Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia

Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich
Born	(1860-10-03)3 October 1860 Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye Selo, Russian Empire
Died	24 January 1919(1919-01-24) (aged 58) Peter and Paul Fortress, Petrograd, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, USSR
Spouse	Alexandra of Greece and Denmark Olga Valerianovna Karnovitsch
Issue	Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Prince Vladimir Paley Princess Irina Paley Princess Natalia Paley
House	Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov
Father	Alexander II of Russia
Mother	Maria Alexandrovna

Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia (Template:Lang-ru; 3 October 1860 – 30 January 1919) was the sixth son and youngest child of Tsar Alexander II of Russia by his first wife Empress Maria Alexandrovna. He was a brother of Emperor Alexander III and uncle of Nicholas II, Russia's last Tsar.

He entered the Russian Army, was a general in the Calvary and adjutant general to his brother Tsar Alexander III, and a Knight of the Order of St Andrew. In 1889, he married Princess Alexandra of Greece, his paternal first cousin once removed. The couple had a daughter and a son, but Alexandra died during the birth of their second child. In his widowhood, Grand Duke Paul began a relationship with Olga Karnovitsch, a married woman with three children. After obtaining a divorce for Olga and in defiance of a strong family opposition, Grand Duke Paul married her in October 1902. As he contracted a morganatic marriage with a divorcée in defiance of the Tsar's prohibition, Grand Duke Paul was banished from living in Russia and deprived of his titles and privileges. Between 1902 and 1914, he lived in exile in Paris with his second wife who gave him three children. In the spring 1914, he settled back in Russia with his second family.

With the outbreak of World War I, Grand Duke Paul was appointed in command of the first corps of the Imperial Guard but, afflicted with ill health, he served only intermittently. During the last days of the Tsarist period, he was one of the few members of the Romanov family who remained close to Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna. It fell upon Grand Duke Paul to informed Alexandra of Nicholas II's abdication.

After the fall of the Russian monarchy, Grand Duke Paul initially remained living at his Palace in Saint Petersburg during the period of the provisional government. With the Bolsheviks ascending to power, his palace was expropriated and eventually he was arrested and sent to prison. In declining health, he was shot by the Bolsheviks with other Romanov relatives in the courtyard of the Peter and Paul Fortress in January 1919 and his remains were thrown into a common grave.

Early life

Tsar Alexander II of Russia with his wife and their three youngest children: Sergei, Paul and Maria

Grand Duke Paul was born on 3 October [O.S. 21 September] 1860 at the Catherine Palace, in Tsarskoye Selo. He was the eight and youngest child of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and his first wife Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, née Duchess Maximilienne Wilhelmine of Hesse-Darmstadt. His birth was commemorated by the naming of the city of Pavlodar in Kazakhstan.

As the youngest child in a large family, he was much loved by his parents and siblings. His early years were spent with his two siblings closest in age: his sister Marie, and his brother Grand Duke Sergei from whom he was inseparable. By the time of Paul Alexandrovich birth, his mother was afflicted from tuberculosis and the doctors advised her no to have more children. Relations between Paul's parents ceased. The family was struck by tragedy with the death of Paul's eldest brother, Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich in 1865, when Paul was four years old. The following year his father, Alexander II, started an affair with Princess Catherine Dolgurokova, who gave him three children.

Grand Duke Paul early years were spent at Tsarskoye Selo and at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg with vacations at Livadia, the family’s Crimean retreat. As time passed and the Empress’ health dictated her to avoid the harsh Russian climate, the Tsarina spent long sojourns abroad with her three youngest children in Jugenheim outside Darmstadt and the winters in the South of France. Like his mother, Paul was a delicate child and he never had a robust constitution.

Education

Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich and his brother Grand Sergei Alexandrovich.

Grand Duke Paul was educated at home by private tutors. From the 1870s, Paul and his brother Sergei were kept in Russia by their studies. They were destined to follow a military career, but their tutor, Admiral D.S Arseniev, encouraged his pupils to have a broad artistic education as well. Grand Duke Paul became a good amateur actor and an excellent dancer. He was widely liked due to his gentle character so different from his boisterous eldest brothers.

He was from birth Guard cornet in an Infantry Regiment. However, his career advanced more slowly than that of his elder brothers. He became Lieutenant in Januray 1874, but as he was still too young, he was the only of Tsar Alexander II's sons not to take part in the the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78.

Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich was known as a gentle person, religious and accessible to people. In June 1880, he was afflicted by the death of his mother whose slim figure and delicate health he inherited. Shortly after his father married his mistress Catherine Dolgorukova. Grand Duke Paul, overprotected by his brother Sergei, did not know of the affair. Emotional distraught by the news, he had to travel abroad to recuperate. Grand Duke Paul was in a trip to Italy with his brother Sergei when their father Alexander II was assassinated on 13 March [O.S. 1 March] 1881. Paul's eldest surviving brother Alexander III ascended to the Russian throne. Grand Duke Paul was appointed Captain in 1882.

Since childhood Paul was very attached to his brother Sergei, their closeness remained even after Sergei engagement and later marriage to Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine (1864–1918). Paul accompanied the couple to England to meet Elisabeth's British grandmother Queen Victoria, who was favorably impressed by Paul. After Sergei's marriage Paul moved with his brother and his new sister in law who became also very close to him. The trio share the same household for some time and they made a trip together to Jerusalem in 1888. Grand Duke Paul suffered from weak lungs and spent periods abroad to recuperate. On medical advice he visited Greece in 1887.

First marriage

.Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich and Princess Alexandra of Greece. Engagement photograph.

It was during his visits to Greece, in the warm family atmosphere of his first cousin Queen Olga of Greece that Grand Duke Paul grew closer with Olga's eldest daughter, Princess Alexandra of Greece of Denmark. Alexandra's father King George I of Greece was a brother of Tsarina Maria Feodorovna, Paul's sister in law. During the silver wedding anniversary of king George and Queen Olga, Paul asked for Alexandra hand and he was accepted. Alexandra had come to Russia several times during visits to her maternal relatives. The wedding took place on 5 June  [O.S. 17 June] 1860 1889, in St. Petersburg at the chapel of the Winter Palace. Grand Duke Paul was twenty-nine years old and his wife ten years younger.

Paul settled with his wife in his own Palace in St Petersburg on the English Embankment. The mansion located at 68 Angliiskaya Naberezhnaya, in the very center of Saint Petersburg, was built in the Florentine renaissance style by the architect Alexander Krakau between 1859–1862 for Baron Alexander von Stieglitz, a prominent financier and the first Governor of the Bank of Russia. After Stieglitz's death in 1884, the mansion was inherited by his adopted daughter, Nadezhda Polovtsova, who was in fact the illegitimate child of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, and thus a close cousin of Grand Duke Paul. She sold the property to the Treasury in 1887. Shortly before his marriage, Grand Duke Paul acquired the mansion. The treasures of the house included the white marble staircase, the sitting room decorated with caryatids, the oak-paneled library, and the concert hall with portraits of great composers and panels depicting The Four Seasons. The architect Maximilian Messmacher redesigned some of the interiors, creating a Moorish Hall.

Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich; Sergei's wife, Grand Duchess Elizaberth Feodorovna holding Grand Duchess Maria pavlovna; Grand Duke paul alexandrovich with his son Dmitri on his lap.

Grand Duke Paul's marriage was a happy, but brief. Alexandra, after a difficult first pregnancy, gave birth to a daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (1890–1958). Alexandra was of a frail constitution and she was also homesick for her native Greece. In Autumum that same year, Grand Duke Paul took his wife for a holiday in Greece. Back in Russia, he was appointed commander of the imperial house guards and, therefore, he was usually away fulfilling his military duties. Paul and his wife were given rooms at the great palace at Tsakoiselo, but they saw each other’s only on weekends. Although Grand Duke Sergei and his wife Elizabetha lived in Moscow, the two couples remained very close. In the summer 1891, Paul and Alexandra decided to spent some time with Grand Duke Sergei and Sergei's wife at iIlinskoie, Sergei's country estate outside Moscow. While there, Alexandra, seven months pregnant with her second child, carelessly stepped into a waiting boat, causing premature labor and the following day gave birth prematurely to a son, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia (1891–1942). Alexandra did not recover consciousness and died six days later on 24 September 1891.

Grand Duke Paul was deeply affected by Alexandra's death. It took him long time to overcome his depression. During this period, his brother Sergei and Sergei's wife took care of Paul's motherless children in a pattern of behavior that it would be repeated in the years to follow. In his widowhood, the grieving grand duke moved to Tsarskoye Selo leaving his palace in St Peterburg that had been his home with Alexandra to never return. For a long time, the palace stood vacant. After that, the building changed many hands over time. When the revolution ended, the mansion was sold to the Russian Society for the Production of Equipment and Military Supplies. Eventually it became home to various Soviet institutions. The palace has survived to the present and today it is at the disposal of Saint Petersburg State University. Paul's brother, Tsar Alexander III died on 1 November [O.S. 20 October] 1894 and Paul' nepehew Nicholas II became the new Tsar. There was only an eight-year gap between uncle and nephew and Paul had known Nicholas II "s wife Alexandra Feodorovna since she was a little girl when in his young he made many visit to his mother's native Darmstardt. Therefore, Grand Duke Paul was well liked by the new Tsar and Tsarina

Second marriage

Grand Duke Paul and his second wife.

In 1895, the young widower began an affair with a commoner, Olga Valerianovna Karnovich. Olga was married with three young children, a son and two daughters. Her husband, Eric von Pistohlkors, was an aide the champ of Paul's brother Grand Duke Vladimir and a captain in Paul's regiment. The affair initially remained secret, but it became public knowledge at court when Olga, during a court ball, wore a diamond necklace that had belonged to Paul's mother Empress Maria Alexandrovna and that he had given to Olga as a present.The Dowager Tsarina Maria Feodorvna recognized the jewels and had Olga removed from the ball. In the subsequent scandal, Paul was moved to a different regimental command and Eric von Pistohlkors was sent away, but it was already too late. Olga was pregnant with Paul's child. She gave birth to a son Vladimir, in January 1897 and Eric von Pistohlkors asked for divorce.

Grand Duke Paul wanted to recognize the child who had been born legally as von Pistolkos son. He also would like to marry Olga, but Tsar Nicholas II and Grand Duke Vladimir vehemently opposed their union. Grand Duke Paul turned his back on his family; lost interest on Maria and Dmitri and instead spent long periods abroad with his mistress. In 1900, he bought a house in Boulogne-sur-Seine, that previously belonged to Princess Zenaide Ivanovna Youssoupoff, intenteding to settle there and marry Olga once she would obtain a divorce. Paul's brother, Grand Duke Vladimir, made him swore a solemn oath that he would not marry Olga. With this assurance, Olga's divorce was granted in 1902. Things complicated further when, in August that same year, Paul's niece, Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna, married Prince Nicholas of Greece, Paul's former brother-in-law. It was the first time that Paul's former father in law King George of Greece came to Russia since the death of his daughter Alexandra. Their meeting was very uncomfortable. After the wedding celebrations were over, Paul left for Italy where Olga awaited him. Defying the strong family opposition, particularly of his brother Sergei and his sister in law Elisabeth, who begged him to reconsider, to think about his children and his responsibilities in Russia, Paul was determined to marry Olga. The realtionship with his brother Sergei and his sister in law Elisabeth, so close before, never recovered.

On 10 October 1902 Grand Duke Paul married Olga in a Greek Orthodox church in Livorno, Italy. Because he married morganatically and without the Tsar's permission, Grand Duke Paul was banished from Russia; he was dismissed of his military commissions; all his properties were seized, and his brother Grand Duke Sergei was appointed guardian of Maria and Dmitri.

Exile

Grand Duke Paul with his children by his first marriage: Dimitri and Maria Pavlovna. Paris, 1914.

Grand Duke Paul and his second wife were still vacationing in Italy when they were banished from Russia. They settled in Boulogne-sur-Seine where a daughter, Irina, was born on 22 November [O.S. 5 December] 1903. In 1904, Grand Duke Paul arranged through Prince Regent Leopold of Bavaria for his wife and their children to be granted the hereditary title of Count and Countesses de Hohenfelsen with a coat of arms. With the assassination of his brother Sergei in February 1905, Grand Duke Paul was allowed to return to Russia for the funeral, but Olga was denied entrance that April to attend the promotion of her son Alexander Erikovich as an army officer. Paul claimed the custody of his Maaie and Dmitri, but the Tsar made Elizabeth their guardian. From then on, Grand Duke Paul was allowed to visit his children, but not to return to Russia permanently with his second wife. On 5 December that same year, Grand Duke Paul and Olga had another daughter, Natalia, completing their family.

Although an outcast to the Romanovs, Grand Duke Paul had a happy life in Paris with Olga and their three children. They lived in style employing a household staff of sixteen maids, gardeners, cooks, and tutors and they were avid art and old porcelain collectors. At their mansion in Boulogne-sur-Seine, they had a hectic social life offering dinners and lavish receptions entertaining writers, artist and Russian abroad. The couple was very close to their three children, and on Sundays, the whole family attended private mass at the Russian church on rue Daru.

Finally, in November 1907, Nicholas II relented pardoning Grand Duke Paul and lifted his banishment from Russia. The Tsar also recognized as valid Paul's second marriage. Although he was not consulted in the engagement of his daughter Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna to Prince Wilhem of Sweden, Paul attended the wedding on April 20/May 3 1908. That same year, Grand Duke Paul, Olga and their three children visited Russia together for the first time. After a brief visit they return to Paris but their son, Vladimir, stayed in Russia and became a student in the Corp-des-Paiges . In 1912, on the occasion of Dimitri reaching his majority, Tsar Nichola II, finally relented and pardoned his only surviving uncle, restoring Grand Duke Paul titles and privileges. However, Paul decided to remained in France fro some more time. In 1913 Paul visited Russia once again to take part in the celebration for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov family on the Russian throne. Grand Duke Paul moved back permanently to Russiqa only when he finished a house for himself and his family in Tsarskoe Selo in May 1914.

World War I

Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich and his second family.

At the out break of World War I, Gran Duke Paul Alexandrovich's two sons, Dmitri and Vladimir, joined the war effort and his daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna became an army nurse. In August 1915, the Tsar granted Paul's wife, Olga, the title of Princesses Paley with the style of Serene Highness, and their children also became Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley and Princesses Irina Pavlovna and Natalia Pavlovna Paley. In the same month, Prince Vladimir Paley, joined a regiment. Although he had being away from active service for many years and his health was frail, Gran Duke Paul begged his nephew, Tsar Nicholas II, to give him an active military appointment in the battle fields. By that time, Paul was, once again, one of the few members of the extended Romanov family in good terms with the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Through her intervention, Nicholas II placed Paul in command of the First Corps of the Imperial Guard in 1915. However, before he could assumed his military appointment, Paul felt gravely ill with gall bladder troubled. It was feared that he had cancer and he spent the fall and the winter 1915-1916 sick. It was only, until he recovered many months later, in May 1916, when, Grand Duke Paul, ignoring his doctor's advice, left to take command of his Guards regiment. After a difficult spell at the front under heavy enemy bombardment at the village of Sokoul, he was awarded a St George's's Cross 4th class, one of the most coveted military decoration. Due to his bad health, the grand duke was moved, in September 1916, to a new appointment as inspector general of the Guard at the Tsar's headquarters and his son, Vladimir, was placed under his orders.

Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich (the tallest man in the group) and his son, Vladimir (the young man without mustache), during the war.

In the Autumn 1916, Paul took a three week holiday in Crimea with his wife and children. On his way back north, in November, he visited the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna in Kiev. Maria Feodorovna and her son-in-law, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, enlisted Paul's help in order to persuade Nicholas II and his wife of the need for change and to get rid of Rasputin's damaging influence. Grand Duke Paul handled the issue with tact, but without success. Nevertheless, he was able to retain Nicholas II and Alexandra's confidence even after it was shaken with Paul's son, Dmitri, involvement in Rasputin's murder on December 16, 1916. Paul, who was at Stavka with Nicholas II when both received news of the event, was horrified of his son's participation in the murder, but supported Dmitri and wrote a letter to the Tsar asking for clemency for Dimitri who, nevertheless, was sent to the Persian front as a form of exile.

On 28 February 1917, Alexandra summoned Paul and asked him to go to the front and gather some troops to save the throne. He declined, convinced that it was going to be a fruitless endeavor. Instead, with the assistance of Prince Michael Putiatin and the lawyer Nicholas Ivanov, Grand Duke Paul drafted a constitutional manifesto, underwritten with his own signature and those of Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich and Kirill Vladimirovich, the three most senior grand dukes in the last period of Imperial Russia. It was then delivered to the Duma to be presented for the Tsar's signature on March 1, at Nicholas II's return from headquarters. However, before that, the Tsar's train was help up and Nicholas II abdicated on 2 March. It fell upon Grand Duke Paul to informed Alexandra of Nicholas II's abdication on March 3.

Revolution and death

Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich.

At the fall of the Russian monarchy, in March 1917, Grand Duke Paul and his wife, not seeing the dangers ahead, decided to stay in their luxurious estate amid the upheaval. As Tsar Nicholas and his family were sent to internal exile to Siberia, Grand Duke Paul and his second family remained united living at their home in Tsarkoe Selo. In August 1917, the Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky, placed Paul under house arrest, but thanks to the intervention of his daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia, the guards in charge of overseeing his house were removed. The lives of the Romanovs deteriorated sharply after the Bolsheviks rose to power in October 1917. In that same month, Grand Duke Paul was arrested and held for two weeks at the Bolshevik's headquarters in the Smolny Institute. He was going to be incarcerated at the Peter and Paul Fortress, but the Grand Duke protested. He was treated well by his captors, who addressed him as "Comrade Highness". Due to his frail health, he was released and he returned to live in Tsarkoe Selo with his family.

On December 27, 1917 the Bolshevik Government confiscated all property held by the banks. Grand Duke Paul, who had deposited all the jewelry he had inherited from his parents in the banks under his wife name, lost all his fortune. By early January 1918, Grand Duke Paul and his family could no longer afford to heat their large Tsarkoe Selo Palace and they were forced to move to a nearby English dacha that belonged to Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich. Shortly after they moved out, their home was expropriated and turned into a museum while Lenin himself rode their car.

In March 1918, all male members of the Romanov family, including Paul's son, Vladimir, were ordered to register at Cheka headquarters and shortly after they were sent away into internal Russian exile. They never saw Vladimir again. He was murdered by the Bolshevik along with several other Romanovs relatives on 18 July 1918 in a mine shaft near Alapayevsk, one day after the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his immediate family at Yekaterinburg. Grand Duke Paul, who was too ill to travel, initially escaped the fate of his son. Although, under constant harassment, Grand Duke Paul continued living with his wife and their two daughters at Grand Duke Boris's dacha.

Grand Duke Paul was arrested on July 30 and sent to Spalernaia prison, where he would remain for most of his incarceration. His cousins: Grand Dukes Dimitri Konstantinovich, Nicholas Mikhailovich and George Mikhailovich were already imprisoned there. The four Grand Dukes, all men in their fifties, each had their own cell, 7 feet by 3 feet. They had little exercise and the food was bad. Paul's wife visited him in prison many times and did all she could to have him released. On 6 December, as the Grand Duke's health, already bad, declined sharply, he was transferred to the prison hospital on the island of Golodai. Before he left he was allowed to say goodbye to his young daughters, Irene and Natalia. Shortly afterwards, Princess Paley arranged for the two girls to be smuggled into Finland. They never saw their father again.

A few week later, when his wife went to see him, he had been transferred to Cheka headquarters and she would never see him again. Princess Paley continued making desperate attempts to have her husband released through the intervention of Maxim Gorky. Her efforts were useless: on 29 January 1919, Paul was moved to St. Peter and St. Paul Fortress, and in the first hours of the following day he was shot there, along with his cousins Grand Dukes Dimitri Konstantinovich, Nicholas Mikhailovich and George Mikhailovich.

They were buried in a mass grave in the Fortress, the Bolsheviks having refused the distraught Princess Paley the right to bury her husband.

Ancestry

Family of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia

16. Peter III of Russia 8. Paul I of Russia 17. Catherine II of Russia 4. Nicholas I of Russia 18. Friedrich II Eugen, Duke of Württemberg 9. Sophie Dorothea of Württemburg 19. Friederike Dorothea of Brandenburg-Schwedt 2. Alexander II of Russia 20. Frederick William II of Prussia 10. Frederick William III of Prussia 21. Frederika Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt 5. Charlotte of Prussia 22. Charles II, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz 11. Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz 23. Friederike Caroline Luise of Hesse-Darmstadt 1. Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia 24. Louis IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt 12. Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse 25. Karoline of Zweibrücken 6. Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse 26. Georg Wilhelm of Hesse-Darmstadt 13. Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt 27. Luise of Leiningen-Heidesheim 3. Marie of Hesse and by Rhine 28. Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Baden 14. Charles Louis of Baden 29. Karoline Luise of Hesse-Darmstadt 7. Wilhelmine of Baden 30. Louis IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt 15. Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt 31. Karoline of Zweibrücken

References

• Alexander, Grand Duke of Russia. Once a Grand Duke. Cassell, London, 1932
• Lee, William & Davidson, Lisa. Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich. Published in The Grand Dukes. Eurohistory, 2010. ISBN 978-0-9771691-8-0
• King, Greg. The Court of the Last Tsar. Wiley, 2006. ISBN 978-0-471-72763-7.
• Papi, Stefano. Jewels of the Romanovs. Thames & Hudson, 2013. ISBN 978-0-500-51706-2
• Perry, John and Pleshakov, Constantine. The Flight of the Romanovs. Basic Books, 1999, ISBN 0-465-02462-9.
• Van der Kiste, John. The Romanovs 1818–1959. Sutton Publishing, 1999, ISBN 0-7509-2275-3.
• Zeepvat, Charlotte. The Camera and the Tsars. Sutton Publishing, 2004. ISBN 0-7509-3049-7.
• Zeepvat, Charlott. Romanov Autumn. Sutton Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-7509-2739