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| Princess Alice of Battenberg (left) and Prince Andrew of Greece (right) |
Princess Alice of Battenberg (later Princess Andrew of Greece) lived a very interesting life, enduring many battles of her own. Despite her unhappy marriage and schizophrenia, the princess redeemed herself by helping those in need, hiding a Jewish family in her own home at the height of the Nazi holocaust. Later, she founded her own sisterhood of nuns and was posthumously recognized as “Righteous Among The Nations,” the highest Israeli honor to non-Jews. Here are 14 facts about Princess Alice of Battenberg.
A Royal and
Not-so-Royal Heritage
Princess Alice of Battenberg was the eldest child of Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Prince Louis of Battenberg was the eldest son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine by his morganatic marriage to Countess Julia von Hauke. Prince Alexander was the fourth child of Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse and Princess Wilhelmina of Baden. Because of his parent’s morganatic marriage, Louis and his siblings were not allowed to take their father's grand ducal rank. From birth, Louis bore the title Count of Battenberg with the style Illustrious Highness, the rank given to his mother at the time of her marriage. In 1858, 1858 the Countess of Battenberg was elevated to Princess of Battenberg with the style of "Her Serene Highness.” Louis and his siblings were also elevated to princely rank. Alice’s mother, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, was the eldest daughter of the future Grand Duke Louis IV and Princess Alice, the second daughter and third child of Queen Victoria.
While her childhood was spent between Darmstadt, London,
Jugenheim, and Malta (where her naval officer father was occasionally
stationed), Princess Alice of Battenberg grew up living in the company of her
royal relatives.
Birth and Congenital
Defect
Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie was born on February
25, 1885 at Windsor Castle in Berkshire, England. Her mother, Princess Victoria
of Hesse observed that Alice was slow in learning to talk. Her indistinct
pronunciation became a cause of grave concern. After seeing an ear specialist,
Alice was diagnosed as congenitally deaf. With encouragement from her mother,
Alice learned to both lip-read and speak in English and German.
A Great Beauty
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| Prince and Princess Andrew of Greece |
Princess Alice of Battenberg was said to be greatly
beautiful with “long blond hair and large brown eyes” that her great-uncle, the
future King Edward VII remarked: “No throne is too good for her.”
Smitten by Love
Princess Alice of Battenberg was only 17 years old when she
met Prince Andrew of Greece who was in London to attend the coronation of King
Edward VII and his aunt, Queen Alexandra. Prince Andrew was the seventh child
and fourth son of King George I of Greece and Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna
of Russia. King George I was also the younger brother of Queen Alexandra. According to Alice’s niece, Lady Pamela
Hicks, “[Alice] was absolutely dotty about him,” and was “really, deeply in
love” with Andrew. They married, first, in a civil ceremony at Darmstadt on
October 6, 1903. The following day, Lutheran and Greek Orthodox ceremonies were
held at the Evangelical Castle Church and the Russian Chapel on the
Mathildenhöhe. After their wedding, she was officially styled Princess Andrew
of Greece and Denmark.
The Children of
Princess Alice of Battenberg
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| Princess Alice with her daughters, Margarita and Theodora. |
Prince and Princess Andrew of Greece had five children. The eldest, Margarita, married Gottfried, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Theodora was married to Berthold, Margrave of Baden. The third, Cecilie, married Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse, and with him perished in a plane crash. The fourth daughter, Sophie of Greece first married Prince Christoph of Hesse, and then Prince George William of Hanover (25 March 1915 – 8 January 2006). Their youngest child was a boy, Philip, who married Queen Elizabeth II.
Breakdown and Schizophrenia
Some time after she began claiming she received divine
messages and that she had healing powers, and following a nervous breakdown in
1930, a number of specialists confirmed that she was suffering from a condition
called paranoid schizophrenia. She was then forced to depart her family and was
placed in the sanatorium of Dr. Ludwig Binswanger in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland,
the same institution where revered ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav
Nijinsky was admitted.
Sigmund Freud, on the one hand, also examined Princess
Andrew and alleged that her delusions resulted from sexual frustration. He
recommended for the princess to have her ovaries X-rayed “in order to kill off
her libido" to which the patient heavily protested.
Separation from Prince Andrew
Prince Andrew
allegedly left her wife for her mistress while Princess Andrew was in the
sanatorium, which basically left their son Philip homeless. The young man found
himself spending time with relatives during boarding school holidays. Princess
Andrew left the sanatorium in 1932 and started an incognito existence in
Central Europe, breaking all ties with her whole family but her mother. Princess
Andrew was only reunited with Prince Philip at the funeral of her daughter
Cecilie, her son-in-law, and her two grand children who all figured in an air
crash at Ostend.
A Selfless Life
During the Balkan Wars, Princess Andrew worked as a nurse,
setting up field hospitals and assisting in operations. Her contribution to the
war effort did not go unnoticed as she was awarded the Royal Red Cross in 1913
by King George V.
She was also a World War II hero and savior of the Jews
despite the holocaust. She would go
against the curfew to walk the streets and distribute rations to children and
policemen. When she was warned she might get struck by a stray bullet, she
said, "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?"
Stuck in Greece during the Nazi invasion in 1941, she hid
Jewish widow Rachel Cohen and her two children in her home, which was near the
Gestapo headquarters. When the Nazis started getting suspicious, she used her
deafness to her advantage and pretended not to hear any of their questions.
Later on she was given the posthumous recognition as Righteous Among the
Nations, the highest honor given to non-Jews who risked their lives during the
Holocaust. Later, Prince Philip remarked:
"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."
The British Government posthumously named her Hero of the Holocaust in 2010.
Mother Superior
Alice-Elizabeth
In December 1944, her husband Prince Andrew died during the
clash between British forces and communist guerillas, ending hopes of the
couple reuniting since they last saw each other in 1939. Following the Second
World War in 1949, Princess Andrew sold all of her jewels to establish the
Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, a nursing order of Greek orthodox
nuns.
Later Life and Death
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| The Church of Mary Magdalene |
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