Sophie Dorothee of Württemberg

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Sophie Dorothee von Württemberg, Empress Maria Fjodorovna of Russia

Sophie Dorothee Auguste Luise Princess of Württemberg , from 7 October 1776 Maria Feodorovna (* 25. October 1759 in Stettin , † October 24 . Jul / 5. November  1828 . Greg in Pavlovsk ), was since 1776 the second wife of Russian Emperor Paul I. (ruled 1796–1801). Two of their children, Alexander I and Nicholas I , also became emperors.

Family classification

Sophie Dorothee was the fourth of a total of twelve children and the eldest daughter from the marriage of Duke Friedrich Eugen von Württemberg with Friederike Dorothea Sophia von Brandenburg-Schwedt . Her mother Friederike Dorothea Sophia in turn was the daughter of Margrave Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg-Schwedt and Sophie Dorothea Marie , who was the ninth child of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I and a sister of Frederick the Great . Sophie Dorothee was the sister of the first King of Württemberg, Friedrich I, and the great niece of Frederick the Great.

youth

Portrait of a youth by Sophie Dorothee von Württemberg

At the time of Sophie Dorothee's birth, her father Friedrich Eugen was a general in the service of Frederick the Great in the Seven Years War . It was not to be assumed that he would take the reign of Württemberg as third in line to the throne. After the end of the war he was general in Treptow in Pomerania from 1763 to 1769 and then quit his military service in order to move with his family to Mömpelgard , which was then part of Württemberg, on the left bank of the Rhine . There Sophie Dorothee was friends with Henriette von Oberkirch , who reported in detail about their time together in her memoir. The summer residence of Friedrich Eugen and his family was a small castle in nearby Étupes .

Sophie Dorothee grew up in a happy family and was brought up to be modest, disciplined and religious. She received extensive training and learned several languages ​​such as French, Italian and Latin. She was also taught conversation, music, dance, drawing, painting, needlework, history, geography, and religion. Sophie Dorothee also learned skills and knowledge in housekeeping. Their cultural interests were also awakened. She read quite a bit and her father even had a correspondence with Jean-Jacques Rousseau .

Marriage to Paul of Russia

When Katharina the Great looked for a bride for her son, the Russian heir to the throne Paul , in 1772 , she opted for a marital relationship with a princess from a German royal house. Sophie Dorothee was among the 15 more closely targeted candidates, but she seemed too young at the time. The choice initially fell on Wilhelmina Luisa von Hessen-Darmstadt , who took the name Natalja Alexejewna in Russia , but died on April 26, 1776.

Sophie Dorothee of Württemberg

In April 1776 Sophie Dorothee got engaged to Ludwig von Hessen-Darmstadt , a brother of Paul's first wife Natalja Alexejewna. Soon afterwards, at the request of Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great, Sophie Dorothee became engaged to the tsarevich Paul, who had just been widowed. This ceremony took place in Berlin on July 23, 1776 . Ludwig von Hessen-Darmstadt received 10,000 rubles from the tsarina as compensation for the termination of his engagement. Sophie Dorothee wrote to a friend that she was very much in love with Paul and happy that he returned her love. But the Tsarevich demanded strict rules of conduct from his fiancée: she had to be patient and endure his moods and should never interfere in politics. Sophie Dorothee did not adhere to these demands.

Before she married, Sophie Dorothee converted from the Lutheran to the Orthodox faith and took the name Maria Feodorovna . She now became the Russian Grand Duchess. Their wedding took place on October 7, 1776 in Saint Petersburg . The bride was just 17 years old at the time, five years younger than her husband. Her brothers Wilhelm and Karl took on important posts in the army and administration in Russia, thereby supporting Maria Fjodorovna's position in her new home.

Russian Grand Duchess

Sophie Dorothee as Maria Fjodorovna, Grand Duchess of Russia

The marriage of the Russian heir to the throne was happy for many years. The Grand Duchess and her husband made love, although the outwardly small and unsightly Paul had a difficult character. Russian historiography of the 19th century and Soviet historiography described him largely negatively as an extremely capricious and suspicious prince who was prone to unpredictable behavior and unexpected mood swings.

Empress Katharina II was initially very satisfied with Paul's second wife and described her as a tall woman of nymph-like figure with a light complexion and great kindness of heart. Soon, however, the two noble ladies fell apart because the empress did not intend to abdicate in favor of her son and Maria Feodorovna sided with her husband in this conflict. There was a deep hatred between son and mother, who held power in her hands until her death in 1796. During this time Paul and his wife remained isolated and politically uninfluential.

The tensions were deepened when Maria Feodorovna gave birth to the heir to the throne Alexander in December 1777 and a year and a half later as the second child Constantine, since Catherine II had both sons taken away from their parents and intended to raise them herself. Catherine II acted in exactly the same way as her son Paul had been withdrawn from her by the then Empress Elisabeth . Maria Feodorovna later provided for further offspring by giving birth to six daughters and finally two sons, all of whom were allowed to remain in the care of their parents. Except for one daughter, Olga, all children reached adulthood.

On the occasion of the birth of the heir to the throne, Catherine II gave her son and his wife the Pavlovsk estate 30 km south of Saint Petersburg , where a beautiful palace was built. Maria Fjodorovna, who knew a lot about garden architecture, was particularly responsible for the layout of the extensive landscape park in the English style, which was supposed to evoke memories of her homeland.

From September 1781, the Tsarevich and his wife toured Western Europe for 14 months under the pseudonym Graf and Countess Severny . The couple traveled to Poland , Austria , Italy - where Paul was publicly very in love with his wife - and to France , Holland , Switzerland and Germany , where Maria Fjodorowna visited her parents in Stuttgart . Paul was impressed by the regiment of Frederick the Great and always adhered to a pro-Prussian policy.

After the Russian Crown Princess had given birth to her first daughter Alexandra in 1783, she and her husband received the castle in Gatchina from the Tsarina as a gift. Since then Paul has mainly moved to live there and practiced his militaristic games. So he kept his own guard based on the Prussian model. His wife did not share these warlike ideals of Paul. But she tried to give him emotional support and to curb his temper.

In contrast to many of the princesses of the time, Maria Feodorovna was extremely economical and took over the clothes of Paul's first wife in her wardrobe. She promoted the arts, worked as a watercolor painter, designed cameos and created ivory works . As a talented musician, she played the harpsichord , had theater performances arranged to the delight of her husband and sponsored the blind Swedish musician Charlotta Seuerling . In literature she was particularly interested in German and French works. The German poet Friedrich Maximilian Klinger was hired to read Paul. Together with Maria Feodorovna, he contributed to the extensive maintenance of German literature in Gatchina. Other writers, artists, and scholars also frequented Gatchina. The Grand Duchess initiated voyages of discovery for the admiral and circumnavigator Adam Johann von Krusenstern . She also supported charities and founded an institution for the blind in Saint Petersburg.

A few years before Catherine II's death, Maria Feodorovna's many years of harmonious marriage was subjected to a severe test when Paul, bored by his forced political passivity, took a lady-in-waiting of his wife, Katharina Nelidova , as his lover. The Grand Duchess was deeply wounded, but her bitter complaint to Catherine II was unsuccessful. Paul assured that his relationship with the lady-in-waiting was purely platonic in nature. In 1793 Katharina Nelidowa withdrew and later there was a rapprochement between her and Maria Feodorovna.

Towards the end of her life, Catherine II seems to have seriously considered excluding her son Paul from the line of succession and instead making her eldest grandson Alexander her successor. However, she did not take any decisions in this regard, and after Katharina's death on November 17, 1796, Paul was able to take over the government in Russia without any problems.

empress

On the occasion of his coronation in April 1797, the new emperor reinstated the right of birthright, which had been abolished by Peter the Great , in the succession to the throne, thus designating his eldest son Alexander as the legitimate successor. This regulation remained in place even after Paul's murder.

Sophie Dorothee von Württemberg, as Tsarina of Russia (1799) by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun

Maria Feodorovna also stepped into the limelight and was allowed to exercise a certain political influence. She was responsible for the state welfare institutions and became the supreme supporter of the hospitals, poor kitchens, orphanages and other institutions intended for the countless needy. She received an annual budget of one million rubles from the Tsar for her social activities, which she carried out in an exemplary manner until her death. She also raised her daughters to be active in caring for the poor. She also presided over the Society for the Education of Noble Daughters. She also helped her many less affluent relatives.

The Empress also promoted the musical and cultural life of Russia and personally oversaw the beautification of imperial residences such as the one in Gatchina or the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. She also had an important say in the upbringing and marriage of her children, although the emperor made the final decision. She made sure that her offspring were only taught by selected scholars and intensified the policy begun by Peter the Great to establish marriage relationships with numerous European aristocratic houses that serve the interests of Russia's power. These in turn were interested in a connection with the Romanovs because after the outbreak of the French Revolution they saw Russia as an ally against the threat posed by the Grande Nation.

The experiences of the French Revolution contributed to the fact that Paul was an advocate of the autocracy even before his accession to the throne and tried by all means to prevent the entry of liberal ideas into the tsarist empire. In terms of foreign policy, his policy is characterized as particularly erratic, among other things because he was initially allied with some European states against France, but after the collapse of this coalition he made a rapprochement with Napoleon . The Empress, however, remained anti-French. Paul tolerated no freedom of thought or attempts at autonomy, transformed Saint Petersburg into a "barracks" through countless rules that dictated the citizens' daily routine down to the smallest detail, and he became hostile to the nobility because he let them be taxed and their rights restricted. His last reign showed increasingly despotic features.

Paul also increasingly distrusted his wife. The marriage was increasingly shattered. The empress brought Katharina Nelidowa back to the court and tried together with her to exert a mitigating influence on the emperor. But opponents of the Empress's party made Paul suspicious. The monarch banished his former lover in 1798, took himself as the new mistress Anna Petrovna Lopuchina - according to his statements only platonic - , withdrew political agendas from his wife and warned her that he could put her in a monastery. Since Maria Fjodorovna's detailed diaries were burned after her death on the orders of Nicholas I, as were many of her letters, one can only guess at her state of mind at the time.

Resistance from the nobility soon formed against Paul's autocratic regime. As early as the end of 1797, rumors were circulating about a coup that was being prepared by a group of nobility. The emperor had the fortress-like Mikhailov Palace built in Saint Petersburg to be safe from attacks. The heir to the throne Alexander was privy to the overturning plans and it is very likely that Maria Feodorovna knew at least about their existence. In February 1801 Paul and his family moved into the Mikhailov Castle, but this was of no use to him: he was murdered on March 24, 1801 during a palace revolt.

Empress widow

Maria Fjordorowna as a widow (by Gerhard von Kügelgen after 1801)

Maria Feodorovna was previously described as economical, friendly and amiable, but after the death of her husband she appeared more politically demanding and intriguing as well as demanding respect. At first she wanted to take over the government herself, following the example of Catherine II, but could not get through with this request, as most of the political parties supported her son Alexander. She demanded at least her recognition as the highest ranking woman in Russia, which included her precedence over Tsarina Elizabeth Alexejewna . So she often went to the side of Alexander at public appearances, while his wife had to follow behind. She was just as hurtful to her daughter-in-law as she had once heard from Catherine II.

Maria Feodorovna continued the charitable work she had begun under the rule of her husband Paul during her widowhood. Above all, she was involved in the expansion of educational and charitable institutions, which later became the " Department of the Institutions of Tsarina Maria ".

The Pavlovsk court of the dowager empress, who lived very expensively, became an important meeting place for the Saint Petersburg nobility. Maria Feodorovna gave magnificent receptions and always wore elaborate, luxurious robes. She was strict about adherence to etiquette. The lifestyle of the tsarist couple, on the other hand, seemed modest.

Although Maria Feodorovna was unable to make direct political decisions, she nevertheless exerted a great influence on Tsar Alexander as well as on her other children. She also took part in the marriage of her younger children to members of Western European aristocratic families and remained anti-Napoleonic. She was not very enthusiastic about the peace of Tilsit negotiated during a personal meeting between Alexander and Napoleon in June and July 1807 , since she considered Russia's participation in the continental blockade to be problematic and was fundamentally against an agreement with the French ruler. Her rejection of the 1807/08 plan to make her daughter Katharina Napoleon's wife was on the same line. She stood up for Alexander in the interests of conservative parties that opposed the liberal policy approaches during the early reign of the tsar. So she worked towards the overthrow of the liberal reformer Michail Michailowitsch Speranski , which finally took place in 1812 . She also persuaded her son not to raise the people involved in the murder of her husband to high offices.

When Napoleon's era came to an end after the Congress of Vienna , Maria Fjodorovna undertook various trips through Europe, for example as a companion to her imperial son or on family visits. Conversely, their children, insofar as they had married foreign monarchs, often traveled to their Russian homeland to pay their respects to the empress widow. Important political issues were also raised at these meetings. In November 1818 Maria Fyodorovna visited in Weimar the father of her daughter Maria Pavlovna, Grand Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, whose mind she was too liberal, and worked with, that he was the Holy Alliance remained. Conversely, Maria Pavlovna and her family came to Saint Petersburg to meet her mother in 1824. The marriage plans for Maria Pavlovna's daughters Marie and Augusta were discussed.

Although the empress widow was not allowed to raise her two eldest sons, she did so with her two younger sons and influenced them in a conservative spirit. When Alexander died in 1825 and Nicholas I became the new tsar, he was exercising an extremely reactionary regime. Maria Feodorovna also played an important role in the early upbringing of her grandson, the future emperor Alexander II . She lived through the first three years of her third son Nikolaus' reign and died in 1828 at the age of 69. Their palace in Pavlovsk was left unchanged and maintained by their descendants as a kind of family museum until the Russian Revolution .

progeny

The marriage to Paul had ten children:

literature

Web links

Commons : Sophie Dorothee von Württemberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
predecessor Office Successor
Catherine II Empress of Russia
1796–1801 		Elisabeth Alexejewna
personal data
SURNAME Sophie Dorothee of Württemberg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maria Feodorovna; Maria Feodorovna; Maria Feodorovna; Sophie Dorothee Augusta Luisa of Württemberg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Empress of Russia
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1759
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 1828
Place of death Pavlovsk