Alexander of Oldenburg

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Alexander Friedrich Konstantin von Holstein-Gottorp

Alexander Frederick Constantine of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp, Prince of Oldenburg ( Russian Александр Петрович Ольденбургский Alexander Petrovich Oldenburgsky ; born May 21 . Jul / 2. June  1844 greg. In St. Petersburg , Russia ; † 6. September 1932 in Biarritz , France ) was a nobleman and representative of the Russian branch of the house of the Gottorf Oldenburg family . He was a grandson of the Tsar's daughter Katharina Pavlovna and held the rank of Imperial Highness .

Life

Early years

Alexander was born the son of Peter von Oldenburg (1812–1881) and Therese von Nassau-Weilburg (1815–1871) and grew up in Saint Petersburg. He was intended for a military career and received the rank of ensign in the Preobrazhensky Body Guard Regiment of the Tsar at birth . In 1864 he began his military service there and rose quickly in the military hierarchy.

In the Russo-Ottoman War (1877-1878) he commanded a brigade as major general and received high military awards for his bravery, including the golden sword for bravery . From 1880 to 1885 he commanded the 1st Guard Infantry Division and was also adjutant general to the Tsar. From 1885 to 1889 he was commander of the Guard Corps in Saint Petersburg with the rank of lieutenant general .

social commitment

After the death of his father, Alexander took over the financial and social inheritance of the Oldenburg family in Russia. Since his brother Nikolaus (1840-1880) had entered into a morganatic marriage , this was out of the question for the succession of the family fortune. Alexander continued the family's philanthropic works throughout Russia and held various management positions in Saint Petersburg schools. Together with his wife, he founded the Oldenburg Institute in Saint Petersburg, where more than two thousand boys and girls received technical training at the couple's expense.

He was considered one of the richest aristocrats in Russia, both in terms of property and financial resources. This was partly due to the inherited wealth of his wife Eugenia von Leuchtenberg . From these fortunes, the couple made a large number of donations to fund and establish technical schools, hospitals, orphanages, and other philanthropic institutions across Russia.

As a result, Alexander took on a curatorial position and was particularly active in the field of medicine. He was involved in the administration of the hospitals he financed with donations and organized the transport of patients. When the plague broke out in Russia in the 1880s , he founded the Imperial Institute for Experimental Medicine (IEM) in Saint Petersburg in 1890 , where the later Nobel Prize winner Ivan Petrovich Pavlov worked from 1891 .

Candidate for the Bulgarian throne

After Alexander I of Bulgaria relinquished his throne on September 7, 1886 at the instigation of Russia, replacement candidates were proposed by various major European powers. Because of his Russian origins, membership of the tsarist family, and extensive services in various fields, Alexander was the preferred candidate of the Russian government. As King of Bulgaria, Alexander could have kept his vast fortune. In contrast, he would have lost his fortune if he had returned to Oldenburg as regent , where he was second in line to the throne after the Hereditary Prince Nikolaus von Oldenburg , the only son of Grand Duke Friedrich August .

In order to evade Russian influence, however, the Bulgarian parliament elected Ferdinand von Sachsen-Coburg and Gotha as King of Bulgaria in 1887 .

Later years

In 1900 Alexander founded Mayak , an organization against alcoholism , which is very widespread in Russia, and was appointed its curator. In the same year, Tsar Nicholas II commissioned him to convert the city of Gagra on the Black Sea into a holiday and health resort for the Russian elite. After combating the malaria occurring in Gagra , intensive planting of palms, agaves, cypresses, cedars, magnolias, lemon and orange trees and importing parrots and monkeys, the spa was completed in 1903.

During the peasant unrest in southern Russia 1901–1902, Alexander's property, Ramon Castle , which Eugenia's uncle Tsar Alexander II had given the couple for their wedding, was damaged by fire by marauding peasants. The background to the unrest was an ultimately false claim that the Tsar would distribute land from large estates among the peasants. The property survived the fire and was rebuilt, but was confiscated fifteen years later by the new Bolshevik regime and used as barracks, school, hospital and apartment for a nearby factory.

Until 1914, Alexander was severely restricted in health and could only travel in the company of nursing staff. During a spa stay in Wiesental shortly before the outbreak of the First World War , he got into a car accident with his valet and his nurse and suffered serious injuries. His companions were also injured.

First World War, October Revolution and end of life

A few weeks after the outbreak of World War I, Alexander, now at the age of 70, was appointed by the Tsar as Supreme Commander of the medical and evacuation forces. In this position he improved the evacuation of wounded soldiers from the front considerably and invited hundreds of wounded French and British officers to stay free of charge in a sanatorium he founded in the Crimea .

Despite his extensive philanthropic work, Alexander fell into the sights of the Bolshevik regime during the October Revolution of 1917, which even put a price on his head. The institutions he had founded were closed and it was initially said that Alexander had been killed by the government with the other members of the royal family. It later emerged that Alexander and his seriously ill wife had fled to Finland, where he owned the Rantalinna Castle in the Ruokolahti community . In 1922 the family moved to Biarritz via Paris . Since he had limited access to his property in Russia, he and his family lived relatively modestly in France compared to before. Alexander died in 1932 at the age of 88. He and his wife were buried in the Cimetière du Sabaou cemetery in Biarritz.

family

Eugenia Maximilianowna von Leuchtenberg

On January 19, 1868, Alexander appropriately married Eugenia von Leuchtenberg (1845-1925), the daughter of Maximilian de Beauharnais , 3rd Duke of Leuchtenberg and his wife Grand Duchess Marija Nikolajewna Romanowa . Her maternal grandparents were Tsar Nicholas I and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna . Eugenia was also an offshoot of the tsarist family and, like her husband, had the title of Imperial Highness.

The couple had a son, Peter von Oldenburg (1868–1924) . Through a long friendship between Eugenia and Tsarina Maria Feodorovna , the two women managed to arrange the marriage of Eugenia's son with Maria's daughter, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna Romanova . The marriage was later divorced and after the end of the First World War, Peter also lived in Biarritz like his parents.

Awards (selection)

  • Portrait of Alexander in youth by Woldemar Hau 1853

  • Alexander with his wife Eugenia von Leuchtenberg

  • Alexander's son Peter with his wife Olga

  • Ramon Castle (2015) - formerly owned by Alexander

literature

  • Huno von Oldenburg: The Russian branch of the House of Oldenburg and other members of the House in Russian service. Published in: Jörg Michael Henneberg u. a. (Ed.): History of the Oldenburger Land. Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Aschendorff Verlag, Münster 2014, ISBN 978-3-402-12942-5 , p. 171 ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Katharina Radziwill: Memories of Forty Years. Funk & Wagnalls Company. London. 1915. page 236.
  2. ↑ a b Article Alexander of Oldenburg. The New York Times. October 3, 1886.
  3. ↑ George Windholz: Ivan P. Pavlov: An overview of his life and psychological work . In: American Psychologist . tape 52 , no. 9 , 1997, pp. 941-946 , doi : 10.1037 / 0003-066X.52.9.941 .
  4. ↑ Article: Russia and Bulgaria. The Manchester Guardian. September 7, 1886.
  5. ↑ Article: Duke Victim of Auto Wreck. The Washington Post. July 9, 1914.
  6. ↑ Article: German Prince Opens Hotels To Wounded British Officers. The Washington Post. July 18, 1915.
personal data
SURNAME Alexander of Oldenburg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alexander Petrovich Oldenburgsky; Alexander Friedrich Konstantin von Holstein-Gottorp
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian nobleman and military
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1844
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH September 6, 1932
Place of death Biarritz