Irene of Hessen-Darmstadt
Irene Luise Maria Anna of Hesse and Rhine VA (born July 11, 1866 in Darmstadt ; † November 11, 1953 in Hemmelmark ) was the wife of the Prussian prince and imperial brother Heinrich of Prussia and sister of the last Russian tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna .
Early years
Irene grew up as a princess of Hesse and near the Rhine . She was the third daughter of Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and of the Rhine and Princess Alice of Great Britain and Ireland , the second eldest daughter of Queen Victoria . Since she was born during the German War in 1866, she was given the first name Irene, a derivation from the Greek word for "peace". The princess was brought up very simply. The parents placed particular emphasis on religious instruction, learning the languages English and French, as well as instruction in courtly conversation. Grand Duchess Alice made sure that her daughters also learned practical things. The daughters had to sweep their rooms themselves, make beds and do simple household chores. In addition, the Grand Duchess was considered to be active in charities and often took her children with her on visits to hospitals and charities.
In the eyes of her mother, Irene was considered the most unattractive girl, which emerged from a letter from her mother to her aunt Victoria , who later became the German empress. Although she was not as pretty as her older sister Elisabeth , Irene was pleasant.
In 1873, her brother Friedrich (1870–1873), called Frittie , who was only two years old, died of internal bleeding after falling out of the window. He suffered from hemophilia , the blood disease he inherited from his mother.
Diphtheria was rampant in Darmstadt in 1878 . Irene, her siblings - with the exception of Elisabeth - and Grand Duke Ludwig were infected and Grand Duchess Alice nursed them to health. The youngest sister Marie , called by the May family , died of the disease when she was only four years old. Her mother was increasingly exhausted from the grief and care and died of diphtheria on December 14, 1878 at the age of 35.
After this loss, Irene, her sisters Viktoria , Elisabeth and Alix and her brother Ernst Ludwig came into the care of their grandmother Victoria in England. With the help of a governess , she continued her education, on which the Queen exercised additional influence. Together with sister Alix, she was one of the bridesmaids at the wedding of her aunt Princess Beatrice of Great Britain and Ireland to Prince Heinrich Moritz von Battenberg in 1885 .
marriage
As the daughter of a British princess, she was in close contact with the related Hohenzollern family , her aunt and later mother-in-law was the German Empress Victoria, her cousin and future brother-in-law was Emperor Wilhelm II. When their grandmother Queen Victoria visited, Irene became engaged to her cousin Heinrich . The wedding took place on May 24, 1888 in the chapel of the Charlottenburg Palace . Less than a month after the marriage, Irene's uncle and father-in-law, Emperor Friedrich III, died. of throat cancer . His son Wilhelm succeeded him on the throne.
Heinrich's mother Victoria, also called Empress Friedrich , was very fond of her daughter-in-law. However, she was shocked by the fact that Irene never wore a scarf or longer clothes to hide her pregnancy when she was pregnant with their first child, Waldemar.
The couple had three sons together. Irene was, like her mother, to be a carrier ( Konduktorin ) hemophilia. She passed the disease on to two of her sons. The youngest son Heinrich died of the consequences at the age of four. The son Waldemar died of it shortly before the end of the Second World War when there were no blood products. Sigismund, the second born, did not suffer from the disease and was able to lead a normal life.
- Waldemar (1889–1945) ⚭ 1919 Calixta zu Lippe-Detmold
- Sigismund (1896–1978) ⚭ 1919 Charlotte Agnes von Sachsen-Altenburg
- Heinrich Victor Ludwig Friedrich (1900–1904)
Heinrich and Irene were known as "The very Amiables" because of their friendly behavior in the family. The couple lived with the children on Hemmelmark, an estate near Eckernförde that Heinrich had bought in 1894. It was near his place of employment in Kiel , where he worked for the Imperial Navy . In addition to Hemmelmark, the family residence, she occasionally stayed in Potsdam and Berlin. Irene also accompanied her husband on trips abroad.
Family relationships
Irene, who grew up in Victorian times and was brought up accordingly, was said to have strict Victorian morals. When her sister Elisabeth became engaged to the Russian Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrowitsch Romanov in 1881 and converted from the Lutheran faith to the Russian Orthodox Church , Irene was deeply affected. She wrote to her father that she cried terribly because of Elisabeth's decision.
When Grand Duke Ludwig IV died in 1892, Irene's brother Ernst Ludwig took over the reign. In 1894, at the insistence of Queen Victoria, Ernst Ludwig married his cousin Princess Victoria Melita von Sachsen-Coburg and Gotha , who was named in the family Ducky . On the occasion of the wedding celebrations, Irene's youngest sister Alix got engaged to Tsarevich Nicholas, who later became Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. After the death of Tsar Alexander III. In 1894 Irene and Heinrich von Prussia traveled to Saint Petersburg to attend his funeral and the subsequent wedding of Alix and Nikolaus. With her marriage, Alix also converted to the Russian Orthodox Church and has called herself Alexandra Feodorovna ever since. Despite Irene's disagreement with her sisters about their conversion , she remained in close contact with all of her siblings throughout her life.
In 1907 Irene supported her sister Elisabeth in initiating the marriage between Grand Duchess Marija Pavlovna Romanowa and Prince Wilhelm of Sweden . Marija was Elisabeth's niece and lived with her in foster care for some time after her mother died. Her father, Grand Duke Paul Alexandrowitsch Romanov , morganatically remarried and left Russia. Wilhelm's mother, Queen Victoria of Sweden, was a friend of Irene. However, the marriage soon turned out to be unhappy. In her memoir, Grand Duchess Marija later claimed that Irene had put pressure on her to marry Wilhelm.
Next life
Princess Irene was a charitable companion of Empress Auguste Viktoria , her sister-in-law. With the outbreak of World War I it became difficult for Irene to keep in touch with her sisters, who lived in England and Russia. After the end of the war, she was certain that Elisabeth, Alix, Nikolaus and their children had been murdered by the Bolsheviks in the course of the revolution . Heinrich's brother Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated in November 1918. Gut Hemmelmark near Eckernförde remained in her husband's possession.
In Berlin in the 1920s, a woman named Anna Anderson appeared who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanowa . Irene visited her and came to the conclusion that it could not be her niece. Irene had last seen Anastasia in 1913 and was not impressed by Anna Anderson's appearance: I saw immediately that she couldn't be one of my nieces. Although I have not seen Anastasia for nine years, the fundamental facial features could not have changed to this degree, especially the position of the eyes, ears, etc. At first glance, I might be able to see a resemblance to Grand Duchess Tatiana . Prince Heinrich said Irene was upset to talk about Anna Anderson. It was ordered never to mention this subject in her presence.
When her son Sigismund emigrated to Costa Rica in 1928 , where he started a large bee farm , Irene took in his daughter Barbara, who was born in 1920. In 1929 her husband Heinrich von Prussia died on Gut Hemmelmark. Irene lived as a widow in Berlin , Potsdam and Hemmelmark. Ernst Ludwig also died in 1937. In the same year Ernst Ludwig's son Georg Donatus , his wife Cecilia , their two sons and Grand Duchess Eleonore died in a plane crash in Belgium . Of her siblings, only Victoria lived now, and she sometimes visited. Her eldest son Waldemar died in 1945 of hemophilia.
The daughter of the imperial treasurer von Sell reported in her memoirs of frequent visits by the former Princess Irene in the 1930s and 1940s to her parents' villa in Berlin-Dahlem. She was the last living child of Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and of the Rhine and Princess Alice of Great Britain and Ireland . Irene von Prussia died on November 11, 1953, her fortune was inherited by her granddaughter Barbara.
Honors by naming the ship
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Prince Heinrich named his racing yacht " Irene " in honor of his wife
ancestors
literature
- Karin Feuerstein-Praßer: The German Empresses. Piper, Munich 2006.
- Irene , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 02/1954 from January 4, 1954, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
Web links
- Bride crowns - little crowns of the Prussians
- The Forgotten Sister: Princess Irene Of Hesse And The Rhine, Princess Henry Of Prussia
- Princess Irene leaves home for her wedding
- The Grandchildren of Queen Victoria
- Prussia, Princess Irene of. Hessian biography. (As of February 26, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine, Princess of Prussia. In: Unofficial Royalty. Retrieved April 23, 2016 (American English).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hessen-Darmstadt, Irene von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hesse and near the Rhine, Irene Luise Maria Anna Princess of |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | The wife of Heinrich of Prussia and sister of the last Russian tsarina Alexandra Fjodrovna |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 11, 1866 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Darmstadt |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 11, 1953 |
| Place of death | Hemmelmark |