Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine

Princess Henry of Prussia

Irene of Hesse and by Rhine
Princess Henry of Prussia
Princess Irene, 1898
Born	(1866-07-11)11 July 1866 New Palace, Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse, German Empire
Died	11 November 1953(1953-11-11) (aged 87) Schloss Hemmelmark, Barkelsby, Schleswig-Holstein, West Germany
Burial	15 November 1953 Schloss Hemmelmark, Barkelsby, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Spouse	Prince Henry of Prussia ​ ​ (m. 1888; died 1929)​
Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine
Mother	Princess Alice of the United Kingdom

Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine (Irene Luise Marie Anne; 11 July 1866 – 11 November 1953), later Princess Henry of Prussia, was the third child and third daughter of

North German Lloyd

was named after her.

Her siblings included

Tsar Nicholas II of Russia

. Like her younger sister, the empress, Irene was a carrier of the hemophilia gene, and Irene would lose her sisters Alix and Elisabeth in Russia to the Bolsheviks.

Early life

She received her first name, which was taken from the Greek word for "peace", because she was born at the end of the Austro-Prussian War. She was nicknamed "Nin" by her family.^[1] Alice considered Irene an unattractive child and once wrote to her sister Victoria that Irene was "not pretty".^[2] She would never be considered a great beauty like her sisters Elisabeth and Alix, but she did have a pleasant, even disposition. Princess Alice brought up her daughters simply. An English nanny presided over the nursery and the children ate plain meals of rice puddings and baked apples and wore plain dresses. Her daughters were taught how to do housework, such as baking cakes, making their own beds, laying fires and sweeping and dusting their rooms. Princess Alice also emphasised the need to give to the poor and often took her daughters on visits to hospitals and charities.^[3]

The family was devastated in 1873 when Irene's haemophiliac younger brother Friedrich, nicknamed "Frittie", fell through an open window, struck his head on the balustrade and died hours later of a brain hemorrhage.^[4] In the months following the toddler's death, Alice frequently took her children to his grave to pray and was melancholy on anniversaries associated with him.^[5] In the autumn of 1878 Irene, her siblings (except for Elisabeth) and her father became ill with diphtheria. Her younger sister Princess Marie, nicknamed "May", died of the disease. Her mother, exhausted from nursing the children, also became infected. Knowing she was in danger of dying, Princess Alice dictated her will, including instructions about how to bring up her daughters and how to run the household. She died of diphtheria on 14 December 1878.^[6]

Ernest Louis, sister Victoria and, sitting, her sister Alix

in February 1879, two months after the deaths of her mother and sister Marie

Following Alice's death, Queen Victoria resolved to act as a mother to her Hessian grandchildren. Princess Irene and her surviving siblings spent annual holidays in England and their grandmother sent instructions to their governess regarding their education and approving the pattern of their dresses.[7] With her sister Alix, Irene was a bridesmaid at the 1885 wedding of their maternal aunt, Princess Beatrice, to Prince Henry of Battenberg.^[8]

Marriage

Irene married

Irene transmitted the haemophilia gene to her eldest and youngest sons, Waldemar and Heinrich. Waldemar's health worried her from early childhood.^[12] She was later devastated when the youngest child, four-year-old Heinrich, died after he fell and bumped his head in February 1904.^[13] Six months after little Heinrich's death, Irene became an aunt to Tsarevich Alexei of Russia, son of her youngest sister, Tsarina Alexandra, who also had hemophilia.

Irene, raised to believe in a proper Victorian code of behaviour, was easily shocked by what she saw as immorality.

Irene's ties to her sisters were disrupted by the advent of World War I, which put them on opposing sides of the war. When the war ended, she received word that Alix, her husband and children and her sister Elizabeth had been killed by the Bolsheviks.

When Anna Anderson surfaced in Berlin in the early 1920s, claiming to be the surviving Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, Irene visited the woman, but decided that Anderson could not be the niece she had last seen in 1913.^[19] Princess Irene was not impressed.

"I saw immediately that she could not be one of my nieces. Even though I had not seen them for nine years, the fundamental facial characteristics could not have altered to that degree, in particular the position of the eyes, the ear, etc. .. At first sight one could perhaps detect a resemblance to Grand Duchess Tatiana."^[20]

Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, sister of the murdered tsar, commented on the visit of Princess Irene,

"It was an unsatisfactory meeting, but the woman's supporters said that Princess Irene had not known her niece very well and all the rest of it."^[21]

Irene's husband, Heinrich, said that the mention of Anderson upset Irene too much and ordered that no one was to discuss Anderson in his presence.^[22] Heinrich died in 1929. Anna Anderson biographer Peter Kurth wrote that several years later, Irene's son (Prince Sigismund) posed questions to Anderson through an intermediary about their shared childhood and declared that her answers were all accurate.^[23] Irene later adopted Sigismund's daughter, Barbara, born in 1920, as her heir after Sigismund left Germany to live in Costa Rica during the 1930s. Sigismund declined to return to Germany to live after World War II.^[24]