When Alice of Battenberg and Andrew of Greece first met in August 1902, the European princely family had come to London for the coronation of Edward VII. Alice was in seventh heaven. The 17-year-old fell madly in love with the Greek heir to the throne at the celebrations. And he into her.
That was 121 years ago when Charles III. will be crowned monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on May 6th. And yet the woman who lost her heart at the coronation of Edward VII will play a special role on this day: his German-British grandmother, who spent her youth at Schloss Heiligenberg near Darmstadt.
The coronation oil for his anointing is pressed from olives ripened near their burial site on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. A touching gesture and a late honor for a relative that the royals made fun of for a long time. Prince Philipp’s mother was considered eccentric. She wasn’t just a hands-on philanthropist.
She also gives an example of a person who does not allow himself to be permanently crushed by the most severe blows of fate. On March 29, before their coronation, Charles and Camilla come to Berlin on a state visit. A good reason to shed light on the turbulent life of the woman who connects Charles with Germany like no other.
Princess Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie von Battenberg was born on February 25, 1885 in the presence of her great-grandmother, Britain’s Queen Victoria. Deaf from birth, she was able to read three languages from the lips at the age of eight. When she stood in front of the altar on the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt in October 1903, however, there were communication problems. When asked by the priest whether she wanted to marry Andrew of Greece, she said no, when asked whether she had committed to someone else, she said yes.
After her marriage she moved to Athens and gave birth to four daughters. Alice von Battenberg was also socially involved from the start and set up a knitting school for women. When war broke out between Greece and Turkey in 1919, she organized field hospitals and cared for the wounded. “God what we saw,” she wrote to her mother. “Crushed arms, legs and heads… the corridor covered in blood.”
In 1921, the 36-year-old had another child: Philip. A year later, the royal family was forced to flee after a coup d’état. Paris became her exile. Alice tried to keep her afloat by selling embroidery. Meanwhile, Andreas was having fun with his lover. In 1930 he left his wife. During these difficult years, Alice von Battenberg increasingly sought support in her faith – and developed a religious delusion, believing herself to be the wife of Buddha and Jesus.
Her biographer Karin Feuerstein-Praßer (“Alice von Battenberg – The Queen’s Mother-in-Law”, Piper) thinks it’s possible that the fate of her aunts who were married to Russia helped trigger the severe psychological crisis. Alix von Hessen-Darmstadt, the last tsarina, was shot by the Soviet secret police in 1918 with her husband and children. Her sister Elisabeth, founder of a charitable order, was also killed during the October Revolution.
However, Sigmund Freud, who was consulted by Alice von Battenberg’s mother, saw another reason for her “paranoid schizophrenia”: sexual frustration. To lower her libido, her ovaries were exposed to X-rays at the Tegel Sanatorium in Berlin. As expected, that didn’t help.
This was followed by forcible admission to a closed institution on Lake Constance. When, after long pleas, she was finally able to leave two years later, she was estranged from her family. Philip was twelve. Grandmother and uncle had taken care of him. The still mentally ill woman traveled through Europe, her relatives rarely knew where she was.
In 1937, another stroke of fate shook her life: her heavily pregnant daughter Cecilia died in a plane crash with her husband and their two sons. On the occasion of the funeral service, Alice von Battenberg reunited with her family after many years. A new closeness developed between her and Philip.
When she moved back to Athens in 1938, she even found the strength to do social work again. In 1941, after the Wehrmacht marched in, severe famine broke out. Alice von Battenberg set up one of the city’s largest soup kitchens. When asked about the reason for her willingness to help, she is said to have only replied: “What else was I born to?”
Even when the widow of the Jewish parliamentarian Haimaki Cohen asked her for help, she did not hesitate to hide Rachel Cohen and her children in her house. When questioned by the Gestapo, she referred to her deafness and pretended to be so clueless that she was left alone.
When Philip married Crown Princess Elizabeth in 1947, Alice von Battenberg made one last appearance in brilliant gowns. To crown it four years later she appeared in a gray habit. Following the example of her aunt, who was murdered in Russia, she too founded an order, which, however, dissolved after a few years. However, Alice von Battenberg never took off her nun’s clothes again. Not even when she moved to Buckingham Palace in 1967 after another military coup in Greece, where she died two years later.
How close Charles was to his grandmother can only be speculated about. The chain-smoking nun, who liked to cheat at canasta and left nothing behind when she died but two bathrobes and an unfinished letter, didn’t really fit into the world of royals.
It was not until 1994, when the children of the Cohen family she rescued, arranged for Alice von Battenberg to be honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, that they realized the extent of their commitment.
At the coronation in May, the Bishop of Canterbury will touch the monarch’s head, hands and heart with the oil from her burial site. A beautiful sign.
