Anastasia Mannerheim

Baroness Anastasia Nikolajevna Mannerheim(nee "Arapova") [IPA: anastasia nikolajevna mɑnerhei̥m] ("née": Arapova) (1872 — 1936) was a Russian aristocrat married to the Marshal of Finland, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim from 1892 to 1919. Anastasia Arapova was the daughter of a wealthy Russian general and former Chevalier Guards officer, Nikolai Arapov, and his wife, Vera Kazakova. Carl Gustaf Mannerheim met Anastasia when he was serving in the Chevalier Guards in St. Petersburg. Her cousin had been a service mate of Mannerheim's in the Russian Army. According to Stig Jägerskiöld in "Mannerheim, Marshal of Finland," Anastasia was a "charming and good-hearted" young woman. She had inherited a considerable fortune, which was of great help to Mannerheim, who had been impoverished and struggled with financial difficulties ever since the bankruptcy of his father, Count Carl Robert Mannerheim, during Carl Gustaf's youth. According to J. E. O. Screen, in "Mannerheim: The Years of Preparation," the Empress Maria Feodorovna, mother of Tsar Nicholas II, was greatly in favor of the marriage between Mannerheim and Anastasia. The couple were married in May, 1892. Anastasia was Russian Orthodox, but Carl Gustaf remained Lutheran. The couple had two daughters, Anastasie ( b. 1893 ) and Sophie ( b. 1895 ) and a son who died at birth. It was not a happy marriage, and Mannerheim and his wife separated unofficially in 1903. In 1919, following his return to Finland after the Russian Revolution, and his victorious leadership of the White Army in the Finnish civil war, Mannerheim obtained a formal divorce in the Tornio court. At this time, according to Screen, he was planning to marry the Finnish aristocrat Catherine ( Kitty ) Linder, twenty years his junior, a beautiful woman with whom he was deeply in love, but this did not, in fact, occur. Kitty seems to have decided against the marriage, and after 1921, it was clear that she and Mannerheim were simply friends. In 1936, Mannerheim met Anastasia, now in failing health, in France and a reconciliation between the ex-spouses took place, much to the comfort and consolation of both. After Anastasia died, in the same year, Mannerheim, although still formally a Lutheran, prayed for her in an Orthodox church.As for the two daughters of Mannerheim and Anastasia, the elder, Anastasie, became a Carmelite nun in London and the younger, Sophie, lived in France and Switzerland, coming to visit her father in Finland and act as his hostess during his term as Regent of Finland. Anastasie died in 1977 and Sophie in 1963.

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title=wife of the head of Finland
before= Ellen Svinhufvud
years=1918–1919
after=Ester Ståhlberg