Elena of Greece

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Elena of Greece

Elena of Greece (born May 2, 1896 in Athens , Greece , † November 28, 1982 in Lausanne , Switzerland ) was a princess of Greece and Denmark and the queen mother of Romania. During the Second World War Elena made efforts to save the Romanian Jews from mass murder, for which she was later awarded the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations .

biography

Elena was born as the third of six children of King Constantine I of Greece (1868-1923) and his wife Sophie of Prussia (1870-1932) in Athens. She is thus a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria , granddaughter of Empress Friedrich , a niece of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the aunt of the former Spanish Queen Sophia of Greece .

On March 10, 1921, she married the Romanian heir to the throne, Charles II . Their only son, Michael (Mihai), born on October 25, 1921, became heir to the throne on January 4, 1926, after his father had renounced his inheritance and stayed abroad. So Elena was responsible for raising her son. With the death of King Ferdinand in 1927, Michael became King of Romania for the first time. On the advice of the Prime Minister Elena divorced Karl on June 21, 1928. Michael's reign ended on June 8, 1930, when Charles illegally returned to Romania from his self-imposed exile and allowed parliament to appoint him king.

Although the public had hoped for a reconciliation of the royal couple, it quickly became clear that Charles had no intention of resuming the divorced marriage. As tensions between the two parents worsened, Elena decided in 1932 to go into exile. For the next eight years Michael visited her in Florence two months a year.

On September 6, 1940, Charles had to abdicate after his popularity waned as a result of the country's territorial losses to the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and Hungary. Prime Minister Ion Antonescu seized power and, following the German example, appointed himself Conducător (de. Führer ), but did not abolish the monarchy. Mihai became king for the second time that same day, and Antonescu asked Elena to return to help her son as a counselor. However, Antonescu only gave the head of state a ceremonial role and created suspicion and tension with the royal family through his subsequent behavior. During the war Elena tried repeatedly to convince Antonescu not to deport the Romanian Jews to Poland and to stop the murders.

Elena became her son's most important confidante and stood by him during the difficult time when, after 1944, the Romanian Communist Party slowly seized power. The monarchy ultimately remained the only obstacle to the establishment of a totalitarian regime, and on December 30, 1947, Michael was forced to sign a deed of abdication . On January 4th of the following year, the royal family left the country.

The Queen Mother spent most of her exile in Florence, on her property, the Villa Sparta. Only in 1979 did she move to Switzerland for health reasons, where her son lived. She died in Lausanne at the age of 86. She was buried in the Bois-de-Vaux cemetery in Lausanne next to Prince Regent Paul of Yugoslavia , his wife Olga of Greece (a cousin of hers), and their son Nikola.

literature

  • Ivor Porter (2005), Michael of Romania. The King and the Country , Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing
  • Arthur Gould Lee (1956), Helen, Queen mother of Rumania, Princess of Greece and Denmark , London: Faber and Faber

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elena of Greece and Crown Prince Carol. In: Berner Woche, 1926. Retrieved on May 7, 2020 .


Web links

Commons : Queen Helen of Romania  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Elena of Greece
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Elena of Romania
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian-Greek noblewoman, princess of Greece and Denmark
DATE OF BIRTH May 2, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Athens , Greece
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1982
Place of death Lausanne , Switzerland