Centenaire de la mort de la grande-duchesse Marie Pavlovna Sr.
Grande-Duchesse Marie Pavlovna de Russie
(1854-1920)
Née le 14 mai 1854 au château de Ludwigslust, Marie Pavlovna est la fille du grand-duc Frédéric-François II de Mecklembourg-Schwerin (1823-1883) et de sa première épouse, la princesse Auguste Reuss. En août 1874, elle épouse le grand-duc Vladimir Alexandrovitch (1847-1909) et adopte le nom russe de « Marie Pavlovna ».
Le couple a eu cinq enfants : Alexandre (1875-1877) ; Kirill (1876-1938), qui a épousé la princesse Victoria Melita de Saxe-Cobourg et Gotha et d'Édimbourg (1876-1936) ; Boris (1877-1943) ; Andrei (1879-1956) ; et Helen (1882-1957), qui a épousé le prince Nicolas de Grèce.
Durant son mariage, Marie Pavlovna fut l'une des sommités de la société pétersbourgeoise, peut-être même sa leader incontestée. Elle conserva cette position même après la mort de son mari en 1909.
Durant la Grande Guerre, Marie Pavlovna dirigea plusieurs hôpitaux et apporta son soutien sans faille à l'assistance médicale aux soldats russes. Ses trains-hôpitaux, qui sillonnaient le front, étaient perçus comme une source de soulagement et d'espoir par ceux qui y étaient soignés.
La Grande-Duchesse Marie Pavlovna Sr. et sa fille la Grande-Duchesse Hélène Vladimirovna,
Princesse Nicolas de Grèce.
Lorsque la révolution renversa le tsar, Marie Pavlovna se retira à Kislovodsk, dans le Caucase déchiré par la guerre. De là, toujours dans son wagon privé, elle parvint à Novorossiysk, sur la côte de la mer Noire. En chemin, elle rencontra sa nièce Olga Alexandrovna, qui décrivit plus tard son expérience : « Au mépris des dangers et des difficultés, elle s’obstinait à conserver tous les attributs de la splendeur et de la gloire d’antan. Et elle y parvint d’une manière ou d’une autre. Alors que même les généraux avaient la chance de trouver une charrette à cheval et une vieille rosse pour les mettre en sécurité, tante Miechen fit un long voyage dans son propre train. Il était cabossé, certes… mais il était à elle. Pour la première fois de ma vie, j’ai eu plaisir à l’embrasser… »
Elle finit par gagner Venise, d'où elle se rendit en Suisse, pour finalement rejoindre sa chère station balnéaire française de Contrexéville. Elle séjourna ensuite dans sa villa, où entourée de sa famille, elle mourut le 6 septembre 1920.
Elle repose dans une petite chapelle que ses descendants avaient restaurée il y a quelques années.
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Centenaire de la mort de la grande-duchesse Marie Pavlovna Senior de Russie
par Nicholas Nicholson pour Eurohistory
As July drew to a close, Maria Pavlovna’s famous health and energy was beginning to leave her. Alone in her rooms at the Hôtel la Souveraine, she began her decline. Ducky and Kirill, who had been visiting with Queen Marie of Romania in Paris cut short their time to rush to her side at the once-fashionable Vosges resort. From Contréxeville, Ducky wrote her sister: “we found my mother-in-law in almost dying condition with an old ass of a Kurarzt[1] who has no notion what to do & a lady & gentleman at the end of their resources and the poor old lady crying in her bed for want of her family, feeling herself dying and deserted by all. She was so pleasant and touched that we came that it repays one for very much what one has been through. I cannot say if she will recover. At moments one thinks there is but little hope, at other moments she rallies & talks but she is very weak, can take no food without hours of deadly sickness afterwards. They seem to think that one of her kidneys has … brought on a sort of blood poisoning. The old fool of a doctor here started her on the full cure[2]like in olden days which set all this matter in motion, causing an acute attack of the kidneys with excessive pain, followed by complete heart failure. The pulse almost stopped, and this off and on for nearly a week now. We are awaiting your Doctor Abrams with greatest impatience. One keeps her going with camphor injections but they make her suffer terribly. This is a medeavel [sic] place, awful bare little rooms & no food or things to be got in the house. One has to send for everything… I never saw such an arrangement.”[3] The Grand Duchess was dying slowly of a combination of heart and renal failure with nothing to relieve her pain. She floated in and out of consciousness for weeks as her family gathered by her side. Boris arrived in early August and was followed by Andrei and Ellen.
Prince Nicholas of Greece, Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich, Princess Nicholas of Greece, Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich, Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna Sr., and Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich.
Ellen wrote later to her mother’s old friend Princess Galitzine: “It was épouvantable for several days, but then she at last seemed at some peace — sometimes calling out for Papa Wladimir! In a weak voice. There were a few days when she seemed almost well, but then on the last day it was a great struggle until at last she slept deeply, and the end came.”[4] Ducky wrote Missy: “…Aunt Miechen died, repentant like one only reads in books. Asking pardon all round for all the harm she had done, even blaming herself more than seemed necessary to me. She suffered inhumanely and only the last day was quite unconscious. The death struggle lasted 14 hours. I was really, really sad as she was more than nice & touching to me in the end. If she could have lived as she died, what invincible friends we would have been.”[5]
Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna Sr. and her granddaughter
Princess Olga of Greece.
The funeral service was intimate and held in the tiny chapel of Sts. Vladimir and Mary Magdalene which she had built in 1909 to commemorate the death of her husband and her own conversion to the Orthodox faith. The “Grandest” of the Grand Duchesses, Maria Pavlovna was the last Romanov to leave Russia, and the first to die in exile. Buried in a simple white marble sarcophagus as she would have been in Russia, outside the chapel a sign reads : “In this chapel raised by her own hands lies H.I.H. the Grand Duchess Wladimir, died at Contrexéville 6 September 1920.”
[1] A Spa physician
[2] Hot spa treatments, mineral waters, and enemas.
[3] Fond Regina Maria: Dos V/3393/1920, Royal Archives Bucharest; John Wimbles Papers, Archivio Orléans-Borbón, Sanlucar de Barrmeda, Spain.
[4] Princess Nicholas of Greece to Pcess Galitzine, 10 Sept 1920, private collection, USA.
[5] Fond Regina Maria: Dos V/3395/1920, Wimbles, op cit.
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