Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna of Russia

Infobox Prussian Royalty
name =Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna
title =Princess Louis Ferdinand of Prussia


spouse =Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia
issue =Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia
Prince Michael of Prussia
Princess Marie Cécile of Prussia
Princess Kira of Prussia
Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia
Prince Christian Sigismund of Prussia
Princess Xenia of Prussia
full name =Kira Kirillovna Romanova
titles ="HI&RH" Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna of Russia, Princess Louis Ferdinand of Prussia
"HIH" Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna of Russia
"HH" Princess Kira Kirillovna of Russia

royal house =House of Hohenzollern
House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov
father =Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia
mother =Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
date of birth =birth date|1909|5|9|df=y
place of birth =Paris, France
date of death =death date and age|1967|9|8|1909|5|9|df=y
place of death =Saint-Briac-sur-Mer, Brittany, France|

Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna of Russia (May 9 1909 - September 8 1967) was the second daughter of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia and Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna. She married Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia.

Russian Revolution

Kira, named after her father, was born in Paris when her parents were exiled because their marriage had not been approved by Tsar Nicholas II. This was because her maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather were siblings and the Russian Orthodox religion forbids the marriage of two first cousins. As well, her mother had divorced her husband Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse, who was the brother of the Empress Alexandra. Her parents were later restored to favor and returned to Russia.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the family fled to Finland. Kira, eight at the time, recalled that her family was permitted to leave by the Provisional Government of Russia. For the first time they rode on a public train. "For the first time there were no royal trappings ... i.e. red carpets, special comforts, etc.," she recalled. [Michael John Sullivan, A Fatal Passion: The Story of the Uncrowned Last Empress of Russia, Random House, 1997, p. 322] In Finland, her 40-year-old mother gave birth to a son, Vladimir. The family waited in Finland for more than a year, hoping that the White Russians would defeat the Bolsheviks and they could return to Russia. "How I wish I could see you," 9-year-old Kira wrote to her aunt, Queen Marie of Romania, in May 1918. "Here it is quite cold though it ought to be summer. Boy (baby Vladimir) is so sweet. When he is hungry and Nana is preparing his lunch, the tears simply stream down his cheeks with hunger." Kira spoke of gathering mushrooms in the woods, going to the movies on Fridays, and of lessons, but also mentioned that they were running out of sugar. Her mother wrote to relatives in other countries begging for baby food to give the baby Vladimir. [Sullivan, p. 333]

Later life

The family eventually left Finland and headed first to Coburg and then to Saint-Briac, France. Kira was born Princess Kira Kirillovna of Russia, but her father later gave her the title "Grand Duchess" when he declared himself Guardian of the Throne in 1924. Dark-haired [Sullivan, p. 378] Kira, high-spirited and straightforward [Sullivan, p. 408] , also had an even temper. She was intelligent, curious, and interested in the arts like her mother, with whom she worked in the art studio at Saint-Briac. Kira also frequently visited her cousins at various royal courts or attended house parties in the United Kingdom. [John Van der Kiste, Princess Victoria Melita, Sutton Publishing, 1991, p. 141] Kira had some difficulty finding a suitable husband. She was interested in the hemophiliac Alfonso of Spain, Prince of Asturias, son of Alfonso XIII of Spain, but was disappointed when the prince showed more interest in one of the daughters of Prince Nicholas of Greece. Later, she was fond of Prince Constantine "Teddy" Soutzo, a Romanian aristocrat. Her cousin, Carol II of Romania, refused to permit the match for political reasons. [Van der Kiste, p. 141] Kira married Louis Ferdinand on May 4, 1938. Louis Ferdinand worked with the underground against the Nazis. He and his wife later raised a family of four sons and three daughters in a village near Bremen, Germany. [ Sullivan, p. 408] Her children were Friedrich Wilhelm (February 10 1939 - ); Michael (March 22 1940 - ); Marie Cécile (May 28 1942 - ); Kira (June 27 1943 - January 10 2004); Louis Ferdinand (August 25 1944 - July 11 1977); Christian-Sigismund (March 14 1946 - ); and Xenia (December 9 1949 - January 18 1992). [cite web | author= Paul Theroff| year=2007 | title= "Prussia" | work=An Online Gotha| url=http://pages.prodigy.net/ptheroff/gotha/russia.html | accessdate= January 7| accessyear=2007]

After World War II, Kira was called upon to testify in the case of Anna Anderson, the woman who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. Kira had met Anderson briefly in 1952 at the urging of her mother-in-law, Crown Princess Cecilie of Prussia, who believed Anderson's claim. Kira was not convinced. She found the woman "repellent" and "not a lady" and incapable of speaking the cultured English used by her family. [Peter Kurth, "Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson," Back Bay Books, 1983, p. 343] Kira had last seen Anastasia when she was a child of seven. Kira's uncle, Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia had been convinced Anderson was Anastasia, but her father and mother were unconvinced by Anderson's claim. [Kurth, p. 342]

In later years, Kira was disappointed when her eldest son, Friedrich Wilhelm, renounced his rights to the title and married a commoner. [Van der Kiste, p. 160] She also paid little heed to her health, putting on weight and suffering from high blood pressure in her fifties. She was in good spirits on a visit to her brother Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia at Saint-Briac in September 1967, where she ate well and dumped several spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee, commenting, "God forbid I should eat anything healthy!" That night, she suffered a heart attack and soon died. [Van der Kiste, p. 160]

Ancestry

Notes

References

*Peter Kurth, "Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson," Back Bay Books, 1983, ISBN 0-316-50717-2
*Michael John Sullivan, "A Fatal Passion: The Story of the Uncrowned Last Empress of Russia," Random House, 1997, ISBN 0-679-42400-8
*John Van der Kiste, "Princess Victoria Melita," Sutton Publishing, 1991, ISBN 0-7509-3469-7
* [http://pages.prodigy.net/ptheroff/gotha/russia.html Paul Theroff, An Online Gotha, genealogy of the royal family of Prussia]

External links

* [http://pages.prodigy.net/ptheroff/gotha/prussia.html Paul Theroff, An Online Gotha, genealogy of the royal family of Prussia]

Persondata
NAME=Russia, Kira Kirillovna of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Daughter of Grand Duke Kirill of Russia and of Princess Victoria Melita of Great Britain and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha; wife of Prince Louis-Ferdinand of Prussia
DATE OF BIRTH=May 9, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH=Paris, France
DATE OF DEATH=September 8, 1967
PLACE OF DEATH=Saint-Briac, France