Coordinates	44°25′57″N26°6′14″N
Name	Hesse
German name	Hessen
State coa	Coat of arms of Hesse.svg
Map	Deutschland Lage von Hessen.svg
Flag	Flag of Hesse.svg
Capital	Wiesbaden
Largest city	Frankfurt
Area	21100
Key	06
Population	6073000
Pop ref
Pop date	2007-09-30
Gdp	224.98
Gdp year	2010
Website	www.hessen.de
Leader	Volker Bouffier
Leader party	CDU
Ruling party1	CDU
Ruling party2	FDP
Votes	5
Nuts	DE7
Iso region	DE-HE
Date	September 2010 }}

Hesse () or Hessia ( , Hessisch: Hesse ) is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.

The state is called Hessen in German and Hesse (or Hessia) in English; the English name for the state was taken from French. "Hessia" is a variant and is related with "Hassia", which is the common and nearly similar medieval latin term for the area. An inhabitant of the state is a Hesse (masculine) or Hessin (feminine) in German and a Hessian in English (see Hessian (soldiers)). Occasionally the German term Hessen is also used in English, for example by the European Commission. Hesse refers to the Germanic tribe of the Chatti, who settled in the region in the first centuries B.C.

History

An early Celtic presence in what is now Hesse is indicated by a mid 5th century BC La Tène style burial uncovered at Glauberg. The region was later settled by the Germanic Chatti tribe in ca. the 1st century BC, and the name Hesse is a continuation of that tribal name. In the early Middle Ages, a Frankish gau comprising an area around Fritzlar and Kassel and a Saxon one further north were known as Hessengau. In the 9th century the Saxon Hessengau also came under the rule of the Franconians. In the 12th century it was passed to Thuringia.

In the War of the Thuringian Succession (1247–64), Hesse gained its independence and became a Landgraviate within the Holy Roman Empire. It shortly rose to primary importance under Landgrave Philip the Magnanimous, who was one of the leaders of German Protestantism. After Philip's death in 1567, the territory was divided up among his four sons from his first marriage (Philip was a bigamist) into four lines: Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel), Hesse-Darmstadt, Hesse-Rheinfels and the also previously existing Hesse-Marburg. As the latter two lines died out quite soon (1583 and 1605, respectively), Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt were the two core states within the Hessian lands. Several collateral lines split off during the centuries, such as in 1622, when Hesse-Homburg split off from Hesse-Darmstadt. In the late 16th century, Kassel adopted Calvinism, while Darmstadt remained Lutheran and subsequently the two lines often found themselves on different sides of a conflict, most notably in the disputes over Hesse-Marburg and in the Thirty Years' War, when Darmstadt fought on the side of the Emperor, while Kassel sided with Sweden and France.

The Landgrave Frederick II (1720–1785) ruled as a benevolent despot, 1760-1785. He combined Enlightenment ideas with Christian values, cameralist plans for central control of the economy, and a militaristic approach toward diplomacy. He funded the depleted treasury of the poor nation by renting out 19,000 soldiers in complete military formations to Great Britain to fight in North America during the American Revolutionary War, 1776-1783. These soldiers, commonly known as Hessians, fought under the British flag. For further revenue the soldiers were rented out elsewhere as well. Most were conscripted, with their pay going to the Landgrave.

19th century

Hesse-Kassel was elevated to the rank of an Electorate in 1803, but this remained without effect as the Holy Roman Empire was disbanded in 1806. The territory was annexed by the Kingdom of Westphalia in 1806, but restored to the Elector in 1813. While other Electors had gained other titles, becoming either Kings or Grand-dukes, the Elector of Hesse-Kassel alone retained the anachronistic dignity. The name survived in the term Kurhessen, denoting the region around Kassel. In 1866 it was annexed by Prussia, together with the Free City of Frankfurt, Hesse-Homburg and the duchy of Nassau, which established the province of Hesse-Nassau.

Hesse-Darmstadt was elevated to the rank of a Grand Duchy in 1806. In the War of 1866, it fought on the side of Austria against Prussia, but retained its autonomy in defeat, because a greater part of the country was situated south of the Main river and Prussia did not dare to expand beyond the Main line as this might have provoked France. But the parts of Hesse-Darmstadt north of the Main river (the region around the town of Gießen, commonly called Oberhessen) were incorporated in the Norddeutscher Bund, a tight federation of German states, established by Prussia in 1867. In 1871 the rest of the Grand Duchy joined the German Empire. Around the turn of the century, Darmstadt was one of the centres of the Jugendstil. Until 1907, the Grand Duchy of Hesse used only the Hessian red and white lion as its coat-of-arms

20th century

The revolution of 1918 transformed Hesse-Darmstadt from a monarchy to a republic, which officially renamed itself to "Volksstaat Hessen" (People's State of Hesse). The parts of Hesse-Darmstadt on the western banks of the Rhine (province Rheinhessen) were occupied by French troops until 1930 under the terms of the Versailles peace treaty that officially ended WWI in 1919.

After World War II the Hessian territory left of the Rhine was again occupied by France, whereas the rest of the country was part of the US occupation zone. The French separated their part of Hesse from the rest of the country and incorporated it into the newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz). The United States, on the other side, proclaimed the state of Greater Hesse (Groß-Hessen) on 19 September 1945, out of Hesse-Darmstadt and most of the former Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. On December 4, 1946 Groß-Hessen was officially renamed Hessen.

Geography

Situated in west-central Germany, Hesse state borders the German states of (starting in the north and proceeding clockwise) Lower Saxony, Thuringia, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia.

The principal cities of Hessen include Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, Offenbach, Hanau, Gießen, Wetzlar, and Limburg in the greater Rhine Main Area, Fulda in the east, and Kassel and Marburg an der Lahn in the north.

The most important rivers in Hesse are the Fulda and Eder rivers in the north, the Lahn in the central part of Hesse, and the Main and Rhine in the south. The countryside is hilly and there are numerous mountain ranges, including the Rhön, the Westerwald, the Taunus, the Vogelsberg, the Knüll and the Spessart.

Most of the population of Hesse is in the southern part of Hesse in the Rhine Main Area. The Rhine borders Hesse on the southwest without running through the state, only one old arm – the so-called Alt-Rhein – runs through Hesse. The mountain range between the Main and the Neckar river is called the Odenwald. The plain in between the rivers Main, Rhine and Neckar, and the Odenwald mountains is called the Ried.

Hesse is the greenest state in Germany. Forest covers 42% of the state.

Administration of the State of Hessen

Hesse is divided into 21 districts and 5 independent cities (with their abbreviations, as used on vehicle number plates): {| |----- | valign="top" |

1. Bergstraße (Heppenheim) (HP)
2. Darmstadt-Dieburg (Darmstadt) (DA)
3. Groß-Gerau (Groß-Gerau) (GG)
4. Hochtaunuskreis (Bad Homburg) (HG)
5. Main-Kinzig-Kreis (Gelnhausen) (MKK)
6. Main-Taunus-Kreis (Hofheim am Taunus) (MTK)
7. Odenwaldkreis (Erbach) (ERB)
8. Offenbach (Dietzenbach) (OF)
9. Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis (Bad Schwalbach) (RÜD)
10. Wetteraukreis (Friedberg) (FB)
11. Gießen (Gießen) (GI)
12. Lahn-Dill-Kreis (Wetzlar) (LDK)
13. Limburg-Weilburg (Limburg) (LM)
14. Marburg-Biedenkopf (Marburg) (MR)
15. Vogelsbergkreis (Lauterbach) (VB)
16. Fulda (Fulda) (FD)
17. Hersfeld-Rotenburg (Bad Hersfeld) (HEF)
18. Kassel (Kassel) (KS)
19. Schwalm-Eder-Kreis (Homberg (Efze)) (HR)
20. Werra-Meißner-Kreis (Eschwege) (ESW)
21. Waldeck-Frankenberg (Korbach) (KB) |} Independent cities: #Darmstadt (DA) #Frankfurt am Main (F) #Kassel (KS) #Offenbach am Main (OF) #Wiesbaden (WI) {| width=100% | |}

    Rhenish Hesse

    Rhenish Hesse () refers to the part of the former Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt located west of the Rhine river and now part of Rhineland-Palatinate. It is a hilly countryside largely devoted to vineyards; therefore, it is also called the "land of the thousand hills." Its larger towns include Mainz, Worms, Bingen, Alzey, Nieder-Olm and Ingelheim. Many inhabitants commute to work in Mainz, Wiesbaden, or Frankfurt.

    Administration of Rhenish Hesse

    Rhenish Hesse contains a number of municipalities and has no specific overall government. It was previously part of the government area of Rheinhessen-Pfalz. However, the state of Rheinland-Palatinate no longer uses this area for administrative purposes.

    Politics

    The Politics of Hesse takes place within a framework of a federal parliamentary representative democratic republic, where the Federal Government of Germany exercises sovereign rights with certain powers reserved to the states of Germany including Hesse. The state has a multi-party system where the two main parties were long the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the leftist Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). However, this changed in 2009, when support for the SPD collapsed after a political crisis in 2008. There are now five parties in the Hesse Landtag.

    Most recent state election

    Although the government under Minister-President, Roland Koch (CDU), lost their majority in the state diet Landtag of Hesse following the 2008 Landtag election, their rival parties were unable to form a government. A snap election was held in 2009, which enabled the CDU again to form a government with the FDP. In May 2010, Koch announced his resignation from the post of Minister-President as well as his retirement from politics. His successor is Volker Bouffier.

    The party strengths in the 2009 election were as follows:

    Culture

    The cultural region of Hesse extends into Rhenish Hesse which is in Rhineland-Palatinate. The oldest and second largest Hessian city of Mainz is in Rhenish Hesse. The locals speak a Rhine Franconian dialect known as Hessisch.

    State anthem

    The official anthem of Hesse is called "Hessenlied" (Song of Hesse), and was written by Albrecht Brede (music) and Carl Preser (lyrics).

    TV and radio stations

    Hessischer Rundfunk (HR) is the main ARD broadcaster in Hesse, providing a statewide TV programme as well as its regional radio stations (HR 1, HR 2, HR 3, HR 4, you fm and HR info). Other than HR, ZDF and other privately run TV stations flourish. Among the commercial radio stations that are active in Hesse are Hit Radio FFH, Planet Radio, Harmony FM, Radio BOB and Main FM.

    Economy

    Hesse is one of the largest and healthiest economies in Germany. Its GDP in 2009 exceeded 217 billion Euros (about 300 bn US$). This makes Hesse itself one of the largest economies in Europe and the 31st largest in the world. Some large companies headquarted in Hesse include Opel, Merck, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Fraport, Fresenius, Sanofi Aventis, Procter & Gamble, B. Braun and Deutsche Börse. After figures among the GDP per capita, Hesse is the wealthiest State in Germany.

    Traffic and public transportation

    Hesse has one of the best transportation networks in Europe. Many trans-European and German motorways, high-speed train, and waterways lines cross Hesse. Frankfurt International Airport is Germany's largest and Europe's third largest airport (after London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle). Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof is Germany's second busiest railway station by passengers but the busiest in terms of traffic.

    Motorways

    Hesse has a dense highway network with a total of 24 motorways. The internationally important motorway routes through Hesse are the A3, A5, and A7. Close to the airport of Frankfurt is the Frankfurter Kreuz, Germany's busiest and one of Europe's busiest motorway junction, where the motorways A3 (Arnhem-Cologne-Frankfurt-Nuremberg-Passau) and A5 (Hattenbach-Frankfurt-Karlsruhe-Basel) intersect. The A5 becomes as large as 4 lanes in each direction near the city of Frankfurt am Main. During the rush-hour its possible to use the emergency lanes on the A3 and A5 motorway in the Rhine-Main Region. In fact of this, the Motorways had 4 lanes in each direction.

    Death penalty

    Death penalty in Hesse is still present in article 21 of the Hessian constitution but it's not applied at all. According to article 102 of the Grundgesetz (basic law) death penalty is not allowed in Germany. The reason is that if something is not allowed by the Grundgesetz it's also not allowed in any German state law like the Hessian constitution (German principle "Bundesrecht bricht Landesrecht" → literally Federal law breaks state law). In addition to the Grundgesetz death penalty cannot be applied in Germany because the modern German criminal code doesn't know any death penalty as punishment, while earlier versions of the German criminal code (until 1953) knew death penalty as possible sentence for murder.

    The Hessian constitution was written in 1946, three years before the Grundgesetz (1949), so some older laws like death penalty have been kept until today.

    Article 21 of the Hessian constitution

    Original text:

    # "Ist jemand einer strafbaren Handlung für schuldig befunden worden, so können ihm auf Grund der Strafgesetze durch richterliches Urteil die Freiheit und die bürgerlichen Ehrenrechte entzogen oder beschränkt werden. Bei besonders schweren Verbrechen kann er zum Tode verurteilt werden." # "Die Strafe richtet sich nach der Schwere der Tat." # "Alle Gefangenen sind menschlich zu behandeln. "

    English translation:

    # "If somebody has been found guilty for a punishable act his freedom and civil rights can be deprived or limited by a judicial sentence based on the penal laws. In case of notably hard crimes he can be sentenced to death." # "Sentence goes by the heaviness of crime." # "All prisoners must be treated with humanity."

    Article 102 of the Grundgesetz

    Original text:

    "Die Todesstrafe ist abgeschafft."

    English translation:

    "Death penalty is abolished."

    Public discussion in Hesse

    There is still a public discussion in Hesse about abolishing death penalty. Some people think that article 21 of the Hessian constitution should be ceased (if there is no death penalty at all it cannot be administered at all). Ceasing death penalty from the Hessian constitution requires a referendum in Hesse. Bavaria held a referendum in 1998 to cease death penalty successfully from its constitution and the Saarland dropped the passage of death penalty during reunion with Germany in 1956.

    See also

22. Landgraviate of Hesse
23. Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt
24. Hesse-Kassel
25. Hessische Bergstrasse
26. List of mountains in Hesse

References

External links

27. Official government portal
28. Wiki about Hesse in Hessian language

Category:States of Germany Category:NUTS 1 statistical regions of the European Union Category:Chatti

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Coordinates	44°25′57″N26°6′14″N
name	Hermann Hesse
birth date	July 02, 1877
birth place	Calw, Württemberg, Germany
death date	August 09, 1962
death place	Montagnola, Switzerland
occupation	Novelist, short story author, essayist, poet
nationality	German, Swiss
period	1904–1953
genre	Fiction
notableworks	The Glass Bead Game, Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha
awards
influences	Plato, Spinoza, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, J.P. Jacobsen, Burckhardt, Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy, Carl Jung
signature	Hesse Signature.svg }}

Hermann Hesse () (July 2, 1877 – August 9, 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. His best-known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi), each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality.

Biography

Family background

Hermann Hesse was born on 2 July 1877 in the Black Forest town of Calw in Württemberg, Germany. Both of Hesse's parents served in India at a mission under the auspices of the Basel Mission, a Protestant Christian missionary society. Hesse's mother, Marie Gundert, was born at such a mission in India in 1842. In describing her own childhood, she said, "A happy child I was not..." As was usual among missionaries at the time, she was left behind in Europe at the age of four when her parents went to India. In her teens she attempted to rebel against her authoritarian father, Hermann Gundert but finally submitted.

Hesse's father, Johannes Hesse, the son of a doctor, was born in 1847 in the Estonian town of Paide (Weissenstein). In his own way, Dr. Hesse was just as tyrannical as Dr. Gundert. Once Johannes was married, he moved into his father-in-law's house. Due at least in part to the crowded conditions there, in 1889 he suffered his first bout of deep depression. He continued to have such attacks of "melancholia, weeping and headaches" the rest of his life.

Since Johannes Hesse belonged to the sizable German minority in that part of the Baltic region, which was then under the rule of the Russian Empire, his son Hermann was at birth both a citizen of the German Empire and of Russian Empire. Hesse had five siblings, two of whom died in infancy. In 1873, the Hesse family moved to Calw, where his father worked for the Calwer Verlagsverein, a publishing house specializing in theological texts and schoolbooks. Hesse's grandfather Hermann Gundert managed the publishing house at the time, and Johannes Hesse succeeded him in 1893.

Hesse grew up in a household pervaded with the spirit of Swabian Pietism, with its strong tendency to insulate believers into small, deeply thoughtful groups. Furthermore, Hesse described his father's Baltic German heritage as "an important and potent fact" of his developing identity. His father, Hesse stated, "always seemed like a very polite, very foreign, lonely, little-understood guest." His father's tales from Estonia instilled a contrasting sense of religion in young Hermann. "[It was] an exceedingly cheerful, and, for all its Christianity, a merry world... We wished for nothing so longingly as to be allowed to see this Estonia ... where life was so paradisiacal, so colorful and happy." Hermann Hesse's sense of estrangement from the Swabian petty bourgeoisie further grew through his relationship with his grandmother Julie Gundert, née Dubois, whose French-Swiss heritage kept her from ever quite fitting in among that milieu.

From early on, Hermann Hesse appeared headstrong and hard for his family to handle. In a letter to her husband Johannes Hesse, Hermann's mother Marie wrote: "The little fellow has a life in him, an unbelievable strength, a powerful will, and, for his four years of age, a truly astonishing mind. How can he express all that? It truly gnaws at my life, this internal fighting against his tyrannical temperament, his passionate turbulence [...] God must shape this prideful spirit, then it will become something noble and magnificent -- but I shudder to think what this young and passionate person might become should his upbringing be false or weak." thumb|200px|right|Hesse's birthplace, 2007 He showed signs of serious depression as early as first grade. In his juvenilia collection Gerbersau, Hermann Hesse vividly describes experiences and anecdotes from his childhood and youth in Calw: the atmosphere and adventures by the river, the bridge, the chapel, the houses leaning closely together, hidden nooks and crannies, as well as the inhabitants with their admirable qualities, their oddities, and their idiosyncrasies. The fictional town Gerbersau is pseudonymous for Calw, imitating the real name of a nearby town called Hirsau. It is derived from the German words gerber, meaning "tanner," and aue, meaning "meadow." Calw had a centuries-old tanners' trade, and, during Hesse's childhood, the tanneries' influence on the town was still very much in evidence. Hesse's favorite place in Calw was the St. Nicholas-Bridge (Nikolausbrücke), which is why the Hesse monument by the sculptor Kurt Tassotti was erected there in 2002.

Hermann Hesse's grandfather Hermann Gundert, a doctor of philosophy and fluent in multiple languages, encouraged the boy to read widely, giving him access to his library, which was filled with the works of world literature. All this instilled a sense in Hermann Hesse that he was a citizen of the world. His family background became, he noted, "the basis of an isolation and a resistance to any sort of nationalism that so defined my life."

Young Hermann shared a love of music with his mother. Both music and poetry were important with his family. His mother wrote poetry and his father was known for his use of language in both his sermons and the writing of religious tracts. His first role model for becoming an artist was his half-brother, Theo, who rebelled against the family by entering a music conservatory in 1885. Hermann showed a precocious ability to rhyme, and by 1889-90 had decided that he wanted to be a writer.

Education

In 1881, when Hesse was four, the family moved to Basel, Switzerland, staying for six years and then returning to Calw. After successful attendance at the Latin School in Göppingen, Hesse began to attend the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Maulbronn Abbey in 1891. Here, in March 1892, Hesse showed his rebellious character, and, in one instance, he fled from the Seminary and was found in a field a day later. Hesse began a journey through various institutions and schools and experienced intense conflicts with his parents. In May, after an attempt at suicide, he spent time at an institution in Bad Boll under the care of theologian and minister Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt. Later, he was placed in a mental institution in Stetten im Remstal, and then a boys' institution in Basel. At the end of 1892, he attended the Gymnasium in Cannstatt. In 1893, he passed the One Year Examination, which concluded his schooling. It was also in '93 that he began hanging out with older companions and took up drinking and smoking.

After this, Hesse began a bookshop apprenticeship in Esslingen am Neckar, but, after three days, he left. Then, in the early summer of 1894, he began a 14-month mechanic apprenticeship at a clock tower factory in Calw. The monotony of soldering and filing work made him resolve to turn himself toward more spiritual activities. In October 1895, he was ready to begin wholeheartedly a new apprenticeship with a bookseller in Tübingen. This experience from his youth he returns to later in his novel Beneath the Wheel.

Becoming a writer

On 17 October 1895, Hesse began working in the bookshop in Tübingen, which had a specialized collection in theology, philology, and law. Hesse's tasks consisted of organizing, packing, and archiving the books. After the end of each twelve-hour workday, Hesse pursued his own work further, and he spent his long, idle Sundays with books rather than friends. Hesse studied theological writings and later Goethe, Lessing, Schiller, and several texts on Greek mythology. He also began reading Nietzsche in '95, and that philosopher's ideas of "dual...impulses of passion and order" in humankind was a heavy influence on most of his novels.

By 1898, Hesse had a respectable income that enabled financial independence from his parents. During this time, he concentrated on the works of the German Romantics, including much of the work from Clemens Brentano, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, Friedrich Hölderlin and Novalis. In letters to his parents, he expressed a belief that "the morality of artists is replaced by aesthetics."

During this time, he was introduced to the home of Fraulein von Reutern, a friend of his family. There he met with young people of his own age. His relationships with his contemporaries was "problematic," in that most of them were now at university. This usually left him feeling awkward in social situations.

In 1896, his poem "Madonna" appeared in a Viennese periodical. In the autumn, Hesse released his first small volume of poetry, Romantic Songs. In 1897, a published poem of his, "Grand Valse," drew him a fan letter. It was from Helene Voigt, who the next year married Eugen Diederichs, a young publisher. To please his wife, Diederichs agreed to publish Hesse's collection of prose entitled One Hour After Midnight in 1898 (although it is dated 1899). Both works were a business failure. In two years, only 54 of the 600 printed copies of Romantic Songs were sold, and One Hour After Midnight received only one printing and sold sluggishly. Furthermore, Hesse "suffered a great shock" when his mother disapproved of "Romantic Songs" on the grounds that they were too secular and even "vaguely sinful."

From the autumn of 1899, Hesse worked in a distinguished antique book shop in Basel. Through family contacts, he stayed with the intellectual families of Basel. In this environment with rich stimuli for his pursuits, he further developed spiritually and artistically. At the same time, Basel offered the solitary Hesse many opportunities for withdrawal into a private life of artistic self-exploration, journeys and wanderings. In 1900, Hesse was exempted from compulsory military service due to an eye condition. This, along with nerve disorders and persistent headaches, affected him his entire life.

In 1901, Hesse undertook to fulfill a long-held dream and travelled for the first time to Italy. In the same year, Hesse changed jobs and began working at the antiquarium Wattenwyl in Basel. Hesse had more opportunities to release poems and small literary texts to journals. These publications now provided honorariums. His new bookstore agreed to publish his next work, Posthumous Writings and Poems of Hermann Lauscher. In 1902, his mother died after a long and painful illness. He could not bring himself to attend her funeral, afraid that it would worsen his depression.

Due to the good notices he received for Lauscher, the publisher Samuel Fischer became interested in Hesse and, with the novel Peter Camenzind, which appeared first as a pre-publication in 1903 and then as a regular printing by Fischer in 1904, came a breakthrough: from now on, Hesse could make a living as a writer. The novel became popular throughout Germany. Sigmund Freud "praised Peter Camenzind as one of his favorite readings."

Between Lake Constance and India

With the literary fame, Hesse married Maria Bernoulli (of the famous family of mathematicians) in 1904, settled down with her in Gaienhofen on Lake Constance, and began a family, eventually having three sons. In Gaienhofen, he wrote his second novel, Beneath the Wheel, which was published in 1906. In the following time, he composed primarily short stories and poems. His story "The Wolf," written in 1906-07, was "quite possibly" a foreshadowing of Steppenwolf.

His next novel, Gertrude, published in 1910, revealed a production crisis, he had to struggle through writing it, and he later would describe it as "a miscarriage". Gaienhofen was the place where Hesse's interest in Buddhism was re-sparked. Following a letter to Kapff in 1895 entitled Nirvana, Hesse ceased alluding to Buddhist references in his work. In 1904, however, Arthur Schopenhauer and his philosophical ideas started receiving attention again, and Hesse discovered theosophy. Schopenhauer and theosophy renewed Hesse's interest in India. Although it was many years before the publication of Hesse's Siddhartha (1922), this masterpiece was to be derived from these new influences.

During this time, there also was increased dissonance between him and Maria, and in 1911 Hesse left for a long trip to Sri Lanka and Indonesia. He also visited Sumatra, Borneo, and Burma, but "the physical experience... was to depress him." Any spiritual or religious inspiration that he was looking for eluded him, but the journey made a strong impression on his literary work. Following Hesse's return, the family moved to Bern (1912), but the change of environment could not solve the marriage problems, as he himself confessed in his novel Rosshalde from 1914.

During the First World War

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Hesse registered himself as a volunteer with the Imperial army, saying that he could not sit inactively by a warm fireplace while other young authors were dying on the front. He was however, found unfit for combat duty, but was assigned to service involving the care of war prisoners. In September 1914, Hesse wrote an essay entitled "O Friends, Not These Tones" ("O Freunde, nicht diese Töne"), which was published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, on November 3. In this essay he appealed to German intellectuals not to fall for patriotism. He called for subdued voices and a recognition of Europe's common heritage. What followed from this, Hesse later indicated, was a great turning point in his life: For the first time, he found himself in the middle of a serious political conflict, attacked by the German press, the recipient of hate mail, and distanced from old friends. He did receive continued support from his friend Theodor Heuss, and the French writer Romain Rolland, who visited Hesse in August 1915. In 1917, Hesse wrote to Rolland, "The attempt...to apply love to matters political has failed."

This public controversy was not yet resolved when a deeper life crisis befell Hesse with the death of his father on 8 March 1916, the serious sickness of his son Martin, and his wife's schizophrenia. He was forced to leave his military service and begin receiving psychotherapy. This began for Hesse a long preoccupation with psychoanalysis, through which he came to know Carl Jung personally, and was challenged to new creative heights. During a three-week period in September and October 1917, Hesse penned his novel Demian, which would be published following the armistice in 1919 under the pseudonym Emil Sinclair.

Casa Camuzzi

By the time Hesse returned to civilian life in 1919, his marriage had shattered. His wife had a severe episode of psychosis, but, even after her recovery, Hesse saw no possible future with her. Their home in Bern was divided, and Hesse resettled alone in the middle of April in Ticino. He occupied a small farm house near Minusio (close to Locarno), living from 25 April to 11 May in Sorengo. On 11 May, he moved to the town Montagnola and rented four small rooms in a castle-like building, the Casa Camuzzi. Here, he explored his writing projects further; he began to paint, an activity reflected in his next major story, "Klingsor's Last Summer", published in 1920. In 1922, Hesse's novel Siddhartha appeared, which showed the love for Indian culture and Buddhist philosophy that had already developed in his earlier life. In 1924, Hesse married the singer Ruth Wenger, the daughter of the Swiss writer Lisa Wenger and aunt of Meret Oppenheim. This marriage never attained any stability, however.

In 1923, Hesse received Swiss citizenship. His next major works, Kurgast (1925) and The Nuremberg Trip (1927), were autobiographical narratives with ironic undertones and foreshadowed Hesse's following novel, Steppenwolf, which was published in 1927. In the year of his 50th birthday, the first biography of Hesse appeared, written by his friend Hugo Ball. Shortly after his new successful novel, he turned away from the solitude of Steppenwolf and married art historian Ninon Dolbin, née Ausländer. This change to companionship was reflected in the novel Narcissus and Goldmund, appearing in 1930. In 1931, Hesse left the Casa Camuzzi and moved with Ninon to a large house (Casa Hesse) near Montagnola, which was built according to his wishes.

In 1931, Hesse began planning what would become his last major work, The Glass Bead Game (aka Magister Ludi). In 1932, as a preliminary study, he released the novella Journey to the East. The Glass Bead Game was printed in 1943 in Switzerland. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.

Later life and death

Hesse observed the rise to power of Nazism in Germany with concern. In 1933, Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann made their travels into exile and, in both cases, were aided by Hesse. In this way, Hesse attempted to work against Hitler's suppression of art and literature that protested Nazi ideology. "[H]is third wife ..was Jewish and his opposition to anti-Semitism was expressed publicly long before then." Hesse was criticized for not condemning the Nazi party, but his failure to criticize or support any political idea stemmed from his "politics of detachment [...] At no time did he openly condemn (the Nazis), although his detestation of their politics is beyond question." From the end of the 1930s, German journals stopped publishing Hesse's work, and it was eventually banned by the Nazis.

The Glass Bead Game was Hesse's last novel. During the last twenty years of his life, Hesse wrote many short stories (chiefly recollections of his childhood) and poems (frequently with nature as their theme). Hesse wrote ironic essays about his alienation from writing (for instance, the mock autobiographies: Life Story Briefly Told and Aus den Briefwechseln eines Dichters) and spent much time pursuing his interest in watercolours. Hesse also occupied himself with the steady stream of letters he received as a result of the Nobel Prize, and as a new generation of German readers explored his work. In one essay, Hesse reflected wryly on his lifelong failure to acquire a talent for idleness and speculated that his average daily correspondence was in excess of 150 pages. He died on 9 August 1962 and was buried in the cemetery at San Abbondio in Montagnola, where Hugo Ball is also buried.

Throughout Germany, many schools are named after him. In 1964, the Calwer Hermann-Hesse-Preis was founded, which is awarded every two years, alternately to a German-language literary journal or to the translator of Hesse's work to a foreign language. There is also a Hermann Hesse prize associated with the city of Karlsruhe.

Influence

Following the death of Hesse in 1962, his novels saw a revival in popularity because of their association with some of the popular themes of the 1960s counterculture (or hippie) movement. In particular, the quest-for-enlightenment theme of Siddhartha, Journey to the East, and Narcissus and Goldmund resonated with those espousing counter-cultural ideals. The "magic theatre" sequences in Steppenwolf were interpreted by some as drug-induced psychedelia. These and other Hesse novels were republished in paperback editions and were widely read by university students and young people in the United States and elsewhere.

Hesse's Siddhartha is one of the most popular Western novels set in India. An authorized translation of Siddhartha was published in the Malayalam language in 1990, the language that surrounded Hesse's grandfather, Hermann Gundert, for most of his life. A Hermann Hesse Society of India has also been formed. It aims to bring out authentic translations of Siddhartha in all Indian languages. It has already prepared the Sanskrit translation of Siddhartha.

One enduring monument to Hesse's lasting popularity in the United States is the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. Referring to "The Magic Theatre for Madmen Only" in Steppenwolf (a kind of spiritual and somewhat nightmarish cabaret attended by some of the characters, including Harry Haller), the Magic Theatre was founded in 1967 to perform works by new playwrights. Founded by John Lion, the Magic Theatre has fulfilled that mission for many years, including the world premieres of many plays by Sam Shepard.

Awards

1906 - Bauernfeld-Preis

1928 - Mejstrik-Preis of the Schiller Foundation in Vienna

1936 - Gottfried-Keller-Preis

1946 - Goethe Prize

1946 - Nobel Prize in Literature

1947 - Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bern

1950 - Wilhelm-Raabe-Preis

1954 - Pour le Mérite

1955 - Peace Prize of the German Book Trade

Bibliography

(1899) Eine Stunde hinter Mitternacht. Novella.

(1900) Hermann Lauscher

(1904) Peter Camenzind

(1906) Unterm Rad (Beneath the Wheel also published as The Prodigy)

(1908) Freunde. Novella.

(1910) Gertrud

(1914) Roßhalde

(1915) ''Knulp. (“Three Tales from the Life of Knulp”)

(1916) Schön ist die Jugend. Novella.

(1919) Demian (published under the pen name Emil Sinclair)

(1919) Klein und Wagner

(1920) Klingsors letzter Sommer (Klingsor's Last Summer)

(1922) Siddhartha

(1927) Der Steppenwolf

(1930) Narziß und Goldmund (Narcissus and Goldmund) (also published as Death and the Lover)

(1932) Die Morgenlandfahrt (Journey to the East)

(1943) Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game) (also published as Magister Ludi)

Sources

Freedman, Ralph, Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of Crisis: A Biography, Pantheon Books, NY 1978

References

External links

Complete bibliography at Nobelprize.org

Poems in Dedication to Hermann Hesse, with some of his own incorporated throughout, in English and German, webmastered by S. Wolf Britain, human- and civil-rights advocate

Hermann Hesse Page - in German and English, maintained by Professor Gunther Gottschalk

Hermann Hesse Portal

Community of the Journeyer to the East - in German and English

Concise Biography - originally published by the Germanic American Institute, by Paul A. Schons

Article at Books and Writers

The painter Hermann Hesse Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf, Germany

Audio recording in English of Siddhartha from Librivox.org

Category:1877 births Category:1962 deaths Category:19th-century German people Category:20th-century German people Category:19th-century writers Category:20th-century writers Category:19th-century poets Category:20th-century poets Category:19th-century painters Category:20th-century painters Category:Nobel laureates in Literature Category:German Nobel laureates Category:German novelists Category:German painters Category:German poets Category:Swiss-German people Category:Swiss novelists Category:Swiss painters Category:Swiss people of German descent Category:Swiss poets Category:Western mystics Category:Baltic Germans Category:People of Baltic German descent Category:German people of Estonian descent Category:Recipients of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade Category:Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Category:People from the Kingdom of Württemberg Category:People from Calw Category:Swiss Nobel laureates

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Coordinates	44°25′57″N26°6′14″N
bgcolour	#6495ED
name	Eva Hesse
birth date	January 11, 1936
birth place	Hamburg, Germany
death date	May 29, 1970
nationality	American
field	Sculpture
training	Yale University, studied with Josef Albers at Yale, Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, Art Students League of New York
movement	Postminimalism
influenced	Pioneer of Feminism in the art world
awards	}}

Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 – May 29, 1970), was a German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics.

Early life

Hesse was born into a family of observant Jews in Hamburg, Germany. When Hesse was two years old in December 1938, her parents, hoping to flee from Nazi Germany, sent Eva and her older sister to the Netherlands via Kindertransport. After a few months of separation, the reunited family moved to England and then, in 1939, emigrated to New York City, where they settled into Manhattan's Washington Heights. In 1944 Hesse's parents separated, her father remarried in 1945 and her mother committed suicide in 1946.

Career

After graduating from New York's School of Industrial Art in 1952, Hesse studied at New York's Pratt Institute (1952–1953) and Cooper Union (1954–1957), then at the Yale School of Art and Architecture (1957–1959), where she studied under Josef Albers and received a B.F.A. Upon returning to New York she made friends with many young artists. In 1961, she met and married sculptor Tom Doyle. In August 1962 Eva Hesse and Tom Doyle participated in an Allan Kaprow Happening at the Art Students League of New York in Woodstock, New York. There Hesse made her first three dimensional piece: a costume for the Happening. In 1963 Eva Hesse had a one-person show of works on paper at the Allan Stone Gallery on New York's Upper East Side.

The couple—whose marriage was coming apart—lived and worked in an abandoned textile mill in the Ruhr region of Germany for about a year during 1964–1965. Hesse was not happy to be back in Germany, but began sculpting with materials that had been left behind in the abandoned factory: first relief sculptures made of cloth-covered cord, electrical wire, and masonite, with playful titles like Eighter from Decatur and Oomamaboomba. Returning to New York City in 1965 she began working in the materials that would become characteristic of her work: latex, fiberglass, and plastics. Eva Hesse had also an interest in drawing as evinced by her numerous workbooks.

She was associated with the mid-1960s postminimal anti-form trend in sculpture, participating in New York exhibits such as "Eccentric Abstraction" and "Abstract Inflationism and Stuffed Expressionism" (both 1966). In September 1968 Eva Hesse began teaching at the School of Visual Arts. Her only one-person show of sculpture in her lifetime was "Chain Polymers" at the Fischbach Gallery on W. 57th Street in New York in November 1968; her large piece Expanded Expansion showed at the Whitney Museum in the 1969 exhibit "Anti-Illusion: Process/Materials". There have been dozens of major posthumous exhibitions in the United States and Europe, including at The Guggenheim Museum (1972, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002), The Drawing Center in New York (2006) and the Jewish Museum of New York (2006).

Except for fiberglass, most of her favored materials age badly, so much of her work presents conservators with an enormous challenge. Arthur Danto, writing of the Jewish Museum's 2006 retrospective, refers to "the discolorations, the slackness in the membrane-like latex, the palpable aging of the material… Yet somehow the work does not feel tragic. Instead it is full of life, of eros, even of comedy… Each piece in the show vibrates with originality and mischief."

In 1969 she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Her death in 1970 at age 34 ended a career spanning only ten years.

Legacy

Her art is often viewed in light of all the painful struggles of her life including escaping the Nazis, her parents' divorce, the suicide of her mother when she was ten, her failed marriage and the death of her father. Danto describes her as "cop[ing] with emotional chaos by reinventing sculpture through aesthetic insubordination, playing with worthless material amid the industrial ruins of a defeated nation that, only two decades earlier, would have murdered her without a second thought." She also always felt she was fighting for recognition in a male dominated art world.

Hesse is one of a few artists who led the move from Minimalism to Postminimalism. Danto distinguishes it from minimalism by its "mirth and jokiness" and "unmistakable whiff of eroticism", its "nonmechanical repetition". She was influenced by, and in turn influenced, many famous artists of the 1960s through today. For many artists and friends who knew her, Eva Hesse was so charismatic that her spirit remains simply unforgettable to this day.

See also

List of notable brain tumor patients

Bibliography

Art Talk: Conversations with Barbara Hepworth, Sonia Delaunay, Louise Nevelson, Lee Krasner, Alice Neel, Grace Hartigan, Marisol, Eva Hesse, Lila Katzen, Eleanor Antin, Audrey Flack, Nancy Grossman. 1975 New York; Charles Scribner's Sons. 201-224pps. Reprinted Art Talk: Conversations: Conversations with 15 Women Artists. 1995 IconEditions, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. 173-199pps.

Corby, Vanessa. Eva Hesse: Longing, Belonging, and Displacement (I.B. Tauris, 2010) 250 pages; focus on drawings from 1960–61

Eva Hesse. 1976 New York; New York University Press / 1992 Da Capo Press, Inc. Lucy R. Lippard. illus. Trade Paper. 251p.

Eva Hesse Sculpture. 1992 Timken Publishers, Inc. Bill Barrette. illus. Trade Paper. 274p.

Eva Hesse Paintings, 1960–1964. 1992 Robert Miller Gallery. Max Kozloff. Edited by John Cheim and Nathan Kernan. illus. Trade Cloth. 58p.

Four Artists: Robert Ryman, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg. Michael Blackwood Productions, Inc. Color VHS 45 min.

Busch, Julia M., A decade of sculpture: the 1960s (The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia; Associated University Presses: London, 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-1

Willson, William S., ""Eva Hesse: On the Threshold of Illusions", in :Inside the Visible edited by Catherine de Zegher, MIT Press, 1996.

de Zegher, Catherine (ed.), Eva Hesse Drawing. NY/New Haven: The Drawing Center/Yale University Press, 2005. (Including essays by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Briony Fer, Mignon Nixon, Bracha Ettinger). ISBN 0-300-11618-7

Griselda Pollock with Vanessa Corby (eds.), Encountering Eva Hesse. London and Munich: Prestel, 2006.

Notes

References

Arthur C. Danto, "All About Eva", The Nation, July 17/24, 2006, p. 30–34. Posted online June 28, 2006.

Lucy R. Lippard, EVA HESSE. 1992 Da Capo Press, Inc. illus. Trade Paper. 251p.

SFMOMA | Exhibitions | Exhibition Overview | Eva Hesse (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art February 2, 2002 — May 19, 2002 exhibition). Accessed online 19 September 2006.

External links

Eva Hesse: Random Notes Essay by Leslie Dick published in X-TRA

Source with some more references

Category:1936 births Category:1970 deaths Category:American women artists Category:Feminist artists Category:American sculptors Category:Artists from New York Category:People from Manhattan Category:German Jews who emigrated to the United States to escape Nazism Category:American people of German-Jewish descent Category:Jewish American artists Category:Jewish sculptors Category:Faculty of Art Students League of New York Category:Art Students League of New York alumni Category:Cooper Union alumni Category:Yale University alumni Category:People from Hamburg

de:Eva Hesse (Künstlerin) es:Eva Hesse fr:Eva Hesse it:Eva Hesse hu:Eva Hesse nl:Eva Hesse ja:エヴァ・ヘス sv:Eva Hesse

{|align=right |

Coordinates	44°25′57″N26°6′14″N
{{infobox royalty|consort	yes
name	Alexandra Feodorovna
birth name
imgw	200px
succession	Empress consort of All the Russias
reign	1 November 1894 – 15 March 1917
coronation	14 May 1896
cor-type	Coronation
spouse	Nicholas II of Russia
issue	Grand Duchess Olga NikolaevnaGrand Duchess Tatiana NikolaevnaGrand Duchess Maria NikolaevnaGrand Duchess Anastasia NikolaevnaTsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich
full name	() ()
house	House of Romanov-Holstein-GottorpHouse of Hesse-Darmstadt
father	Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse
mother	Princess Alice of the United Kingdom
birth date	June 06, 1872
birth place	Darmstadt, German Empire
death date	July 17, 1918
death place	Yekaterinburg, Russian SFSR
burial place	Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
religion	Eastern Orthodoxprev. Lutheran

|- | |- |} Alix of Hesse and by Rhine later Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova () (6 June 1872 – 17 July 1918), was Empress consort of Russia as spouse of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of the Russian Empire. Born a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, she was given the name Alexandra Feodorovna upon being received into the Russian Orthodox Church, which canonized her as Saint Alexandra the Passion Bearer in 2000.

Alexandra is best remembered as the last Tsarina of Russia, as one of the most famous royal carriers of the haemophilia disease and for her support of autocratic control over the country. Her notorious friendship with the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin was also an important factor in her life.

Early life

left|thumbnail|180px|Princess Alix of Hesse with her grandmother Queen Victoria and her four older siblings in mourning after the deaths of her mother and sister.Alexandra was born on 6 June 1872 at the New Palace in Darmstadt as Princess Alix Viktoria Helena Luise Beatrice of Hesse and by Rhine, a Grand Duchy that was then part of the German Empire. She was the sixth child among the seven children of Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and by Rhine, and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, the second daughter of Queen Victoria and Albert, the Prince Consort.

Alix was baptized on 1 July 1872 according to the rites of the Lutheran Church and given the names of her mother and each of her mother's four sisters, some of which were transliterated into German. Her godparents were the Prince of Wales, the Princess of Wales, the Tsarevich of Russia, the tsarevna of Russia, Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, the Duchess of Cambridge and Anna of Prussia. Her family nicknamed the girl "Alicky" or "Sunny," a practice picked up later by Nicholas.

In December 1878, diphtheria swept through the grandducal house of Hesse. Alix, her three sisters and her brother Ernst fell ill. Elisabeth, Alix's older sister, had been sent to visit her paternal grandmother, and escaped the outbreak. Alix's mother Alice tended to the children rather than abandon them to doctors. Alice herself soon fell ill with diphtheria and died on the anniversary of her father's death, 14 December 1878, when Alix was only six years old. Alix, Victoria, Irene, and Ernst survived the epidemic, but Princess Marie did not.

Engagement

Alix was married relatively late for her rank in her era, having refused a proposal from Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence (the eldest son of the Prince of Wales) despite strong familial pressure. It is said that Queen Victoria had wanted her two grandchildren to marry, but because she was very fond of Alix she accepted that she did not want to marry him; The Queen even went on to say that she was proud of Alix for standing up to her, something many people, including her own son the Prince of Wales did not do.

Alix however, had already met and fallen in love with Grand Duke Nicholas, heir to the throne of Russia, whose mother was the sister-in-law of Alix's uncle, the Prince of Wales and whose uncle Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was married to Alix's sister Elisabeth. They were also second cousins as they were both great-grandchildren of Princess Wilhelmina of Baden. Nicholas and Alix had first met in 1884 and when Alix returned to Russia in 1889 they fell in love. "It is my dream to one day marry Alix H. I have loved her for a long time, but more deeply and strongly since 1889 when she spent six weeks in Petersburg. For a long time, I have resisted my feeling that my dearest dream will come true." Nicholas wrote in his diary; and Alix reciprocated his feelings. At first, Nicholas' father, Tsar Alexander III, refused the prospect of marriage. Fortunately Helene also resisted. She was Roman Catholic and unwilling to give up her faith to become Russian Orthodox. The tsar then sent emissaries to Princess Margaret of Prussia, daughter of German Emperor Frederick III and sister of German Emperor Wilhelm II. Nicholas flatly declared that he would rather become a monk than marry the plain and boring Margaret. Margaret stated that she was unwilling to give up her Protestant religion to become Russian Orthodox. As long as he was well, Alexander III ignored his son's demands. He only relented as his health began to fail in 1894. Alix was troubled by the requirement that she renounce her Lutheran faith, as a Russian tsarina had to be Orthodox; but she was persuaded and eventually became a fervent convert.

She and Nicholas became engaged in April 1894 in Coburg, Germany.

Empress of Russia

Alexander III died on 1 November 1894 and Nicholas became the Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias at the age of twenty-six. The marriage was not delayed. Alexandra and Nicholas were wed in the Grand Church of the Winter Palace of Saint Petersburg on 26 November 1894. The marriage that began that night remained unflawed for the rest of their lives. It was a Victorian marriage, outwardly serene and proper, but based on intensely passionate physical love.

Her older sister Ella was not only her sister, but her aunt by marriage. In fact, she, like Nicholas was a first cousin to Britain's King George V; Nicholas was a first cousin to three other kings as well: Christian X of Denmark, Constantine I of Greece, and Haakon VII of Norway.

Alix of Hesse accompanied the Imperial family as they returned to Saint Petersburg with the body of the tsar, and it is said that the people greeted their new Empress-to-be with ominous whispers of "She comes to us behind a coffin."

Coronation

Alexandra Feodorovna became Empress of Russia on her wedding day. It was not until 14 May 1896, that the coronation of Nicholas and Alexandra took place inside the Kremlin in Moscow. The following day, tragedy struck the coronation celebrations when the deaths of several thousand peasants became known. The victims were trampled to death at the Khodynka Field in Moscow when they believed there was not enough food for everyone. By the time the police and more cossacks arrived, the meadow resembled a battlefield. By afternoon the city's hospitals were jammed with wounded and everybody knew what had happened. Nicholas and Alexandra were stunned. He declared he could not go to the ball being given that night by the French Ambassador, the Marquis da Montebello. The tsar's uncles urged him to attend not to offend the French. Nicholas gave in and he and Alexandra attended the ball. Sergius Witte commented, "We expected the party would be called off. Instead it took place if nothing had happened and the ball was opened by Their Majesties dancing a quadrille." It was a painful evening. "The Empress appeared in great distress, her eyes reddened by tears" the British Ambassador informed Queen Victoria.

Rejection by the Russians

Unlike her predecessor, Marie Feodorovna (spouse to Alexander III), the new tsarina of Imperial Russia was heartily disliked among the country. As the tsarina, Alexandra seemed very cold and curt with her subjects, although according to her and many other close friends, she was only terribly shy and nervous in front of the Russian people. She felt her feelings were bruised and battered from the Russians' "hateful" nature. She was also frowned upon by the wealthy and poor alike by her distaste for Russian culture, whether it was the food or the manner of dancing. Her inability to produce a son also incensed the people; however, she was very fond of her four daughters. After the birth of the Grand Duchess Olga, Nicholas was reported to have said, "We are grateful she was a daughter; if she was a boy she would have belonged to the people, being a girl she belongs to us." When her 'Sunbeam' Alexei the tsarevitch was born, she further isolated herself from the Russian court by spending nearly all of her time with him, and his haemophiliac disorder did little to distance their close relationship. She associated herself with more solitary figures like Anna Vyrubova and the invalid Princess Sonia Obeliani, rather than the 'frivolous' Russian aristocratic young ladies. These women were constantly ignored by the 'haughty' tsarina, therefore the Romanovs were hated more by her indifference to Russian court society.

Alexandra lived mainly as a recluse during her rule as the tsar's wife. She also was reported to have had a terrible relationship with her mother-in-law, Marie Feodorovna. Marie resented Alexandra for her use of her role as the tsar's young wife. Ironically, unlike other European courts of the day, the Dowager Empress would have more power than the tsarina, and Marie enforced this rule strictly. In royal balls and other formal, Imperial gatherings, Marie would enter on her son's arm, and Alexandra would silently trail behind them. In addition, Alexandra despised the great treatment of Marie by her husband the tsar, which only slightly evaporated after the birth of their five children. On Marie's part, she did not approve of her son's marriage to a German bride, and was appalled at her daughter-in-law's inability to win points with the Russian people. Also, Marie had spent seventeen years in Russia prior to her crowning with Alexander III; Alexandra had a scarce month to learn the rules of the Russian court (which she seldom ever followed), and this might have contributed to her unpopularity. Alexandra was also smart enough not to openly criticize the woman she publicly referred to as "Mother dear."

Alexandra's only real associations were with Nicholas' siblings and a very small number of the otherwise closely-knit Romanov family: Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (husband of Nicholas' sister Xenia), Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich (the most artistic of the Imperial house) and his family, and Grand Duke George Mikhailovich (married to Nicholas' maternal first cousin, Maria of Greece). Alexandra disliked in particular the family of Nicholas' senior uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, and his wife Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who, during the war, openly criticized the Empress; she considered, quite accurately, their sons, Kyrill, Boris and Andrei to be irredeemably immoral and in 1913 refused Boris' proposal for the hand of Grand Duchess Olga.

Alexandra was very supportive of her husband Nicholas, yet she often gave him bad advice. She was a fervent advocate of the "Divine Right To Rule", and believed that it was unnecessary to attempt to secure the approval of the people. Her aunt, German Empress Frederick, wrote to Queen Victoria that "Alix is very Imperious and will always insist on having her own way; she will never yield one iota of power she will imagine she wields..." During World War I, with the national citizens aroused, all the complaints Russians had about the Empress– for instance, her German birth, her poor ideals, her devotion to Rasputin, all circled and twisted around the deadly fates and designs that claimed the entire family and all of their potential descendants.

Relationship with her children

Almost one year after her marriage to the tsar, Alexandra gave birth to the couple's first child: a girl, named Olga, was born on 15 November 1895. Olga could not be the heir presumptive due to the Pauline Laws implemented by tsar Paul I: only a male could succeed to the Russian throne, although there were four female monarchs of Russia before Paul. Olga was well-loved by her young parents. Three more girls followed Olga: Tatiana on 10 June 1897, Maria on 26 June 1899 and Anastasia on 18 June 1901. Three more years passed before the Empress gave birth to the long-awaited heir. Alexei Nikolaevich was born in Peterhof on 12 August 1904. To his parents' dismay, Alexei was born with hemophilia, an incurable bleeding disease.

Grand Duchess Olga was reportedly shy and subdued. As she grew older, Olga read widely, both fiction and poetry, often borrowing books from her mother before the Empress had read them. "You must wait, Mama, until I find out whether this book is a proper one for you to read," Olga wrote. Alexandra was close to her second daughter, Tatiana, who surrounded her mother with unvarying attention. If a favor was needed, all the Imperial children agreed that "Tatiana must ask Papa to grant it." She climbed trees and refused to come down unless specifically commanded to come down by her father. Her aunt and godmother, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, once recalled a time when Anastasia was teasing so ruthlessly that she slapped the child.

When they were children, Alexandra dressed her daughters as pairs, the oldest two and the youngest two wearing matching dresses. As Olga and Tatiana grew older, they played a more serious role in public affairs. Although in private they still referred to their parents as 'Mama' and 'Papa' in public, they referred to them as 'the Empress' and 'the Emperor'.

Alexandra doted on Alexei. The children's tutor, Pierre Gilliard wrote, "Alexei was the center of a united family, the focus of all its hopes and affections. His sisters worshiped him. He was his parents' pride and joy. When he was well, the palace was transformed. Everyone and everything in it seemed bathed in sunshine." Haemophilia was generally fatal in the early 20th century, and had entered The Royal Houses of Europe via the daughters of Queen Victoria, who herself was a carrier. Alexandra had lost a brother, Friedrich, to the disease, as well as an uncle, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany; her sister Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine was also a carrier of the gene and, through her marriage to her cousin Prince Heinrich of Prussia, spread it into a junior branch of the Prussian Royal Family. Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, another of Queen Victoria's granddaughters and a first cousin of Alexandra, was also a carrier of the haemophilia gene. She married King Alfonso XIII of Spain and two of her sons were haemophiliacs. As an incurable and life threatening illness, suffered by the sole male heir, the decision was made to keep the heir's condition secret from the Russian people. As a carrier of the haemophilia gene, Alexandra was not a haemophiliac but she likely produced lower-than-normal clotting factor, having only one normal copy of the gene instead of two. Her status as a carrier, in addition to her worry over her son's health, might have been one reason for her reportedly poor health.

At first Alexandra turned to Russian doctors to treat Alexei. Their treatments generally failed as there was no known cure. Burdened with the knowledge that any fall or cut could actually kill her son, Alexandra herself did even more charity work. She also turned toward God for comfort, familiarizing herself with all the Orthodox Rituals and Saints and spent hours praying in her private chapel for deliverance. In desperation, Alexandra increasingly turned to mystics and so-called holy men. One of these, Grigori Rasputin, appeared to have a success.

Rasputin's debauched lifestyle led Nicholas at times to distance him from the family. Even after Alexandra was told by the director of the national police that a drunk Rasputin exposed himself at a popular Moscow restaurant and bragged to the crowd that Nicholas let him top his wife whenever he wanted, she blamed it on malicious gossip. "Saints are always calumniated." she once wrote. "He is hated because we love him." Nicholas was not nearly as blind, but even he felt powerless to do anything about the man who seemingly saved his only son's life. One minister of Nicholas wrote, " He did not like to send Rasputin away, for if Alexei died, in the eyes of the mother, he would have been the murderer of his own son."

In 1912, Alexei suffered a life-threatening hemorrhage in the thigh while the family were at Spala, Poland. Alexandra and Nicholas took turns at his bedside and tried in vain to comfort him from his intense pain. In one rare moment of peace, Alexei was heard to whisper to his mother, "When I am dead, it will not hurt any more, will it, Mama?" Devastatingly, it seemed to Alexandra that God was not answering her prayers for her son's relief. Believing Alexei would die, Alexandra in desperation sent a telegram to Grigori Rasputin. Right away he sent a reply, "God has seen your tears and heard your prayers. Do not grieve. The Little One will not die. Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much."

World War I

The outbreak of World War I was a pivotal moment for Russia and Alexandra. The war pitted the Russian Empire of the Romanov dynasty against the much stronger German Empire of the Hohenzollern dynasty. When Alexandra learned of the Russian mobilization, she stormed into her husband's study and said: "War! And I know nothing of it! This is the end of everything."

The Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine, ruled by her brother, formed part of the German Empire. This was, of course the place of Alexandra's birth. This made Alexandra very unpopular with the Russian people, who accused her of collaboration with the Germans. The German Emperor, Wilhelm II, was also Alexandra's first cousin. Ironically, one of the few things that Empress Alexandra and her mother-in-law Empress Maria had in common was their utter distaste for Emperor Wilhelm II.

When the tsar travelled to the front line in 1915 to take personal command of the Army, he left Alexandra in charge as Regent in the capital Saint Petersburg. Her brother-in-law, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich recorded, "When the Emperor went to war of course his wife governed instead of him." Alexandra had no experience of government, and constantly appointed and reappointed incompetent new ministers, which meant the government was never stable or efficient. This was particularly dangerous in a war of attrition, as neither the troops nor the civilian population were ever adequately supplied. She paid attention to the self-serving advice of Rasputin, and their relationship was widely, though falsely, believed to be sexual in nature. Alexandra was the focus of ever increasing negative rumors, and widely believed to be a German spy at the Russian court.

Revolution

World War I put what proved to be unbearable burden on Imperial Russia's government and economy, both of which were dangerously weak. Mass shortages and hunger became the daily situation for tens of millions of Russians due to the disruptions of the war economy. Fifteen million men were diverted from agricultural production to fight in the war, and the transportation infrastructure (primarily railroads) were diverted towards war use, exacerbating food shortages in the cities as available agricultural products could not be brought to urban areas. Inflation was rampant which, combined with the food shortages and the poor performance by the Russian military in the war, generated a great deal of anger and unrest among the people in Saint Petersburg and other cities.

The decision of the tsar to take personal command of the military against advice was disastrous as he was directly blamed for all losses. His relocation to the front, leaving the Empress in charge of the government, helped undermine the Romanov dynasty. The poor performance of the military led to rumors believed by the people that the German-born Empress was part of a conspiracy to help Germany win the war. The severe winter of 1916–17 essentially doomed Imperial Russia. Food shortages worsened and famine gripped the cities. The mismanagement and failures of the war turned the soldiers against the tsar. The mood of the army is perhaps captured well by one scene in Jean Renoir's movie, La Grande Illusion. Alexandra sends boxes to Russian prisoners of war. Thrilled to think they are receiving vodka, they open them to discover bibles, and promptly riot.

By March 1917, conditions had worsened. Steelworkers went out on strike on 7 March, and the following day, International Women’s Day, crowds hungry for bread began rioting on the streets of Saint Petersburg to protest food shortages and the war. After two days of rioting, the tsar ordered the Army to restore order and on 11 March they fired on the crowd. That very same day, the Duma, the elected legislature, urged the tsar to take action to ameliorate the concerns of the people. The tsar responded by dissolving the Duma.

On 12 March soldiers sent to suppress the rioting crowds mutinied and joined the rebellion, thus providing the spark to ignite the February Revolution (like the later October Revolution of November 1917, the Russian Revolutions of 1917 get their names due to the Old Style calendar). Soldiers and workers set up the "Petrograd Soviet" of 2,500 elected deputies while the Duma declared a Provisional Government on 13 March. Alexander Kerensky was a key player in the new regime. The Duma informed the tsar that day that he must abdicate.

In an effort to put an end to the uprising in the capital, Nicholas tried to get to Saint Petersburg by train from army headquarters at Mogiliev. The route was blocked so he tried another way. His train was stopped at Pskov where, after receiving advice from his generals, he first abdicated the throne for himself and later, on seeking medical advice, for himself and his son the tsarevich Alexei. Alexandra was now in a perilous position as the wife of the deposed tsar, hated by the Russian people. Nicholas finally was allowed to return to the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo where he was placed under arrest with his family. Despite the fact he was a first cousin of both Nicholas and Alexandra, King George V refused to allow them to evacuate to the United Kingdom, as he was alarmed by their unpopularity in his country and the potential repercussions to his own throne.

Imprisonment

The Provisional Government formed after the revolution kept Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children confined in their primary residence, the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, until they were moved to Tobolsk in Siberia in August 1917, a step by the Kerensky government designed to remove them from the capital and possible harm. From Tobolsk, Alexandra managed to send a letter to sister-in-law, Xenia Alexandrovna, in the Crimea,

"My darling Xenia, My thoughts are with you, how magically good and beautiful everything must be with you – you are the flowers. But it is indescribably painful for the kind motherland, I cannot explain. I am glad for you that you are finally with all your family as you have been apart. I would like to see Olga in all her new big happiness. Everybody is healthy, but myself, during the last 6 weeks I experience nerve pains in my face with toothache. Very tormenting ...

We live quietly, have established ourselves well [in Tobolsk] although it is far, far away from everybody, But God is merciful. He gives us strength and consolation ...."

Alexandra and her family remained in Tobolsk until after the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, but were subsequently moved to Bolshevik controlled Yekaterinburg in 1918. Nicholas was ordered to Ekaterinburg. Alexandra and their daughter Maria went with him arriving at the Ipatiev House on 30 April 1918. On entering their new prison, they were ordered to open all their luggage. Alexandra immediately objected. Nicholas tried to come to her defense saying, "So far we have had polite treatment and men who were gentlemen but now -" The former Tsar was quickly cut off. The guards informed him he was no longer at Tsarskoe Selo and that refusal to comply with their request would result in his removal from the rest of his family; a second offence would be rewarded with hard labour. Fearing for her husband's safety, Alexandra quickly gave in and allowed the search. On the window frame of what was to be her last bedroom in the Ipatiev House, Alexandra scrawled a swastika, her favorite good luck symbol, and pencilled the date 17/30 April 1918.

For the Romanovs, life at the Ipatiev House was a nightmare of uncertainty and fear. The Imperial Family never knew if they would still be in the Ipatiev House from one day to the next or if they might be separated or killed. The privileges allowed to them were few. For an hour each afternoon they could exercise in the rear garden under the watchful eye of the guards. Alexei could still not walk, and his sailor Nagorny had to carry him. Alexandra rarely joined her family in these daily activities. Instead she spent most of her time sitting in a wheelchair, reading the Bible or the works of St. Seraphim. At night the Romanovs played cards or read; they received little mail from the outside world, and the only newspapers they were allowed were outdated editions.

We now know that Lenin personally ordered the execution of the Imperial Family. Although official Soviet accounts place the responsibility for the decision with the Ural Regional Soviet. Leon Trotsky, in his diary, makes it quite clear that the assassination took place on the authority of Lenin. Trotsky wrote,

"My next visit to Moscow took place after the fall of Ekaterinburg. Talking to Sverdlov I asked in passing, "Oh yes, and where is the tsar?" "It's all over," he answered. "He has been shot." "And where is his family?" "And the family with him." "All of them?" I asked, apparently with a touch of surprise. "All of them," replied Sverdlov. "What about it?" He was waiting to see my reaction. I made no reply. "And who made the decision?" I asked. "We decided it here. Ilyich (Lenin) believed that we shouldn't leave The Whites a live banner to rally around, especially under the present difficult circumstances."

On 4 July 1918, Yakov Yurovsky, the chief of the Ekaterinburg Cheka, was appointed commandant of the Ipatiev House. Yurovsky was a loyal Bolshevik, a man Moscow could rely on to carry out its orders regarding The Imperial Family. Yurovsky quickly tightened security. From The Imperial Family he collected all of their jewellery and valuables. These he placed in a box which he sealed and left with the prisoners. Alexandra kept only two bracelets which her uncle, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, had given her as a child and which she could not take off. He did not know that the former tsarina and her daughters wore concealed on their person diamonds, emeralds, rubies and ropes of pearls. These would be discovered only after the murders. Yurovsky had been given the order for the murder on 13 July.

On Sunday, 14 July 1918, two priests came to the Ipatiev House to celebrate the Divine Liturgy. One of the priests, Father Storozhev later recalled, "I went into the living room first, then the deacon and Yurovsky. At the same time Nicholas and Alexandra entered through the doors leading into the inner room. Two of his daughters were with him. I did not have a chance to see exactly which ones. I believe Yurovsky asked Nicholas Alexandrovich, "Well, are you all here?" Nicholas Alexandrovich answered firmly, "Yes, all of us." Ahead beyond the archway, Alexandra Feodorovna was already in place with two daughters and Alexei Nicolaievich. He was sitting in a wheelchair and wore a jacket, as it seemed to me, with a sailor's collar. He was pale, but not so much as at the time of my first service. In general he looked more healthy. Alexandra Feodorovna also had a healthier appearance. ...According to the liturgy of the service it is customary at a certain point to read the prayer, "Who Resteth with the Saints." On this occasion for some reason the deacon, instead of reading the prayer began to sing it, and I as well, somewhat embarrassed by this departure from the ritual. But we had secretly begun to sing when I heard the members of the Romanov family, standing behind me, fall on their knees ...."

Execution

Tuesday, 16 July 1918 dawned hot and dusty in Yekaterinburg. The day passed normally for the former Imperial Family. At four o'clock in the afternoon, Nicholas and his daughters took their usual walk in the small garden. Early in the evening Yurovsky sent away the fifteen year old kitchen boy Leonid Sedinev, saying that his uncle wished to see him. At 7pm, Yurovsky summoned all the Cheka men into his room and ordered them to collect all the revolvers from the outside guards. With twelve heavy military revolvers lying before him on the table he said, "Tonight, we shoot the entire family, everybody." Upstairs Nicholas and Alexandra passed the evening playing bezique; at ten thirty, they went to bed.

The former tsar and tsaritsa and all of their family, including the gravely ill Alexei, along with several family servants, were executed by firing squad and bayonets in the basement of the Ipatiev House, where they had been imprisoned, early in the morning of 17 July 1918, by a detachment of Bolsheviks led by Yakov Yurovsky. In the basement room of the Ipatiev House, Nicholas asked for and received three chairs from the guards. Minutes later, at about 2:15 a.m., a squad of soldiers, each armed with a revolver, entered the room. Their leader Yurovsky ordered all the party to stand; Alexandra complied "with a flash of anger," and Yurovsky then casually pronounced, "Your relations have tried to save you. They have failed and we must now shoot you." Nicholas rose from his chair and only had time to utter "What...?" before he was shot several times, not (as is usually said) in the head, but in the chest; his skull bears no bullet wounds, but his ribs were shattered by at least 3 fatal bullet wounds. Standing about six feet from the gunmen and facing them, Alexandra watched the murder of her husband and two menservants before military commissar Peter Ermakov took aim at her. She instinctively turned away from him and began to make the sign of the cross, but before she could finish the gesture, Ermakov killed her with a gun shot which, as she had partly turned away, entered her head just above the left ear and exited at the same spot above her right ear. After all the victims had been shot, Ermakov in a drunken haze stabbed Alexandra's body and that of her husband, shattering both their rib cages and even chipping some of Alexandra's vertebrae.

Identification of remains

After the execution of the Romanov family in the Ipatiev House, Alexandra's body, along with Nicholas, their children and some faithful retainers who died with them, was stripped and the clothing burnt according to the Yurovsky Note. Initially the bodies were thrown down a disused mine-shaft at Ganina Yama, 12 miles (19 km) north of Yekaterinburg. A short time later they were retrieved, their faces were smashed and the bodies dismembered and disfigured with sulphuric acid were hurriedly buried under railway sleepers with the exception of two of the children whose bodies were not discovered until 2007. In 2007, the bodies missing were those of a daughter—Maria or Anastasia—and Alexei. In the early 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union, the bodies of the majority of the Romanovs were located along with their loyal servants, exhumed and formally identified. A secret report by Yurovsky, which came to light in the late 1970s, but did not become public knowledge until the 1990s, helped the authorities to locate the bodies. Preliminary results of genetic analysis carried out on the remains of a boy and a young woman believed to belong to Nicholas II's son and heir Alexei, and daughter Anastasia were revealed on 22 January 2008. The Ekaterinburg region's chief forensic expert said, "Tests conducted in Yekaterinburg and Moscow allowed DNA to be extracted from the bones, which proved positive," Nikolai Nevolin said. "Once the genetic analysis has been completed in Russia, its results will be compared with test results from foreign experts." Nevolin said the final results would be published in April or May 2008. Certainty about the remains would definitively put an end to the claim that Anna Anderson could be connected with the Romanovs, as all remaining bodies would be accounted for.

DNA analysis represented a key means of identifying the bodies. A blood sample from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (a grandson of Alexandra's oldest sister, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine) was employed to identify Alexandra and her daughters through their mitochondrial DNA. They belonged to Haplogroup H (mtDNA). Nicholas was identified from DNA obtained from among others his late brother Grand Duke George Alexandrovich of Russia. Grand Duke George had died of tuberculosis in the late 1890s and was buried in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St.Petersburg.

Burial and sainthood

Alexandra, Nicholas and three daughters were reinterred in the St.Catherine Chapel of the Peter and Paul Cathedral at the Fortress of St.Peter and St.Paul in St.Petersburg in 1998, with much ceremony, on the eightieth anniversary of the execution.

In 2000, Alexandra was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church together with her husband Nicholas II, their children and others including her sister Grand Duchess Elizabeth and her fellow nun Varvara.

In popular culture

A rather romanticised version of Alexandra's life was dramatized in the 1971 movie Nicholas and Alexandra, based on the book by the same title written by Robert Massie, in which the tsaritsa/Empress was played by Janet Suzman.

Rasputin and the Empress (1932), an MGM film that is less famous than the lawsuit it spawned. Alexandra was portrayed by Ethel Barrymore.

The highly fictionalized 1966 film Rasputin, the Mad Monk, in which Renee Asherson portrayed the Empress.

1974's Fall of Eagles, a BBC series dramatizing the demise of Europe's ruling families. Alexandra, portrayed by Gayle Hunnicutt, is a prominent character in the series.

Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny is a 1996 HBO TV film for which Greta Scacchi won an Emmy for her portrayal of Empress Alexandra.

Rasputin: The Mad Monk, (1997) is a biographical documentary.

The Lost Prince, a BBC mini-series in which she is played by Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė.

Documentaries

The episode Love and Revolution devoted to the fall of the Romanov dynasty is featured in the Danish television A Royal Family, a series about the descendants of King Christian IX of Denmark.

Titles and styles

Her Grand Ducal Highness Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine (1872–1894)

Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia (created in 1894 by Alexander III prior to her marriage)

Her Imperial Majesty The Empress of all the Russias (1894 – February 1917) – title lost at the time of the abdication of her husband.

Ancestry

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See also

Romanov sainthood

Notes

References

Denton, C.S., Absolute Power, London: Arcturus Publishing, 2006. ISBN 978-1-84193-423-5

Finestone, Jeffrey, The Last Courts of Europe, London: J M Dent & Sons, 1981.

Hall, Coryne, Little mother of Russia, Holmes & Meier Publishers, 2001. ISBN 0-8419-1421-4

Hall, Coryne & Van Der Kiste, John, Once A Grand Duchess Xenia, Sister of Nicholas II, Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing, 2002. ISBN 978-0-7509-2749-9

King, Greg, The Last Empress, Citadel Press Book, 1994. ISBN 0-8065-1761-1.

King, Greg The Court of the Last Tsar, John Wiley & Sons, 2006. ISBN 978-0-471-72763-7.

Kurth, Peter, Tsar: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra, Allen & Unwin, 1995. ISBN 978-1-86373-899-6

Lyons, Marvin, Nicholas II The Last Tsar, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974. ISBN 978-0-7100-7802-5

Massie, Robert, Nicholas and Alexandra, London: Pan Books, 1967.

Massie, Robert, The Romanovs The Final Chapter, New York: Ballantine Books, 1995. ISBN 0-345-40640-0

Tames, Richard, Last of the Tsars, London: Pan Books, 1972. ISBN 978-0-330-02902-5 Vorres, Ian, The Last Grand Duchess, London: Finedawn Publishers, 1985 (3rd edition)

External links

The Murder of Russia's Imperial Family, Nicolay Sokolov. Investigation of murder of the Romanov Imperial Family in 1918.

FrozenTears.org, A media library on the Last Imperial Family.

Alexander Palace Time Machine, Alexandra's home in Tsarskoe Selo.

Life and Tragedy of Alexandra Feodorovna, Sophie Buxhœveden.

The Real Tsaritsa, Lily Dehn.

The Religious Character of Alexandra Feodorovna, Vladimir Gurko.

God in All Things, the Religious Beliefs of Russia's Last Empress by Janet Ashton.

Letters of Alexandra in Exile, in English and Russian.

Letters of Tsaritsa to the Tsar, 1914–17.

Marriage Ceremony of Nicholas and Alexandra.

Jewels of the Romanovs.

Nicholas and Alexandra Exhibition.

Hemophilia A (Factor VIII Deficiency)

The Romanovs in Film, a complete filmography.

A short biography of the Alexandra

Margaretta Eagar

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af:Prinses Alix van Hesse-Darmstadt az:Aleksandra Fyodorovna be:Аляксандра Фёдараўна, жонка Мікалая II bg:Александра Фьодоровна (Алиса) ca:Alexandra de Hessen-Darmstadt cs:Alix Hesensko-Darmstadtská da:Alexandra af Hessen de:Alix von Hessen-Darmstadt et:Aleksandra Fjodorovna (1872–1918) es:Alejandra Fiódorovna Románova fr:Alix de Hesse-Darmstadt gl:Alexandra Fiodorovna Romanova ko:알렉산드라 표도로브나 (1872년) id:Alexandra Feodorovna it:Aleksandra Fëdorovna Romanova ka:ალექსანდრა თედორეს ასული (ნიკოლოზ II-ის მეუღლე) hu:Hesseni Alekszandra Fjodorovna orosz cárné nl:Alix van Hessen-Darmstadt ja:アレクサンドラ・フョードロヴナ (ニコライ2世皇后) no:Alexandra av Hessen-Darmstadt pl:Aleksandra Fiodorowna (Alicja Heska) pt:Alexandra Feodorovna ro:Alix de Hessa-Darmstadt ru:Александра Фёдоровна (жена Николая II) simple:Alexandra Fyodorovna sr:Александра Фјодоровна fi:Aleksandra Fjodorovna (Alix) sv:Alexandra av Hessen th:จักรพรรดินีอเล็กซานดรา เฟโอโดรอฟนาแห่งรัสเซีย tr:Aleksandra Fyodorovna uk:Олександра Федорівна (російська імператриця) zh:亚历山德拉·费奥多罗芙娜皇后 (尼古拉二世)

Coordinates	44°25′57″N26°6′14″N
name	Princess Cecilie
title	Hereditary Grand Duchess of Hesse
styles	HRH The Hereditary Grand Duchess of Hesse HRH Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark
imgw	200px
house	House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-GlücksburgHouse of Hesse-Darmstadt
birth date	June 22, 1911
birth place	Tatoi Palace, Tatoi, Greece
death date	November 16, 1937
death place	Ostend, Belgium
father	Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark
mother	Princess Alice of Battenberg
spouse	Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse
issue	Prince LudwigPrince AlexanderPrincess Johanna }}

Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark () (22 June 1911 – 16 November 1937) was the wife of Hereditary Grand Duke Georg Donatus of Hesse and the sister of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Birth and ancestry

Cecilie was the third child and daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. She was born on 22 June 1911 at the summer estate of the Greek Royal Family at Tatoi, fifteen kilometres north of Athens. Although her given name was Cecilie, she was known to her family as Cécile.

Cecilie was baptised at Tatoi on 2 July 1911. Her godparents were King George V of the United Kingdom, Grand Duke Ernst Louis of Hesse, Prince Nicholas of Greece and Duchess Vera of Württemberg.

Through her father Cecilie was a grandchild of King George I of Greece and his wife Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinova of Russia (a granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia). Through her mother she was a great-granddaughter of Princess Alice of the United Kingdom (daughter of Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert).

Cecilie had three sisters: Margarita (wife of Prince Gottfried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg), Theodora (wife of Berthold, Margrave of Baden) and Sophie (wife firstly of Prince Christoph of Hesse and secondly of Prince Georg Wilhelm of Hanover). Her brother Philip, later Duke of Edinburgh, is the husband of Elizabeth II.

In 1922 Cecilie and her sisters were bridesmaids at the wedding of their uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten (later Earl Mountbatten of Burma) to Edwina Ashley.

Marriage and children

On 2 February 1931 at Darmstadt Cecilie married Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine. They had four children:

25 October 1931 14 April 1933 20 September 1936 16 November 1937

!Name!!Birth!!Death!!Notes
Prince Ludwig of Hesse and by Rhine	Prince Ludwig Ernst Andreas of Hesse	|	16 November 1937	Killed in air accident
Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine (1933-1937)	Prince Alexander Georg Karl Heinrich of Hesse	|	16 November 1937	Killed in air accident
Princess Johanna of Hesse and by Rhine	Princess Johanna Marina Eleonore of Hesse	|	14 June 1939	Died from meningitis.
Stillborn son	|	16 November 1937	Stillborn in air accident

On 1 May 1937 Cecilie and her husband both joined the Nazi Party.

Death

In October 1937, Cecilie's father-in-law Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse died. A few weeks after the funeral, her brother-in-law Prince Ludwig was due to be married to the Hon. Margaret Campbell-Geddes in London.

On 16 November 1937, Georg Donatus, Cecilie, their two young sons and Georg's mother Grand Duchess Eleonore left Darmstadt for London. The aeroplane hit a factory chimney near Ostend and crashed in flames, killing all those on board. Cecilie was eight months pregnant with her fourth child at the time of the crash, and the remains of her baby were found in the wreckage, indicating that Cecilie had gone into labour or suffered sufficient bodily trauma to result in birth.

Cecilie was buried with her husband, two sons and the stillborn child in Darmstadt at the Rosenhöhe, the traditional burial place of the Hesse family. Cecilie's daughter Johanna was adopted by Prince Ludwig and Princess Margaret; she died two years later from meningitis and is buried with her parents and siblings.

In popular culture

The crash figures in the plot of A Matter of Honour by Jeffrey Archer, where Grand Duke Georg has in his possession the jewels of his aunt, the last Tsaritsa of Russia, which the KGB are looking for.

Royal name	Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark
Dipstyle	HRH, Her Royal Highness
Offstyle	Your Royal Highness
Altstyle	Ma'am }}

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

Her Royal Highness Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark (1911–1931)

Her Royal Highness The Hereditary Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine (1931–1937)

Ancestors

{{ahnentafel-compact5 |style=font-size: 90%; line-height: 110%; |border=1 |boxstyle=padding-top: 0; padding-bottom: 0; |boxstyle_1=background-color: #fcc; |boxstyle_2=background-color: #fb9; |boxstyle_3=background-color: #ffc; |boxstyle_4=background-color: #bfc; |boxstyle_5=background-color: #9fe; |1= 1. Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark |2= 2. Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark |3= 3. Princess Alice of Battenberg |4= 4. George I of Greece |5= 5. Olga Konstantinovna of Russia |6= 6. Louis Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford Haven |7= 7. Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine |8= 8. Christian IX of Denmark |9= 9. Louise of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) |10= 10. Grand Duke Konstantine Nicholaievich of Russia |11= 11. Alexandra Iosifovna of Altenburg |12= 12. Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine |13= 13. Julia von Hauke |14= 14. Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse |15= 15. Princess Alice of the United Kingdom |16= 16. Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg |17= 17. Louise Caroline of Hesse-Kassel |18= 18. Prince William of Hesse |19= 19. Princess Louise Charlotte of Denmark |20= 20. Nicholas I of Russia |21= 21. Alexandra Feodorovna (Charlotte of Prussia) |22= 22. Joseph, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg |23= 23. Amelia of Württemberg |24= 24. Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse |25= 25. Princess Wilhelmine of Baden |26= 26. John Maurice von Hauke |27= 27. Sophie Lafontaine |28= 28. Prince Karl of Hesse and by Rhine |29= 29. Princess Elizabeth of Prussia |30= 30. Albert, Prince Consort |31= 31. Queen Victoria }}

See also

Sabena OO-AUB Ostend crash

References

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Category:1911 births Category:1937 deaths Category:Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in Belgium Category:People from Athens Category:House of Glücksburg (Greece) Category:House of Hesse-Darmstadt Category:Greek princesses Category:Danish princesses Category:Burials at the Mausoleum for the Grand Ducal House of Hesse, Rosenhöhe (Darmstadt) Category:Nazis from outside Germany Category:Hereditary Grand Duchesses of Hesse Category:Royalty in Nazi party

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