Maria Pavlovna Romanova (1890-1958)

Maria Pavlovna and Prince William at a time of their marriage in 1908.

Mary Pávlovna, Prince William, and her son Lennart in 1911.

Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (Russian: Великая Княгиня Мария Павловна; April 18, 1890, Saint Petersburg - December 13, 1958, Mainau), was the daughter of Grand Duke Paul Aleksandrovich of Russia and his first wife Grand Duchess Alexandra Georgievna, born Princess of Greece and Denmark. She was also a princess of Sweden, by her marriage to Prince William of Sweden. She was usually called Marie, the French version of her name.

Biography

Maria's mother died shortly after giving birth to Maria's brother, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov, when little Maria was not yet two years old. Her father was grieving at the funeral and had to be restrained by his brother, Grand Duke Sergius Alexandrovich Romanov, when the lid of Alexandra's coffin closed. Sergius gave the premature Dimitri the baths prescribed by the doctors, wrapped him in cotton and kept him in a crib filled with hot water bottles to keep the temperature regulated. I'm enjoying Dimitri's recovery , Sergio wrote in her diary.Little Maria touched Sergio on her shoulder and called him cute uncle in English. She is so cute,, Sergio wrote. After Pablo recovered, he took the two children away from him, but they spent Christmas and later a few days of summer vacation with their children, Sergio and his wife Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna.

Until the age of six, Maria did not speak a word of Russian because all her governesses spoke English. Later he had another governess, Mademoiselle Hélène, who taught him French and remained with her until her marriage.

In 1902 his father married Olga Valerianovna Paléi, as the marriage was disapproved by Nicholas II, he was exiled. Maria and Dimitri were upset by the loss of her father and wrote to the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna a letter asking her to persuade Tsar Nicholas II to reverse his decision. We are so sad and heartbroken that our dear papa cannot return, twelve-year-old Maria and eleven-year-old Dimitri wrote to the Dowager Empress. Maria and Dimitri were placed in the custody of Sergio and Isabel. Towards Dimitri and me he showed an almost feminine sensibility , Maria wrote in her memoirs. Despite the fact that exact and immediate obedience was demanded of us, as in the whole house of him or the next... In his way he loved us deeply. He liked having us around him, and gave us a good deal of his time. But he was always jealous of us. If he had known the rigor of our devotion to our father, it would have driven him crazy. 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 a bit cold towards her during her childhood. Teenage Maria was full of life and very cheerful, said her mother's sister, Grand Duchess Maria Georgievna of Russia, but tends to be stubborn and selfish, and quite difficult to deal with.

Murder of his uncle

In 1905 his uncle Sergio was assassinated 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 Dimitri, were in the carriage and did not want to kill women and children. A second attack a few days later succeeded in killing Sergio. Isabel and the teenagers, upon hearing the bomb, ran outside and saw Sergio's mangled body in the snow. Maria described the scene later in her memoirs:

My aunt was on his knees, next to the explosion. Her brilliant dress was grotesquely shining in the midst of the humble garments surrounding her. I didn't dare look at her. His face was pale, his terrible factions in his fixed stiffness. He did not cry, but the expression of his eyes made an impression on me that I will never forget as long as I live. Supported in the arm of the governor of the city, my aunt approached the door slowly, and when she perceived her arms to us. We hugged her. He loved you, he loved you.I repeated without ceasing, pressing our heads against her. I realized that under the right arm, the sleeve of his joyful blue dress was stained with blood. There was blood in his hand, too, and under his fingernails, in which he held the medals that my uncle always wore in a chain around his neck.

After the murder, both boys were emotionally distraught, especially Dimitri. Dmitri was terrified of being sent to live with his father,, Isabel wrote. Dmitri was just sobbing and clinging to me, she wrote. Her intense fear of him was the thought of having to leave me. She decided that she should watch over me as her uncle would not do it anymore and she clung to me to the point that her father's arrival was an anguish more than a pleasure, because of the intense fear that he would take him away. Elizabeth spoke to the children and admitted that she had been unfair to them. The tsar made Elizabeth his guardian and gave Paul the right to visit Russia from time to time, despite not living there. Paul did not want to take the children away from Elizabeth, according to the diary of the Grand Duke Constantine Konstantinovich of Russia.

Marriage and offspring

She married Prince William of Sweden (1884-1965) in Saint Petersburg in 1908, to whom she gave birth:

• Prince Lennart of Sweden, born in 1910, but the union failed and ended up being annulled by the Orthodox Church in 1914.

During World War I she served as a military nurse. In 1917 she remarried in Pavlovsk with Prince Sergius Mikhailovich Putiatin (1893-1966), with whom she had a son:

• Prince Román Serguéyevich Putiatin, born in 1918.

The persecution unleashed against the Romanovs by the Soviet regime forced her to leave Petrograd with her husband and flee to the Ukraine. From there she moved to Romania, where her little son died, and finally to Western Europe. Her second marriage also ended in divorce; Maria leaving alone in the direction of Western Europe finds asylum in France.

Later life in the world of arts

During her exile she pursued a fine art adventure in photography and fashion art, which led her to live in Paris, France, where she meets Coco Chanel and gives her the idea of operating a high-fashion store for which he creates the Kitmir embroidery venture, which was eventually acquired by Chanel. The social effects of the war in Europe and the insecurity are not to Maria's liking, which is why she moved to New York, United States, where she worked in production for Vogue, and when World War II began her life became socially complicated. Due to the effects of the American-Bolshevik alliance, for which she decided to move to South America, taking a job with a representative of the Elizaberth Arden cosmetics company in Argentina. In the city of Buenos Aires, she was received by the Russian nobility in exile, and housed by the family of the Prince of Mestchersky, Prince Michel Aleksandrovich Gortschakov and his wife Olga, who assisted her with her citizenship establishing Maria as the final residence of her in Argentina. Once her new citizenship was obtained, María joined the group of intellectual women and the art and fashion society, surrounding her activity with women of the stature of Victoria Ocampo. Hand in hand with her best friend, the Harrods model & # 34; Pele & # 34; Peregrina Pastorino, who also had a certain entrepreneurial spirit, thus operated an atelier from her apartment in Barrio Norte, with the intention of creating her own line of hats, which was widely presented at the Harrods store. As she was really fascinated by the beauty industry, she along with her childhood friend Archduchess Elizabeth of Habsburg, whose husband owned the famous stores & # 34; Los Leones & # 34; from Buenos Aires try to market her line of cosmetic products, which was initially successful, but did not have a long-term market presence. Finally, she dedicated her last years to the fine arts, photography and painting, work which led her to return to Europe on trips exhibiting her works and reconnecting with the traveled post-war world. During an exhibition in Vienna, she is offered a family vacation, for which she agrees to spend time at her son's summer home on the island of Mainau in Germany, where she unexpectedly meets her first ex-husband as she called him & #34;Willm" Prince William of Sweden for the first time since before the war, with whom she remedies differences and everyone has a good family break. At the end of these vacations, María has some ailments that carried her, which takes a medical retreat where they discover that she suffered from pneumonia from which she died in Germany in 1958, unable to return to her home in Argentina where a delegation of the newlyweds was waiting for her. created the National Fund for the Arts to grant her an Honor in the Arts, for her great work representing Argentine women in this field worldwide. Her remains are in the Mainau Palace Church, along with those of her brother Grand-Duke Dimitri.

Ancestors