the town of Pushkin and of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.-History:In...
on 3 May 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 12 May 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". Paul eventually was given an opportunity to come to Russia and meet Wilhelm, which made Maria "deliriously happy." Maria and Wilhelm had a single son: Lennart
Prince Lennart, Duke of Småland
Lennart Bernadotte Count of Wisborg, né Prince Gustaf Lennart Nicolaus Paul of Sweden , a grandson of King Gustaf V of Sweden, was until 1932 a Prince of Sweden and the Duke of Småland....
, Duke of Småland
Småland
' is a historical province in southern Sweden.Småland borders Blekinge, Scania or Skåne, Halland, Västergötland, Östergötland and the island Öland in the Baltic Sea. The name Småland literally means Small Lands. . The latinized form Smolandia has been used in other languages...
and later Count Bernadotte af Wisborg
Bernadotte af Wisborg
The title Count of Wisborg is, since 1892, borne by the male-line descendants of four princes of Sweden who married morganatically without the consent of the King of Sweden and thereby lost the right of succession to the throne of Sweden for themselves, their children and their descendants...
(1909–2004).
In the beginning, the marriage looked successful.
Vajiravudh
Phra Bat Somdet Phra Poramentharamaha Vajiravudh Phra Mongkut Klao Chao Yu Hua , or Phra Bat Somdet Phra Ramathibodi Si Sintharamaha Vajiravudh Phra Mongkut Klao Chao Yu Hua , or Rama VI was the sixth monarch of Siam under the House of Chakri, ruling from 1910 until his death...
, 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. 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 21 October 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. 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.
World War I and Revolution
Maria returned home to Russia, where she lived near her younger brother Dmitri, to whom she was intensely attached. 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. During World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Maria worked as a nurse in Pskov
Pskov
Pskov is an ancient city and the administrative center of Pskov Oblast, Russia, located in the northwest of Russia about east from the Estonian border, on the Velikaya River. Population: -Early history:...
and re-established 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. When she learned that Dmitri had participated in the murder of Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a Russian Orthodox Christian and mystic who is perceived as having influenced the latter days of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their only son Alexei...
on 17 December 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." Maria signed a letter along with other members of the Imperial family, begging Nicholas to reverse his decision to exile Dmitri to the Persian front. 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.
Exile
She married her second husband His Illustrious Highness Prince Sergei Mikhailovich Putiatin in September 1917 in Pavlovsk. They had one son, His Illustrious Highness Prince Roman Sergeievich Putiatin (June 1918–1919). Maria's father, Grand Duke Paul, attended Roman's baptism on 18 July 1918, the same day, though they did not know it, that Maria's half-brother Prince Vladimir PaleyVladimir Pavlovich Paley
HSH Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley was a Russian poet.Prince Vladimir was born Vladimir von Pistohlkors in Saint Petersburg, Russia...
was murdered by the Bolsheviks. Maria's father was arrested by the Bolsheviks at the end of July 1918 and was later murdered on 30 January 1919. 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. 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. Her marriage to Putiatin broke up in 1923 "over a fundamental difference in attitude," though she continued to offer Putiatin and his relatives financial assistance. During her years in exile, she lived mainly in Europe including Germany, Sweden and in Biarritz
Biarritz
Biarritz is a city which lies on the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in south-western France. It is a luxurious seaside town and is popular with tourists and surfers....
and in Spain on the invitation of the Spanish queen. She lived twelve years in the United States before moving to Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
because the United States was a country that recognized the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. She lived in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
and after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
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. She grieved over the death of her brother Dmitri, the only person she had really loved, in 1942. She died at the age of sixty-eight in 1958 in the border town of Konstanz
Konstanz
Konstanz is a university city with approximately 80,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the south-west corner of Germany, bordering Switzerland. The city houses the University of Konstanz.-Location:...
in West Germany and was buried beside her brother Dimitri in the vault of the church in Mainau
Mainau
Mainau is an island in Lake Constance . It is maintained as a garden island and a model of excellent environmental practices...
, a possession of her son Lennart.