R.I.P. King Baudouin I

September 7, 1930 - July 31, 1993

Portrait of Princess Marie-José

The Lost Queen

August 29, 2010 will mark the 75th anniversary of the tragic death of Queen Astrid. On this occasion, King Albert II will pay tribute to his mother at her memorial in Küssnacht. (I cannot help thinking it will be a very emotional moment for him!) I will be posting an article on the cult of Astrid in Belgium and Switzerland and the symbolism of the Küssnacht memorial. People really treated the lovely young Queen almost as a saint or a martyr! 

Queen Elisabeth's Religion

In Elisabeth: A Biography (1997), Wanda Larson describes the approach to religion embraced by the consort of King Albert I. Although endowed with a genuine Catholic piety, the heritage of her staunch Braganza mother, Elisabeth was also strongly influenced by her more free-thinking Wittelsbach father:

She was a religious person in the widest sense of the word. All faiths interested her, as ways by which the human spirit attempts to approach the Divine nature, each suited to its environment. She respected the Dominicans in Jerusalem for their piety and learning, but the behavior of some of the other religious orders disgusted her by their pettiness and bigotry. Among religious conceptions, Dr. Albert Schweitzer's respect for life held a high place in her regard. This lover of men who put his precepts into practice and sacrificed a great career as a musician to live his theories at Lambarene was her personal friend and a great artist who loved God and his neighbor in a way that few had been able to achieve.

All faiths interested Elisabeth. She read and studied Lamaistic Buddhism and Hinduism. When in southern Italy, she pursued with professorial enthusiasm the traces of Mithraism in the Napolese villages. She was interested in astrology. At heart, however, she was a pious Catholic, and although all religious manifestations commanded her respect and interest, the faith into which she was born held her allegiance, which she practiced until her passing. The Benedictines of Mont César near Louvain knew her as one of their staunchest supporters (p. 117).

Elisabeth's heterodox tendencies worried her husband. (Despite my admiration for the Queen, I would be a bit concerned, too). Although a tolerant man, Albert was much more theologically conservative.  He feared that his wife's more liberal approach to religion might prove a harmful influence on their children. At times, the King would shyly reproach the Queen for being too aloof, as he saw it, from traditional Catholicism. Elisabeth, however, had a mind very much her own....

Three Generations

Marie-Amélie of Naples (1782-1866), Duchesse d'Orléans, later Queen of the French.

Louise-Marie d'Orléans (1812-1850), Queen of the Belgians. 

Charlotte of Belgium (1840-1927), Empress of Mexico. 

Lilian As A Child

Already a lively, mischievous beauty. In Un couple dans la tempête (2004), a popular account of the romance of Leopold and Lilian, the story is told of the five-year-old Lilian playing with matches and setting fire to the curtains (pp. 36-37). Needless to say, she earned a slap and a severe scolding!

Prayer Request

Please say a prayer for my mother, who's just had rather a nasty fall.

Mafalda of Savoy, Marie-José's Tragic Sister-in-Law

Here is the first of five installments of a grim, but deeply moving Italian documentary on the tragic fate of the lovely Mafalda of Savoy, Princess of Hesse. The 42-year-old mother of four met a grisly death at the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald at the end of August, 1944. The program retraces the story of her last days, drawing on the testimony of biographers and relatives of the princess, most notably her second son, Heinrich of Hesse and her niece, Maria Gabriella of Savoy, a distinguished historian of the Italian royal house.

Cheerful, cultured, brave and kind-hearted, Mafalda was the second of the four daughters of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and his Queen, Elena of Montenegro. She inherited her mother's piety, charity and love of music and the arts. She was also the favorite sister-in-law of Italy's last queen, Marie-José of Belgium, consort of Umberto II. In their youth, the Savoy princesses were considered potential brides for Marie-José's brothers, Princes Leopold and Charles of Belgium, but nothing came of these ideas. Instead, in 1925, Mafalda married Prince Philip, Landgrave of Hesse. (His father, Prince Frederick Charles, had been briefly elected King of Finland in 1918).

Unfortunately, Philip of Hesse would later become a fervent Nazi, attaining high rank in Hitler's regime. With his Italian connections, he acted as an intermediary between Hitler and Mussolini. Nonetheless, he supposedly also aided Jewish friends to escape to the Netherlands. Furthermore, during the Second World War, according to his own testimony, he conspired for peace, with his brother-in-law, Umberto of Savoy. He would eventually fall from Hitler's favor. Mafalda, for her part, too frank and open-hearted for her own good, never hid her antipathy for Hitler. The feeling was mutual; Hitler deeply mistrusted the princess, suspecting her of working against the war effort. He called her "the blackest carrion in the Italian royal house."

Her doom, however, was sealed by her father's separate peace with the Allies, which so enraged Hitler. It was also sealed by her own innocence and generosity. Braving the dangers of travel in wartime, she had insisted on leaving her Italian relatives, with whom she was staying, to comfort her sister Giovanna, Queen of Bulgaria, who had recently lost her husband, King Boris III. (Rumors have flourished that he had been poisoned at Hitler's orders, but this has never been proven). On her journey home, after Boris' funeral, she heard the news, from the Queen of Romania, of Italy's armistice with the Allies of September 8, 1943. (Her father had not, apparently, warned Mafalda of the imminence of the armistice, prior to her departure for Sofia. It is speculated that he was afraid to betray a secret of state, or that he still hoped his daughter would return in time to flee to safety with the rest of the family). Yet, again, forgetful of herself, despite the perils of arriving in Italy, an easy prey for Nazi vengeance on the Savoys, she insisted on proceeding to Rome to attend to her children, then in Vatican custody. (The rest of the royal house, meanwhile, had fled the capital). In Rome, the princess fell into the cruel, cynical trap set by the Nazi high command. Lured to the German embassy, under the pretext of an urgent appeal from her husband, she was arrested and forcibly deported to Berlin for interrogation. Some weeks later, she was transferred to Buchenwald.

Despite the horror of her surroundings, Mafalda behaved with great courage and charity, sharing her food with other prisoners and becoming a source of sad consolation for her fellow sufferers, especially the Italians. Horribly wounded in an air-raid, and treated with neglect and brutality by the camp's medical staff, she died, after several days of agony. Her final words, to two compatriots, had been this touching message: "I am dying, remember me not as a princess, but as an Italian sister."

Queen Astrid's Parents

In words, images and melody. (Very, very beautiful and haunting!)

Anna Sparre

The Swedish Countess Anna Sparre, Queen Astrid's best friend, was moved to write her memoirs of her friendship with Astrid by a touching anecdote. Fifty years after Queen Astrid's death, a young girl preparing to attend a 1920's themed party asked Anna for advice in choosing a dress. Anna told her to look through her boxes of old clothes to find something suitable. Each dress the girl pulled out evoked many memories for Anna, weddings, celebrations, images, melodies...Suddenly, her young companion seized a fine, muslin dress, patterned with flowers, so delicate it might have been woven by a spider. The girl was delighted and eagerly asked if she might wear this dress to the party. "No, not that one...it belonged to Queen Astrid," replied Anna. "Who was she?" asked the astonished girl. Anna was stunned. "You don't know who Queen Astrid was? But, my dear child, it's not even very long since she died."

Not long, perhaps, for Anna, but for her companion, only 19 years old, half a century was a long time...Anna softly brushed the dress against her face, as a swirl of memories rose before her. The last time she had seen Astrid, a week before her death, on vacation in the Alps with King Leopold, the Queen had been wearing this dress. Leopold had warmly admired her beauty: "Isn't she radiant? Like a butterfly. Ravishing." After the tragic car accident in Kussnacht, the King had given the dress to the Countess as a poignant memento of the Queen. Anna had long considered writing memoirs of Astrid, but had always hesitated to do so, finding the painful memory too close, or fearing she might not portray the Queen accurately. But now, at last, she was inspired to make the attempt, to keep Astrid's memory alive.