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Tag Archives: Prince Charles of Hesse and by Rhine

September 12, 1837: Birth of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine. Part II.

13 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by liamfoley63 in Featured Monarch, Grand Duke/Grand Duchy of Europe, Royal Death

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Countess Alexandrine Hutten-Czapska, Diptheria, Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and By Rhine, Louis III of Hesse and by Rhine, Louis IV of Hesse and By Rhine, Morganatic Marriage, Prince Charles of Hesse and by Rhine, Princess Alice of the United Kingdom

In March 1877, Ludwig IV became heir presumptive to the Hessian throne when his father, Prince Charles of Hesse and by Rhine, died, and less than three months later, found himself as the reigning grand duke upon the demise of his uncle, Ludwig III, on June 13, 1877.

A year and a half later, November 1878, the Grand Ducal household fell ill with diphtheria. Ludwig’s eldest daughter Victoria was the first to fall ill, complaining of a stiff neck in the evening of November 5. Diphtheria was diagnosed the following morning, and soon the disease spread to Ludwig’s children Alix, Marie, Irene, and Ernst.

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Ludwig himself became infected shortly thereafter. Elisabeth was the only child to not fall ill, having been sent away by Alice to the palace of the Princess Charles, Ludwig’s mother.

Marie became seriously ill on November 15, and Alice was called to her bedside, but by the time she arrived, Marie had choked to death. A distraught Alice wrote to Queen Victoria that the “pain is beyond words”. Alice kept the news of Marie’s death secret from her children for several weeks, but she finally told Ernst in early December.

Ernst’s reaction was even worse than she had anticipated; at first he refused to believe it. As he sat up crying, Alice broke her rule about physical contact with the ill and gave him a kiss. At first, however, Alice did not fall ill. She met her sister Crown Princess Victoria of Prussia as the latter was passing through Darmstadt on the way to England, and wrote to her mother with “a hint of resumed cheerfulness” on the same day.

However, by Saturday, December 14, the anniversary of her father, Prince Albert’s death, she became seriously ill with the diphtheria caught from her son.

Grand Duchess Alice’s last words were “dear Papa”, and she fell unconscious at 2:30 am. Just after 8:30 am, she died. Alice was buried on 18 December 1878 at the Grand Ducal mausoleum at Rosenhöhe outside Darmstadt, with the Union Flag draped over her coffin. A special monument of Alice and her daughter Marie was erected there by Joseph Boehm.

From then on, Grand Duke Ludwid IV reigned and raised his five surviving children alone.

When looking for a husband for Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, the Prince of Wales suggested that Beatrice marry their sister Alice’s widower, Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse of Hesse and by Rhine.

The Prince of Wales argued that Beatrice could act as replacement mother for Louis’s young children and spend most of her time in England looking after her mother. He further suggested the Queen could oversee the upbringing of her Hessian grandchildren with greater ease.

However, at the time, it was forbidden by law for Beatrice to marry her sister’s widower. This was countered by the Prince of Wales, who vehemently supported passage by the Houses of Parliament of the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill, which would have removed the obstacle.

Despite popular support for this measure and although it passed in the House of Commons, it was rejected by the House of Lords because of opposition from the Lords Spiritual. Although the Queen was disappointed that the bill had failed, she was happy to keep her daughter at her side.

Grand Duke Ludwig IV contracted a morganatic marriage on April 30, 1884 in Darmstadt (on the eve of the wedding of his eldest daughter, for which Queen Victoria and other relatives of his first wife were gathered in the Hessian capital) with Countess Alexandrine Hutten-Czapska (September 3, 1854 –May 8, 1941), daughter of Count Adam Hutten-Czapski and Countess Marianna Rzewuska.

She was the former wife of Aleksander von Kolemin, the Russian chargé d’affaires in Darmstadt. But the couple, facing objections from the Grand Duke’s in-laws, separated within a week and the marriage was annulled within three months. As a compensation, she received the title Countess von Romrod on 31 May 1884. Alexandrine later married for the third time to Basil von Bacheracht.

Death

Grand Duke Ludwig IV died on March 13, 1892 of a heart attack in the New Palace in Darmstadt and was succeeded by his son, Ernst-Ludwig. His remains are buried at Rosenhöhe, the mausoleum for the Grand Ducal House outside of Darmstadt.

September 12, 1837: Birth of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine. Part I.

12 Saturday Sep 2020

Posted by liamfoley63 in Featured Monarch, Grand Duke/Grand Duchy of Europe, Royal Birth, Royal Genealogy, Royal House, This Day in Royal History

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Grand Ducal Highness, Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and by Rhine, Louis IV of Hesse and By Rhine, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Prince Charles of Hesse and by Rhine, Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom

Ludwig IV (September 12, 1837 – March 13, 1892) was the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, reigning from June 13, 1877 until his death. Through his own and his children’s marriages he was connected to the British Royal Family, to the Imperial House of Russia and to other reigning dynasties of Europe.

Early life

Ludwig was born at the Prinz-Karl-Palais in Darmstadt, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine in the German Confederation, the first son and child of Prince Charles of Hesse and by Rhine (1809 – 1877) and Princess Elisabeth of Prussia (1815 – 1885), granddaughter of King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia.

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As his father’s elder brother Ludwig III (1806-1877), the reigning Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, had been married to his first wife since 1833 without legitimate children and from 1868 was married morganatically, Prince Ludwig was from birth second-in-line to the grand ducal throne, after his father.

First marriage

On July 1, 1862, Louis married Princess Alice, a daughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. On the day of the wedding, the Queen issued a royal warrant granting her new son-in-law the style of Royal Highness in the United Kingdom. In the German Confederation his style remained Grand Ducal Highness. The Queen also subsequently made Prince Ludwig a knight of the Order of the Garter.

Although an arranged marriage orchestrated by the bride’s father Albert, Prince Consort, the couple did have a brief period of courtship before betrothal and wed willingly, even after the death of the Prince Consort left Queen Victoria in a protracted state of grief that cast a pall over the nuptials.

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Becoming parents in less than a year following their marriage, the young royal couple found themselves strapped financially to maintain the lifestyle expected of their rank. Princess Alice’s interest in social services, scientific development, hands-on child-rearing, charity and intellectual stimulation were not shared by Ludwig who, although dutiful and benevolent, was bluff in manner and conventional in his pursuits.

The death of the younger of their two sons, Frittie, who was afflicted with hemophilia and suffered a fatal fall from a palace window before his third birthday in 1873, combined with the wearying war relief duties Alice had undertaken in 1870, evoked a crisis of spiritual faith for the princess in which her husband does not appear to have shared.

In 1866 the Austrians suffered defeat in the Austro-Prussian War and the Hessian grandduchy was in jeopardy of being awarded as the spoils of war to victorious Prussia, which annexed some of Austria’s other allies (Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau), a fate from which Hesse-Darmstadt appears to have been spared only by a cession of territory and the close dynastic kinship between its ruler and the Emperor of Russia (Alexander II’s consort, Empress Maria Alexandrovna, was the sister of Hesse’s Grand Duke Ludwig III and of Prince Charles).

In the Franco-Prussian War provoked by Bismarck’s manipulation of the Ems telegram in 1870, Hesse and by Rhine this time found itself a winning ally of Prussia’s, and Prince Ludwig was credited with courageous military service, especially at the Battle of Gravelotte, which also afforded him the opportunity of mending the previous war’s grievances with the House of Hohenzollern by fighting on the same side as his brother-in-law and future emperor, Crown Prince Friedrich of Prussia.

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