Elizaveta Mikhailovna

Elizaveta Mikhailovna was born on May 14 (26), 1826 in Moscow and was the second daughter in the family of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich and Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna . She was named after Empress Elizabeth Alekseevna , wife of Alexander I , with whom Elena Pavlovna was very friendly and who died on May 4 (16), 1826 . At home, Elizabeth Mikhailovna was called "Lily."

Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna wrote about her cousin in her diary “The Dream of Youth. 1825-1846 ":

... cousin Lilly (Grand Duchess Elizabeth Mikhailovna (1826-1845)), very direct, a little hot-tempered and like a boy, called her (Empress Maria Fedorovna) "an honest man ..."

Elena Pavlovna paid great attention to the education of her daughters. Meanwhile, Mikhail Pavlovich introduced one of the military subjects into their program, citing the fact that the daughters are chiefs of cavalry regiments. He introduced the growing daughters ( Maria , Elizabeth and Catherine ) with cavalry and infantry signals on the forge and drum. It happened that the Grand Duke brought officers who made mistakes in exercises or reviews to his palace. Here, having invited his daughters, he forced the ugly man to play signals, and the Grand Duchess accurately explained their meaning. “Here, my sir,” he said, “even my daughters, very children, know signals that, apparently, are not familiar to you, and therefore you are welcome to go to the guardhouse.”

In 1843 she became the bride of the Duke Adolf of Nassau . This marriage almost caused a break with the family of Nicholas I. Elena Pavlovna had long cherished the dream of marrying the eldest daughter Maria Mikhailovna as the Crown Prince of Baden, and the youngest Elizabeth to make the wife of the Duke Adolf. At the same time, Nicholas I and Alexandra Fedorovna chose him as a groom for the Grand Duchess Olga . The emperor, taking care of the peace in the imperial house, decided that the prince himself was free to make a choice between two cousins. But the Grand Duchess was afraid that Prince Adolphus would prefer the royal daughter to the detriment of her dear Lily.

Soon it became known that the princes of Nassauski, Adolf and Maurice, arrived in Kronstadt and were waiting for instructions from Nicholas I where and when they could pay him a visit. At that time, it was not customary to come to such a tall person without a prior invitation. But Nikolai Pavlovich told the guests that they could go to Ropsha , where he was on maneuvers. Nicholas I received them in his tent, and the duke Adolf immediately asked for the hands of his niece Elizabeth Mikhailovna. The emperor had nothing against, although he was surprised. The duke immediately went to Carlsbad , where Elena Pavlovna and her daughters were at that time.

The wedding of Elizabeth Mikhailovna and the Duke of Nassau took place on January 31/19, 1844 in St. Petersburg almost simultaneously with the wedding of her cousin Alexandra Nikolaevna and Prince Friedrich of Hesse-Kasselsky (January 16). Thousands of guests gathered for these celebrations. Among the many festivities on the occasion of two weddings in the imperial house, the most magnificent was the one that Elena Pavlovna arranged on February 2 in her house. This holiday cost the owners of the Mikhailovsky Palace 200,000 rubles (a huge sum for those times).

Despite the solemnity and luxury with which loving parents celebrated the weddings of their daughters, the marriage of both turned out to be short: Alexandra Nikolaevna died six months later in Tsarskoye Selo , and Elizaveta Mikhailovna in faraway Wiesbaden on January 16 (28), 1845, also as a result of difficult births with her newborn daughter .

• In 1840, in honor of Elizabeth Mikhailovna, Elizabeth Street was named in Pavlovsk.
• In memory of Elizaveta Mikhailovna, in accordance with the decree of Nicholas I of March 8 (20), 1845 ^[1] , the clinical hospital for young children, founded in St. Petersburg in 1844 by a private charity ^[2] , was called Elizabethan .
• In memory of the dead daughters (the eldest daughter Maria died in November 1846 ), Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna founded the " shelters of Elizabeth and Mary " in St. Petersburg and Pavlovsk .
• In memory of his wife, the Duke Adolf ordered the construction of the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Righteous Elizabeth in Wiesbaden with the money received by the Grand Duchess in a dowry (1 million rubles) or (3,000,000 Mk.). The Duchess and her daughter rest in the crypt of the temple.

45 years after the death of his wife, Adolf Nassau became the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, inheriting the throne of the duchy from his distant relative, King of the Netherlands Willem III .

• Grigoryan V.G. Romanovs. Biographical Dictionary. - M .: AST, 2007.
• Bees E.V. Romanovs. The history of the dynasty. - M .: OLMA-PRESS, 2004.
• Danilova A. Fate is a sad law. Wives of the sons of Paul I. Biographical chronicles. - M .: Eksmo, 2007.
• Elizaveta Mikhailovna // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.

• Biography c. Prince Elizaveta Mikhailovna
• Elizaveta Mikhailovna
• Official site of the Church of St. Elizabeth
• Site about the Church of St. Elizabeth (inaccessible link) (German)