About Me
I was born Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Louise Alice of Hesse and by Rhine. I was the second child of Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and the Rhine and British Princess Alice. Through my mother, I am a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. You can call me Ella.
I have four siblings. An older sister Victoria, and three younger siblings, Irene, Ernest (Ernie) and Alix. My poor younger brother and sister Frittie and May died in 1873 and 1878.
Though I came from one of the oldest and noblest houses in Germany, my family lived a rather modest life by royal standards. We children swept the floors and cleaned their own rooms, while our mother sewed dresses herself for the children. During the Austro-Prussian War, Mama often took me with her while visiting wounded soldiers in a nearby hospital. In this relatively happy and secure environment, I grew up surrounded by English domestic habits and English became my first language.In the winter of 1878, diphtheria swept through the Hesse household, killing my youngest sister, Marie, as well as my mother. I had been sent away to my paternal grandmother's home at the beginning of the outbreak.
I married Grand Duke Sergei (Son of Alexander II) on June 15 1884. It seems I made a good first impression on my husband’s family and the Russian people. “Everyone fell in love with her from the moment she came to Russia from her beloved Darmstadtâ€, wrote one of Sergei's cousins. Wee settled in the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace in St. Petersburg; after Sergei was appointed Governor-General of Moscow in 1892, we resided in one of the Kremlin palaces. During the summer, we stayed at Il’yinskoe, an estate outside Moscow that Sergei had inherited from his mother.
Though we had no children, Sergei and I became foster parents to Sergei's niece and nephew, Maria and Dimitri.
On February 4, 1905, my husband was assassinated in the Kremlin by the Socialist-Revolutionary, Ivan Kalyayev. It came as a total shock to me. In tine I learned to forgive Ivan and even visited him in jail a few days after Sergei's death.
After Serge’s death, I wore mourning clothes and became a vegetarian. In 1909, I gave away her magnificent collection of jewels and sold my other luxurious possessions. Even my wedding ring was not spared. With the proceeds I opened the Convent of Saints Martha and Mary and became its abbess. I soon opened a hospital, a chapel, a pharmacy and an orphanage on its grounds. My sister nuns and I worked tirelessly among and the poor and the sick of Moscow. I often visited Moscow’s worst slums and did all I could to help alleviate the suffering of the poor. For many years my institution helped the poor and the orphans in Moscow by fostering the prayer and charity of devout women. Here there arose a new vision of a diaconate for women, one that combined intercession and action in the heart of a disordered world. Although the Orthodox Church rejected my idea of a female diaconate, it did bless and encourage my many charitable efforts.
