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Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna, The Benevolent Queen of Greece


Queen Olga, the wife of King George I of the Hellenes, was highly esteemed and deeply loved in her adopted land of Greece. Born on September 3, 1851, she was second child and eldest daughter of Grand Duke Constantine Nicolaevich and Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg. The Grand Duke Constantine was a younger son of Czar Nicholas I and had also served as viceroy of Poland. 

“Between the Imperial Court and her father's estates the Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinovna had grown up,” wrote Danish author Walter Christmas in the book The Life of King George of Greece. Educated together with the Grand Duke Nicholas and the future Duchess of Wurtemberg, her siblings closest to her age, Grand Duchess Olga “quickly developed into one of the handsomest and most charming members of the Imperial family.”

She met her future husband, King George I of Greece, when, as the newly installed King of Greece, the former Prince William of Denmark visited the Court of the Tsar Alexander II in 1863.  Olga was only twelve years old then, the new king only seventeen.   A year ago, on July 3, 1862— Grand Duke Constantine survived an “unusually brutal attempt on his life.” As situations in Poland proved unsafe for the family, the Grand Duchess Constantine decided to decamp with her children for St. Petersburg.

“This event and the whole circumstances of her life among the rebellious and unfriendly Poles made an indelible impression on the mind of the girl of eleven,” wrote Walter Christmas. As for King George, his “choice fell upon the young Grand Duchess. In the spring of 1867, he visited Russia, accompanied by a large suite to seek Olga’s hands for marriage. The date of the union was fixed for the following October. 

King George I of Greece and Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna during their engagement in 1867. Image under Creative Commons license.

Walter  Christmas described the opulent wedding befitting a king and queen:

“On October 28th the marriage took place — according to the rites of both the Orthodox and Lutheran churches — and the Emperor caused it to be celebrated with great pomp. Only a year before the Winter Palace and the whole capital had blazed with illuminations, when the heir to the Imperial throne celebrated his wedding with Princess Dagmar ; and now the festivities were repeated, when another member of the Danish royal family allied himself to one of the nearest relatives of the Tsar. The order for the illumination of the city was given rather too late, and some of the people of St. Petersburg had not time to make the necessary arrangements. In con- sequence there might be seen among the gleaming monograms G. O., a considerable number with the initials A. M., which belonged to the year before and contributed to give a special character to this family festival.”

“At the conclusion of the thanksgiving services, balls, state dinners, and other brilliant court functions, the newly - married pair retired to Tsarskoi-Selo, and on November 9th set out for the young Queen's future home,” Christmas continued. 

The Greek threw an enthusiastic welcome for their new queen who arrived at the port city of Piraeus garbed in blue and white, the national colors of Greece. Adjustment to her new country proved difficult and the teenage queen was said to cling to her teddy bear a few days after her arrival in the kingdom. But following her mother’s advice, she learned to speak Greek and English and study Greek archeology and history. Olga's popularity, which never wavered throughout her lifetime “was due not only to the charming simplicity of her behaviour to her subjects, and to a sense of the advantageous ties that now bound the Court of Athens to the Russian Imperial family, but above all to her boundless benevolence and immense sympathy with the unfortunate.”

A portrait of King George I and Queen Olga of Greece. 

Eight children were born of their marriage, seven of whom reached adulthood: Constantine, Prince George, Prince Nicholas, Prince Andrew, Prince Christopher, and the Grand Duchesse Marie. The birth of a son, Crown Prince Constantine on July 21, 1868 proved to be a day of rejoicing in Greece, where “deafening salutes from the guns of the capital and from the war- ships in the Gulf of Salamis” proclaimed the assurance of succession. George and Olga raised their children in a relaxed atmosphere, unusual for royal households of that era.  While Olga and George addressed each other in German, their issues spoke mainly English and they also imported British nannies to nurse their ward.  

Queen Olga's life as queen consort was spent in charities and social work. Of the Queen’s charitable doings, Walter Christmas had much to said:

“Behind the Palace gardens lies the Amalion orphans home founded by Queen Amalia, and on the University Boulevard is the Arsakion, a great school for girls, built in 1835 by a wealthy man named Arsakis. As patroness of these two institutions Queen Olga began her work of charity immediately on her arrival in Greece. She was at that time sixteen years old. With her private means and with help from various rich men an asylum for incurables was shortly afterwards erected, another for aged paralytics, and later the Santeria sanatorium for consumptives. The Queen founded a society for the assistance of the deserving poor and established a Frobel Kindergarten for the children of necessitous parents, as well as a people's kitchen at the Piraeus, where poor girls might learn cooking. The last-named institution was soon extended to include a Sunday school for factory girls, and these, the Queen's first efforts to improve the position of Greek women, who at that time were at a very low level of knowledge and accomplishment, were continued unbrokenly in the years that followed. A spacious building was erected, in which old women and young girls were taught weaving in order to be able to support themselves.”

Cover of the Le Petit Journal celebrating the silver anniversary of the marriage of King George I of Greece and Queen Olga in 1892. Image under Creative Commons license. 

Queen Olga also initiated the construction of prison for “female delinquents,” which “more than fulfils the requirements, as the number of female criminals in Greece is insignificant.” Next she turned her attention to “youthful delinquents” who were then confined together with older convicts. The help of a wealthy Greek named Avorof,  a prison was commissioned to house young men.

“Queen Olga has also devoted her inexhaustible energy and great sums of money to the care of the sick,” writes Walter Christmas. Under her instigation, two military hospitals were built, followed by the Russian Hospital at the Pirseus in memory of her daughter, the Princess Alexandra, who died a few years after her marriage.  

At the height of the Greco Turkish War, Queen Olga stood “foremost in the work of charity” together with her daughter, Princess Marie, and daughter-in-law, Crown Princess Sophia. The Queen and the Crown Princess also “opened subscriptions for the establishment of hospitals in the capital, and in the towns adjacent to the theatre of war, and they inspected and personally directed most of these institutions.”

Queen Olga’s desire “to give assistance wherever it is needed showed itself from the moment she set foot on Greek soil and has continued unabated… what the Queen has accomplished in the cause of charity and mercy will compare with the work of any other woman who has worn a crown, and in addition she has been untiring in her endeavours to elevate the position of women in Greek society.”

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