Princess Johanna of Hesse and by Rhine

Infobox Greek Royalty
name = Princess Johanna
title = Princess of Hesse and by Rhine
styles = "HRH" Princess Johanna of Hesse and by Rhine


caption = Princess Johanna of Hesse and by Rhine in 1939.
date of birth = birth date|1936|9|20|mf=y
place of birth = Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany
date of death = death date and age|1939|6|14|1936|9|20|mf=y
place of death = Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany
occupation = Royalty
father = Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse
mother = Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark

Princess Johanna of Hesse and by Rhine (Johanna Marina Eleonore), (September 20, 1936 - June 14, 1939), was the third child and only daughter of Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse and Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark (sister of Philip, Duke of Edinburgh). She was orphaned at age fourteen months when her parents, two older brothers Ludwig and Prince Alexander and paternal grandmother Grand Duchess Eleonore were killed in an airplane crash on their way to a family wedding in London. [Duff (1967)]

After the accident, her uncle Ludwig married his bride Margaret Geddes. The couple adopted Johanna, their orphaned niece, and planned to raise her as their own daughter, but she developed meningitis and died twenty months later at the age of two and a half. [Duff (1967)] Her maternal grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, said later that the unconscious Johanna so closely resembled her mother at the same age that it felt like losing her daughter Cecilie all over again. [Vickers (2003)] Following Johanna's death, she was buried with her parents and brothers at the Rosenhohe. Her uncle Ludwig and aunt Margaret were not able to have children of their own. [Duff (1967)]

"Family curse"

Some considered the Hessian family victims of a curse due to the number of premature deaths in the family. Johanna was a great niece of Tsarina Alexandra and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, both of whom were killed with family members during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Her maternal great-grandmother Princess Alice of the United Kingdom and a great aunt, Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine, died of diphtheria. A haemophiliac great-uncle, Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine, tumbled twenty feet through an open window at age two and died of a brain hemorrhage hours later. An aunt, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse, died at age eight of virulent typhoid, though she was rumored to have eaten from a poisoned dish meant for Nicholas II of Russia. One of Johanna's great-uncles, Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was killed in 1979 by the Provisional Irish Republican Army along with his 14-year-old grandson, Nicholas Knatchbull, and his daughter's mother-in-law, Doreen Knatchbull, Baroness Brabourne. Early deaths continued into the next generation, when Leonora Knatchbull, a great-granddaughter of Earl Mountbatten of Burma, died at age five of a kidney tumor in 1991. [Duff (1967)]

Notes

References

*Duff, David (1967). "Hessian Tapestry". London, Frederick Muller.
*Vickers, Hugo (2003). "Alice: Princess Andrew of Greece". St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN-10 0312302398