| Alice of Battenberg | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark | |||||
 Photograph,c. 1920 | |||||
| Born | (1885-02-25)25 February 1885 Windsor Castle, Berkshire, United Kingdom | ||||
| Died | 5 December 1969(1969-12-05) (aged 84) Buckingham Palace, London, United Kingdom | ||||
| Burial | 10 December 1969 | ||||
| Spouse | |||||
| Issue | |||||
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| House | Battenberg | ||||
| Father | Louis Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford Haven | ||||
| Mother | Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine | ||||
| Religion |
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| Signature |  | ||||
Princess Alice of Battenberg (Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie; 25 February 1885 – 5 December 1969) was the mother ofPrince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, mother-in-law of QueenElizabeth II, and paternal grandmother of KingCharles III. After marryingPrince Andrew of Greece and Denmark in 1903, she adopted the style of her husband, becomingPrincess Andrew of Greece and Denmark.
A great-granddaughter ofQueen Victoria, Alice was born inWindsor Castle and grew up in theUnited Kingdom,Germany andMalta. AHessian princess by birth, she was a member of theBattenberg family, a morganatic branch of theHouse of Hesse-Darmstadt. She wascongenitally deaf. She lived in Greece until the exile of most of theGreek royal family in 1917. On returning to Greece a few years later, her husband was blamed in part for the country's defeat in theGreco-Turkish War (1919–1922), and the family was once again forced into exile until therestoration of the Greek monarchy in 1935.
In 1930, Princess Andrew was diagnosed withschizophrenia and committed to a sanatorium in Switzerland; thereafter, she lived separately from her husband. After her recovery, she devoted most of her remaining years to charity work in Greece. She stayed in Athens during theSecond World War, sheltering Jewish refugees, for which she is recognised as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Israel's Holocaust memorial institution,Yad Vashem. After the war, she stayed in Greece and founded aGreek Orthodox nursing order ofnuns known as the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary.
After the fall ofKing Constantine II of Greece and theimposition of military rule in Greece in 1967, Princess Andrew was invited by her son and daughter-in-law to live atBuckingham Palace in London, where she died two years later. In 1988, her remains were transferred from a vault in her birthplace, Windsor Castle, to theChurch of Mary Magdalene at theRussian Orthodox convent of the same name on theMount of Olives in Jerusalem.
Alice was born in the Tapestry Room atWindsor Castle, Berkshire, in the presence of her great-grandmotherQueen Victoria.[1] She was the eldest child ofPrince Louis of Battenberg and his wife,Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Her mother was the eldest daughter ofLouis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, andPrincess Alice of the United Kingdom, the Queen's second daughter. Her father was the eldest son ofPrince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine through hismorganatic marriage toCountess Julia Hauke, who was created Princess of Battenberg in 1858 byLouis III, Grand Duke of Hesse. Her three younger siblings,Louise,George, andLouis, later becameQueen of Sweden,Marquess of Milford Haven, andEarl Mountbatten of Burma, respectively.
Alice was christened Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie inDarmstadt on 25 April 1885. She had six godparents: her three surviving grandparents, Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse, Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine, and Julia, Princess of Battenberg; her maternal auntGrand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia; her paternal auntPrincess Marie of Erbach-Schönberg; and her maternal great-grandmother Queen Victoria.[2]
Alice spent her childhood between Darmstadt, London,Jugenheim, andMalta (where her naval officer father was occasionally stationed).[3] Her mother noticed that she was slow in learning to talk, and became concerned by her indistinct pronunciation. Eventually, she was diagnosed withcongenital deafness after her grandmother, the Princess of Battenberg, identified the problem and took her to see an ear specialist. With encouragement from her mother, Alice learned to both lip-read and speak in English and German.[4] Educated privately, she studied French,[5] and later, after her engagement, she learned Greek.[6] Her early years were spent in the company of her royal relatives, and she was abridesmaid at thewedding of Prince George, Duke of York, and Princess Mary of Teck (laterKing George V andQueen Mary) in 1893.[7] A few weeks before her 16th birthday, she attendedQueen Victoria's funeral inSt George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, and shortly afterward she wasconfirmed in theAnglican faith.[8]
Princess Alice met Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark (known as Andrea within the family), the fourth son of KingGeorge I of Greece andOlga Constantinovna of Russia, while in London forKing Edward VII's coronation in 1902.[9] They married in acivil ceremony on 6 October 1903 at Darmstadt. The following day, there were two religious marriage ceremonies; oneLutheran in the Evangelical Castle Church, and oneGreek Orthodox in the Russian Chapel on theMathildenhöhe.[10] She adopted the style of her husband, becoming "Princess Andrew".[11] The bride and groom were closely related to the ruling houses of the United Kingdom, Germany,Russia, Denmark, and Greece, and their wedding was one of the great gatherings of thedescendants of Queen Victoria and King Christian IX held beforeWorld War I.[3] Prince and Princess Andrew had five children:Margarita,Theodora,Cecilie,Sophie, andPhilip.[12]
After their wedding, Prince Andrew continued his career in the military and Princess Andrew became involved in charity work. In 1908, she visited Russia for the wedding ofGrand Duchess Marie of Russia andPrince William of Sweden. While there, she talked with her aunt Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, who was formulating plans for the foundation of a religious order of nurses. Princess Andrew attended the laying of the foundation stone for her aunt'snew church. Later in the year, Elizabeth began giving away all her possessions in preparation for a more spiritual life.[13] On their return to Greece, Prince and Princess Andrew found the political situation worsening, as theAthens government had refused to support theCretan parliament, which had called for the union of Crete (still nominally part of theOttoman Empire) with the Greek mainland. A group of dissatisfied officers formed aGreek nationalistMilitary League that eventually led to Prince Andrew's resignation from the army and the rise to power ofEleftherios Venizelos.[14]
With the advent of theBalkan Wars, Prince Andrew was reinstated in the army, and Princess Andrew acted as a nurse, assisting at operations and setting up field hospitals, work for which King George V awarded her theRoyal Red Cross in 1913.[3] During World War I, her brother-in-lawKing Constantine I of Greece followed a neutrality policy despite the democratically elected government of Venizelos supporting theAllies. Princess Andrew and her children were forced to shelter in the palace cellars during theFrench bombardment of Athens on 1 December 1916.[15] By June 1917, the King's neutrality policy had become so untenable that she and other members of the Greek royal family were forced into exile when King Constantine abdicated. For the next few years, most of the Greek royal family lived in Switzerland.[16]
The global war effectively ended much of the political power of Europe's dynasties. The naval career of Princess Andrew's father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, had collapsed at the beginning of the war in the face ofanti-German sentiment in Britain. At the request of King George V, he relinquished theHessian title Prince of Battenberg and the style ofSerene Highness on 14 July 1917, and anglicized the family name toMountbatten. The following day, the King created him Marquess of Milford Haven in thepeerage of the United Kingdom.[17] The following year, two of Princess Andrew's aunts,Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, were murdered byBolsheviks after theRussian Revolution. At the end of the war the Russian, German andAustro-Hungarian empires had fallen, and Princess Andrew's uncleErnest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, was deposed.[18]
On Constantine's restoration in 1920, Prince and Princess Andrew briefly returned to Greece, taking up residence onCorfu atMon Repos (inherited by Prince Andrew on his father's assassination in 1913). But after the defeat of theHellenic Army in theGreco-Turkish War, aRevolutionary Committee under the leadership of ColonelsNikolaos Plastiras andStylianos Gonatas seized power and forced King Constantine into exile once again.[19] Prince Andrew, who had served as commander of theSecond Army Corps during the war, was arrested. Several former ministers and generals arrested at the same time were shot following abrief trial, and British diplomats assumed that Prince Andrew was also in mortal danger. After a show trial, he was sentenced to banishment, and Prince and Princess Andrew and their children fled Greece aboard a British cruiser,HMS Calypso, under the protection of the British naval attaché, Commander Gerald Talbot.[20]
The family settled in a small house loaned to them byPrincess George of Greece and Denmark atSaint-Cloud, on the outskirts of Paris, where Princess Andrew helped in a charity shop for Greek refugees.[21] She became deeply religious and, in October 1928, converted to theGreek Orthodox Church.[3] That winter, she translated into English her husband's defence of his actions during the Greco-Turkish War.[22][23] Soon afterward, she began claiming that she was receiving divine messages and that she had healing powers.[24]
In 1930, her behaviour became increasingly erratic, and she asserted that she was in communication with the Buddha and Christ. She was diagnosed withparanoid schizophrenia, first by Thomas Ross, a psychiatrist specialising in the treatment ofshell shock, and subsequently by SirMaurice Craig, who had treated the futureKing George VI before he had speech therapy.[25] The diagnosis was confirmed atErnst Simmel's sanatorium atTegel, Berlin.[26] She was forcibly removed from her family and placed inLudwig Binswanger's sanatorium inKreuzlingen, Switzerland.[27] It was a famous and well-respected institution with several celebrity patients, includingVaslav Nijinsky, the ballet dancer and choreographer, who was there at the same time as the princess.[28] Binswanger also diagnosed her with schizophrenia. Both he and Simmel sought advice fromSigmund Freud, who concluded that the delusions derived from sexual frustration and suggested "X-raying her ovaries in order to kill off her libido." She continued to assert her sanity and made repeated efforts to leave the sanatorium.[25]
During Princess Andrew's long convalescence, she and Prince Andrew drifted apart, her daughters all married German princes in 1930 and 1931 (she did not attend any of the weddings), and Prince Philip went to the United Kingdom to stay with his uncles, Lord Louis Mountbatten and George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, and his grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven.[29]
Princess Andrew remained at Kreuzlingen for two years, but after a brief stay at a clinic inMerano in northern Italy, was released and began an itinerant, incognito existence in Central Europe. She maintained contact with her mother but broke off ties to the rest of her family until the end of 1936.[30] In 1937, her daughter Cecilie, her son-in-lawGeorg, and two of her grandchildren were killed in anair accident at Ostend; she and Prince Andrew met for the first time in six years at the funeral. (Prince Philip and Lord Louis Mountbatten also attended.)[31] She resumed contact with her family, and in 1938 returned to Athens alone to work with the poor, while living in a two-bedroom flat near theBenaki Museum.[32]
DuringWorld War II, Princess Andrew was in the difficult situation of having sons-in-law fighting on the German side and a son in the BritishRoyal Navy. Her cousin,Prince Victor zu Erbach-Schönberg,[33] was the German ambassador in Greece until the occupation of Athens byAxis forces in April 1941. She and her sister-in-law,Princess Nicholas of Greece, lived in Athens for the duration of the war, while most of the Greek royal family remained in exile in South Africa.[34][35] She moved out of her small flat and into her brother-in-lawGeorge's three-storey house in the centre of Athens. She worked for the Red Cross, helped organise soup kitchens for the starving populace and flew to Sweden to bring back medical supplies on the pretext of visiting her sister, Crown Princess Louise.[36] She organised two shelters for orphaned and lost children, and a nursing circuit for poor neighbourhoods.[37]
The occupying forces apparently presumed Princess Andrew was pro-German, as one of her sons-in-law,Prince Christoph of Hesse, was a member of theNSDAP and theWaffen-SS, and another,Berthold, Margrave of Baden, had been invalided out of the German army in 1940 after an injury in France. Nonetheless, when visited by a German general who asked her if there was anything he could do for her, she replied, "You can take your troops out of my country".[36]
After thefall of Italian dictatorBenito Mussolini in September 1943, the German Army occupied Athens, where a minority ofGreek Jews had sought refuge. The majority (about 60,000 out of a total population of 75,000) were deported toNazi concentration camps, where all but 2,000 died.[38] During this period, Princess Andrew hid Jewish widow Rachel Cohen and two of her five children, who sought to evade theGestapo and deportation to the death camps.[39] In 1913, Rachel's husband, Haimaki Cohen, had aided King George I of Greece. In return, King George had offered him any service that he could perform should Cohen ever need it. Years later, during theNazi threat, Cohen's son remembered this, and appealed to Princess Andrew, who, with Princess Nicholas, was one of only two remaining members of the royal family left in Greece. Princess Andrew honoured the promise and saved the Cohen family.[39]
When Athens was liberated in October 1944,Harold Macmillan visited Princess Andrew and described her as "living in humble, not to say somewhat squalid conditions".[40] In a letter to her son, she admitted that in the last week before liberation she had had no food except bread and butter, and no meat for several months.[41] By early December, the situation in Athens was far from improved; Communist guerrillas (ELAS) werefighting the British for control of the capital. As the fighting continued, Princess Andrew was informed that her husband had died, just as hopes of a post-war reunion of the couple were rising.[35] They had not seen each other since 1939. During the fighting, to the dismay of the British, she insisted on walking the streets distributing rations to policemen and children in contravention of the curfew order. When warned that she was in danger of being struck by a stray bullet, she replied, "They tell me that you don't hear the shot that kills you and in any case I am deaf. So, why worry about that?"[42]
Princess Andrew returned to the United Kingdom in April 1947 to attend theNovember wedding of her only son, Philip, toPrincess Elizabeth, the elder daughter andheir presumptive of King George VI. She had some of her remaining jewels used in Princess Elizabeth's engagement ring.[43] On the day of the wedding, her son was createdDuke of Edinburgh by George VI. For the wedding ceremony, Princess Andrew sat at the head of her family on the north side ofWestminster Abbey, opposite the King,Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary. Princess Andrew's daughters were not invited to the wedding because of anti-German sentiment in Britain following World War II.[44]
In January 1949, the princess founded a nursing order of Greek Orthodox nuns, the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, modelled after the convent that her aunt, the martyr Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, had founded in Russia in 1909. She trained on the Greek island ofTinos, established a home for the order in a hamlet north of Athens, and undertook two tours of the United States in 1950 and 1952 in an effort to raise funds. Her mother was baffled by her actions, "What can you say of a nun who smokes and playscanasta?", she said.[45] Princess Andrew's daughter-in-law became queen of theCommonwealth realms in 1952, and the princess attendedthe new queen's coronation in June 1953 wearing a two-tone grey dress and wimple in the style of a nun's habit. The order eventually failed through a lack of suitable applicants.[46]
In 1960, she visited India at the invitation ofRajkumari Amrit Kaur, who had been impressed by Princess Andrew's interest in Indian religious thought, and for her own spiritual quest. The trip was cut short when she unexpectedly took ill, and her sister-in-law,Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma, who happened to be passing through Delhi on her own tour, had to smooth things with the Indian hosts who were taken aback at Princess Andrew's sudden change of plans. She later claimed she had had anout-of-body experience.[47] Edwina continued her own tour, and died the following month.
Increasingly deaf and in failing health, Princess Andrew left Greece for the last time following the21 April 1967 Colonels' Coup. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip invited Princess Andrew to reside permanently atBuckingham Palace in London.[3]King Constantine II andQueen Anne-Marie of Greece went into exile that December after a failed royalist counter-coup.[48][49]
Despite suggestions of senility in later life, Princess Andrew remained lucid but physically frail.[50] She died at Buckingham Palace on 5 December 1969. She left no possessions, having given everything away. Initially her remains were placed in the Royal Crypt inSt George's Chapel at Windsor Castle on 10 December 1969,[51] but before she died she had expressed her wish to be buried at theConvent of Saint Mary Magdalene inGethsemane on theMount of Olives inJerusalem (near her aunt Grand DuchessElizabeth Feodorovna, a Russian Orthodox saint). When her daughterPrincess George William of Hanover complained that it would be too far away for them to visit her grave, Princess Andrew jested, "Nonsense, there's a perfectly good bus service!"[52] Her wish was realised on 3 August 1988 when her remains were transferred to her final resting place in a crypt below the church.[3][53]
| Righteous Among the Nations |
|---|
 |
| By country |
On 31 October 1994, Princess Andrew's two surviving children, the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess George of Hanover, went toYad Vashem (the Holocaust Memorial) in Jerusalem to witness a ceremony honouring her as "Righteous Among the Nations" for having hidden the Cohens in her house in Athens during the Second World War.[54][55] Prince Philip said of his mother's sheltering of persecuted Jews, "I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special. She was a person with a deep religious faith, and she would have considered it to be a perfectly natural human reaction to fellow beings in distress."[56] In 2010, the princess was posthumously named aHero of the Holocaust by the British Government.[57]
Dame of theOrder of the Golden Lion,7 October 1903[59]
Dame Grand Cross of theOrder of Saints Olga and Sophia[60]
Royal Red Cross,1913
Dame of theOrder of Queen Maria Luisa,9 April 1928[61]Posthumous:
| Name | Birth | Death | Marriage | Their children | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Spouse | ||||
| Princess Margarita | 18 April 1905 | 24 April 1981 (aged 76) | 20 April 1931 Widowed 11 May 1960 | Gottfried, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg |
|
| Princess Theodora | 30 May 1906 | 16 October 1969 (aged 63) | 17 August 1931 Widowed 27 October 1963 | Berthold, Margrave of Baden |
|
| Princess Cecilie | 22 June 1911 | 16 November 1937 (aged 26) | 2 February 1931 | Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse |
|
| Princess Sophie | 26 June 1914 | 24 November 2001 (aged 87) | 15 December 1930 Widowed 7 October 1943 | Prince Christoph of Hesse |
|
| 23 April 1946 | Prince George William of Hanover |
| |||
| Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh | 10 June 1921 | 9 April 2021 (aged 99) | 20 November 1947 | Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom |
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| Ancestors of Princess Alice of Battenberg |
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Battenberg/Mountbatten family | ||
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Generations are numbered by their descent fromPrince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine andJulia, Princess of Battenberg | ||
| 1st generation |  | |
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*Not Mountbatten or Battenberg by birth. Adopted the surname Mountbatten from his maternal line on abandoning his patrilineal Greek and Danish princely titles. | ||
Generations are numbered by descent fromGeorge I. | ||
| 1st generation | .svg) | |
| 2nd generation | ||
| 3rd generation |
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| 4th generation | ||
*did not have a royal or noble title by birth §title lost due to divorce and subsequent remarriage ^title disputed | ||
The generations are numbered from the implementation of hereditary monarchy byFrederick III in 1660. | ||
| 1st generation | .svg) | |
| 2nd generation | ||
| 3rd generation | ||
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| 5th generation | ||
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| 8th generation | ||
| 9th generation |
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| 10th generation | ||
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| 12th generation | ||
*also a princess of Greece by marriage ^also a Danish princess by birth §title lost due to divorce and subsequent remarriage | ||
