#Alice Battenberg

[ykzzr]

Ernst Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, his wife Victoria, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine and their daughter Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, his sisters and their children, Princess Victoria of Battenberg, her two daughters Princesses Alice and Louise, her son Prince George of Battenberg,Princess Irene of Prussia, her sons Princes Waldemar and Sigismund of Prussia, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodrovna. Wolfsgarten 1896.

[world-of-wales]

❥ 27 JANUARY 2025 | The Prince of Wales gave a speech during the Holocaust memorial service at London's Guildhall.

During the speech, he paid tribute to his great-grandmother, Prince Philip's mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg.

“I am honoured to join you today to mark Holocaust Memorial Day and to remember the millions murdered during the Holocaust and in subsequent genocides. We also remember those survivors, who have lived with the scars both mental and physical. Their bravery in sharing with us the most harrowing moments of their lives, are extremely powerful and ensure we never forget. I assure them, we never will.

On this, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, we also recall those who risked their own lives to help and save others. They risked death, torture and persecution to defy the aggressors.

I was recently reminded of my great-grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, who lived in Athens during the Second World War.

This is an extract from the book ‘Heroes of the Holocaust’:

'In the early days of German occupation, conditions deteriorated rapidly as food ran out when an estimated 300,000 people died…Conditions were particularly severe in Athens and its port, Piraeus. Alice worked tirelessly for the Red Cross, helping to organise soup kitchens, opening shelters for orphaned children, and setting up a nursing system for poor areas of the city. It was at this time that Princess Alice gave refuge to a Jewish widow, Rachel Cohen, and two of her five children to save them from deportation to the death camps.

This was an extremely risky undertaking in the close-packed streets of Athens where there was always the danger of spies and gossip….On 15 October 1943, Rachel Cohen and Tilde moved into Alice’s home. The staff were told that Mrs Cohen was the former governess to her children…Michel, the youngest of the four brothers, joined them about a month later…. There were great risks, not least the position of the house – the front door faced the residence of the local Archbishop, which always had a German guard on duty outside. She was sometimes interviewed by the Gestapo and used her deafness to an advantage, pretending not to understand their questions or what they were talking about. It worked and they soon gave up. Thanks to her, the entire Cohen family survived the war.' It has been a great honour for Catherine and I to join you all today.

Thank you.

Princess Alice was honoured as 'Righteous Among the Nations' for hiding the Cohens in her house in Athens during the War and was posthumously named a Hero of the Holocaust by the British Government in 2010.

[romanovsonelastdance]

Princess Alice of Battenberg and her husband Prince Andrew of Greece.

[foreverinthepagesofhistoryy]

Royal Hair Challenge 2025 🤍

Day 2: Favorite Updos of the old British Royal Family

⋅⋆ ♡ ⋆ ⋅

[teatimeatwinterpalace]

Darmstadt, 1880s.

[the-last-tsar]

Tsar Nicholas II at the train window with Princess Victoria, her husband Prince Louis and their daughter Princess Alice.

[duchesssoflennox]

JOSEFINE SWOBODA AND QUEEN VICTORIA’S FAMILY 💖🥺❤️‍🩹

Beautiful portraits painted by the talented painter Josefine Swoboda (1861-1924) of the granddaughters and Great-granddaughters of Queen Victoria 🥺🦋🤍

[queenalexandraofdenmark]

♡ Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna with her niece, Princess Alice of Battenberg, 1888/1889. ♡

[lostinsidelostoutside]

Remarkable Woman 🥰

[februaryfrost]

Princess Alice of Battenberg and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. About 1901.

Nicholas was married to Alexandra, who was the youngest sister of Alice's mother, Victoria. Alexandra and Victoria were born Princesses of Hesse and by Rhine and granddaughters of Queen Victoria via her second daughter, Alice.

In 1903 Alice would marry Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, a cousin of Nicholas' and her last born child would become Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. Alice was the grandmother of King Charles III.

Though congenitally deaf, Alice learned to read lips and speak English and German, and also later Greek, the language of her new homeland.

[elsalouisa]

"One of the few occasions when I ever saw the Czarina really happy was when she went back with her husband to her old home in Darmstadt for the marriage of my brother Andrew to Princess Alice, daughter of Prince Louis of Battenberg (who later took the title of Marquis of Milford Haven). She was like a girl released from school then, her face lost its look of sadness. She and Queen Alexandra were the two most beautiful women at the wedding, the Empress in misty delphinium blue and the Queen of England in a dress of amethyst sequins and wearing an amethyst necklace and tiara. There was, of course, a tremendous family reunion for the marriage and the festivities lasted through several days of dinners, balls and gala performances at the opera. That was in 1903. The other day I came across a photograph of some of the guests and realised that nearly half of the group died by violence not very much later. The Emperor, the Empress, their children, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth and several Russian Grand Dukes were put to death during the Revolution. My father was assassinated, some of the English guests and one or two of the German princes were killed in the Great War. Perhaps it was as well for us that we could not read the future, for I think it would have cast a shadow over the tejoicings.

Andrew and Alice had two wedding ceremonies, the first in the Protestant Church and the second in the Russian Church with Greek Orthodox rites. During the service the Russian priest asks the bride two questions . . . whether she consents of her own free will to matry her husband and whether she has already promised her hand to any one else. As my sister-in-law is slightly deaf she was carefully tehearsed the day before, but, even so, at the last moment she was so nervous that she confused the questions and made the responses in the wrong order, to the horror of the officiating priests and the intense amusement of the guests.

My mothet’s sister, the Duchess Vera of Wuttemberg, was at the wedding and, as usual, my brothers and 1 teased her unmercifully. Her appearance was irresistibly funny in our eyes, for she was small and dumpty, with a fat, round, spectacled face and, in the days when the shingle was unknown, she wore her hair cut short. Her hats and even her tiaras were always secured to her head by bands of elastic. At the family dinner after the wedding my brother George sat next to her and, at a pause in the proceedings, snatched off her tiara and put it on his own head. Everybody laughed, Aunt Vera included, though she vowed vengeance on the culprit. Her turn came, as she thought, 2 little later, when the bride and bridegroom started on the honeymoon. We were all gathered at the door throwing rice after them, when someone knocked off poor Aunt Vera’s glasses, which were smashed to atoms on the stone steps. She turned round quickly and, guessing, although she was unable to see clearly without her spectacles, that George was to blame again, dealt a mighty box on the ear of the petson standing immediately behind her. Unfortunately, it was not George, for he had taken care to slip out of range, but the British Admiral, Mark Kerr, who was the recipient of it!"

Memoirs of H R H Prince Christopher of Greece

[the-jewel-catalogue]

Princess Andrew's Meander Tiara

The term “meander” is another word for the Greek key design that makes up the band of this tiara. No one seems to know precisely when Princess Andrew, who was born Princess Alice of Battenberg, acquired the tiara, but it would make sense that she received a Greek key tiara after marrying Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark in 1903.

The tiara is made of diamonds, and the Greek key design is punctuated by a central laurel wreath element and two honeysuckle elements. 

The tiara was handed over to Princess Anne, who still owns the piece today. 

Zara paired her great-grandmother’s tiara with a veil for her Scottish wedding, paying tribute to her lesser-known royal heritage.

~ The Court Jeweller

[thehessiansisters]

Family portrait of Prince and Princess Louis of Battenberg, with their children Princess Louise of Battenberg, Princes George and Louis of Battenberg and Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark, and grandchildren Princesses Margarita and Theodora of Greece, 1910.

[romanovsonelastdance]

Princess Alice of Greece, nee Princess of Battenberg.

[foreverinthepagesofhistoryy]

Rare photo of Greek Royal Family Matriarch, Princess Alice of Greece and Denmark (née Battenberg) with niece-in-law Dowager Queen Frederica of Greece (née Princess of Hanover) and new mother, Queen Anne-Marie of Greece (née Princess of Denmark) with newborn Princess Alexia, 1965

[thestarik]

Tatiana Nikolaevna with Princess Alice of Battenberg. Tsarskoye Selo 1908.