Ekaterina Pavlovna

She was born (in a new style) on May 21, 1788 in Tsarskoye Selo , the summer residence of Empress Catherine II . The next day, the empress informed Grigory Potemkin : “Dear friend, Prince Grigory Alexandrovich! Yesterday, the Grand Duchess gave birth to a daughter, who was named in my honor Catherine ” ^[3] .

The birth was difficult, as follows from the letter of Catherine II: “... yesterday mother’s life literally hung in the balance. As soon as I noticed the danger, I immediately ordered the doctor to take all necessary measures, and now the husband and wife are grateful to me for this. " The official announcement of the birth of the Grand Duchess was published in the St. Petersburg Gazette on May 16, 1788 ^[4] :

In her youth, Catherine was about to marry Mikhail Petrovich Dolgorukov . According to his relative, V.P. Tolstoy, Prince Dolgorukov was in love with Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna, and she reciprocated. Emperor Alexander agreed to this marriage and wrote about it to Dolgorukov’s mother.

But the prince died during the Russian-Swedish war. Later, Catherine was carried away by Bagration .

From the letters of Elizabeth Alekseevna’s mother, Margraine of Baden, the high society learned about the affair of Ekaterina Pavlovna and Bagration, who had been the commandant in Pavlovsk for two years in a row.

There was an intimate correspondence between lovers. According to Ekaterina Pavlovna, these letters were able to “severely compromise her by falling into the wrong hands”. He always carried her portrait with him.

Prince A. B. Kurakin, who knew Ekaterina Pavlovna well, described her: “She has a mind and spirit that is appropriate to her family, has willpower, she is not created for a close circle, she is not at all timid, the courage and perfection with which she rides able to arouse envy even in men. "

At the Erfurt meeting of the sovereigns (1808), Talleyrand made her brother Emperor Alexander I an offer to marry her with Napoleon in ways to strengthen the alliance of Russia with France, but this proposal was rejected, mainly at the insistence of the greatest princess and her mother.

In 1809, Ekaterina Pavlovna married her cousin (their mothers were sisters), Prince George of Oldenburg, and settled with him in Tver . Here, in the palace of Ekaterina Pavlovna , N. M. Karamzin read excerpts from his history to Emperor Alexander I. At the suggestion of Ekaterina Pavlovna, the historiographer compiled his famous note “On Ancient and New Russia,” which the Grand Duchess handed over to the emperor; her efforts subsequently eliminated the cooling of the emperor to Karamzin, caused by this note. In Tver, Kiprensky became close friends with Ekaterina Pavlovna and even fell in love with her, teaching painting [1] .

In 1812, Ekaterina Pavlovna warmly supported the idea of ​​convening a people's militia and formed the Jaeger Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna from her unit peasants, who participated in almost all the main battles of that era. December 15, 1812 Ekaterina Pavlovna lost her husband. In the years 1813-1815. she accompanied Emperor Alexander on campaigns and did not remain without influence on the course of the meetings during the Vienna Congress ; contributed to the marriage of her sister Anna Pavlovna with the Prince of Orange , later King of the Netherlands Willem II .

She entered into a second marriage on January 12, 1816 with another cousin, Crown Prince of Württemberg, William , who entered the throne in the same year. Wilhelm ’s father and Catherine’s mother were the children of Duke Friedrich Eugene of Württemberg .

As a queen, Ekaterina Pavlovna zealously cared for public education; during the famine of 1816, it provided an important service to the country by founding in 1817 a “charitable society”; contributed to the construction of industrious houses. To create this society, she convened male and female persons who belonged to all classes. The king, wanting to support the initiative of his wife, allocated 10,000 florins for annual assistance to the poor. The Queen’s mother, Empress Maria Fedorovna, also did not stand aside - she became a member of the Society with an annual contribution of 2000 rubles, and Nicholas I ordered that this contribution be continued for the future. Ekaterina Pavlovna herself sacrificed a lot - giving the necessary amounts for the initial arrangement of various specialized institutions and organizations that budded from the original general Charity Society ^[5] .

Died January 9, 1819 from erysipelas . The premature death of Ekaterina Pavlovna is mourned in the elegy written by V. A. Zhukovsky (“ You flew away, heavenly visitor ... ”) and Prince Ivan Dolgoruky . She was buried in a specially built for this purpose by King William Grabkapelle in Stuttgart on Mount Rothenberg, where once a year an Orthodox service in her honor takes place ^[6] .

From the first marriage:

• Friedrich Paul Alexander (1810-1829)
• Peter (1812-1881), Russian statesman, senator, philanthropist.

From the second marriage:

• Mary (1816–1887), married to Count Alfred von Neipperg (1807–1865).
• Sofia (1818-1877), married to the King of the Netherlands Willem III .

Ekaterina Pavlovna is the main character in the historical novel by Mikhail Kazovsky “Katish and Bagration” (“Young Guard”, 2012).

• Ekaterina Pavlovna // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.