Ancestral Trails 2016 » Konstantin Nikolaevich of RUSSIA (1827-1892)

Persoonlijke gegevens Konstantin Nikolaevich of RUSSIA 

• Hij is geboren op 21 september 1827 in The Winter Palace, St Petersburg, Russia.
• Hij is overleden op 25 januari 1892 in Pavlosk Palace, Pavlovsk, Saint Petersburg, Russia, hij was toen 64 jaar oud.
• Een kind van Nicholai Pavlovich of RUSSIA en Friederike Luise Charlotte von PREUSSEN

Gezin van Konstantin Nikolaevich of RUSSIA

Hij is getrouwd met Alexandra Friedrike Henriette von SAXE-ALTENBURG.

Zij zijn getrouwd op 11 september 1848 te The Winter Palace, St Petersburg, Russia, hij was toen 20 jaar oud.

Kind(eren):

1. Konstantin Konstantinovich of RUSSIA  1858-1915
2. Dimitri Konstantinovich of RUSSIA  1860-1919
3. Vyacheslav Konstantinovich of RUSSIA  1862-1879
4. Nikolas Konstantinovich of RUSSIA  1850-1918
5. Vera Konstantinovna of RUSSIA  1854-1912
6. Olga Konstantinovna of RUSSIA  1851-1926 

Notities over Konstantin Nikolaevich of RUSSIA

Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia; (21 September 1827 - 25 January 1892) was the second son of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia and younger brother of Tsar Alexander II.

During the reign of Alexander II, Konstantin was an admiral of the Russian fleet and reformed the Russian Navy. He was also an instrumental figure in the emancipation of the serfs. He was less fortunate as viceroy of Poland (1862-1863) and had to be recalled to Russia where he was attacked for his liberalism.

After the assassination of his brother Alexander II in 1881, Konstantin fell from favour. The new tsar, Alexander III, his nephew, opposed Konstantin's liberal ideas and gradually stripped him of all his governmental positions. His retirement was marked with personal turmoil and family setbacks. After suffering a stroke, he spent his last years as an invalid.

Konstantin was born in St. Petersburg, the second son and fifth child of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia and Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna. His parents were happy to have a second son after nine years of having only daughters. Nicholas I and his wife were devoted to each other and to their children, providing an excellent education for them.

Normally the Imperial children were kept under female supervision until they were seven. However, by the time he was five Konstantin had become too willful and difficult for a governess to handle and his father appointed a male tutor for him. Nicholas I intended that Konstantin would eventually become Admiral General of the Russian Fleet and with this in mind chose Fyodor Litke as tutor for his son. Litke, who had circumnavigated the globe at the age of twenty, was a brash and bold man, unafraid of controversy or offense, and he passed these qualities along to his student. He trained the boy in naval sciences and filled his head with tales of the sea, gaining the friendship of his pupil for life. Languages were an important part of Konstantin's education; he learned Russian, English, German and French. As he grew older, his lessons increased in length and complexity to encompass mathematics, science, statistics, and government administration. There were also early military lessons and drills. Konstantin also enjoyed music, learning to play the piano and cello. He loved drawing and had great appreciation for the arts. He also became an enthusiastic reader and his fascination with Homer led him to translate the Odyssey from German.

In 1835, Konstantin accompanied his parents to Germany and from age eight onwards was taught to keep a diary. When he was just eight years old, he was given a small yacht, which he would sail between Petergof and Kronstadt, spending his days at sea and returning home at night. In 1836, accompanied by Litke, he embarked on a lengthy sailing expedition and finally he was given command of the Russian frigate Hercules under Litke's direction. During his training Konstantin was treated like all other naval cadets, even to the point of his title of Grand Duke being dispensed with. He was placed on watch duty at midnight as well as in rain and storms. At the age of sixteen, Konstantin was promoted to the rank of captain and served as commander of the frigate Ulyses, visiting various ports along the Gulf of Finland and embarking on a southern tour that included the Mediterranean.

The encouragement and guidance of his aunt, Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, was another important influence in Konstantin's education. Elena took him under her wing, broadening his taste in literature and music and introducing him to the latest scientific ideas. She was well known for her liberal bent and had a big influence in her nephew's political views. Under Litke's influence, Konstantin began his forays into official life, taking on patronage of the new Imperial Russian Geographical Society. The Geographical Society was subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was home to a conspicuous number of liberal bureaucrats including Nikolay Milyutin.

The male members of the Romanov family were famous for their good looks and their height, but Konstantin was rather short and ugly. He was described by one observer: " His complexion was sallow, the color of his hair was rather neutral, and resembled the sand of the seashore. His eyes were gray, dreamy, and half closed and an enormous wooden looking nose took the place of his father's Grecian outline". He had a loud voice, imposing personality and brusque manners. With a quick temper, Konstantin was a difficult man and often unpleasant.

In 1846 Konstantin's sister, Grand Duchess Olga, married Crown Prince Charles of Württemberg. He went with her to Stuttgart then he continued to Altenburg to be introduced to Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg. His parents had arranged the meeting thinking that Alexandra might make a good match for Konstantin. Alexandra was strikingly beautiful, tall and slim and Konstantin was immediately eager to marry her. "I don't know what is happening to me. It is as if I am a completely new person. Just one thought moves me, just one image fills my eyes: forever and only she, my angel, my universe. I really do think I’m in love. However, what can it mean? I've only known her a few hours and I'm already up to my ears in Passion".

Konstantin was nineteen and Alexandra three years younger; they were engaged but had to wait two more years to get married. On 12 October 1847, she arrived in Russia. In February she converted to Russian Orthodoxy, taking the name of Grand Duchess Alexandra Iosifovna. They were married six months later on 11 September 1848 in the Winter Palace. Both were musical: he played the cello and she the piano. They seem to have been a good match. For the first years of their marriage, they were a devoted couple, starting their married life happily. In the following years, they had six children. The couple lived in some of the most luxurious palaces of the Empire: Pavlovsk, Strelna, and the Marble Palace. Konstantin received the Marble Palace in St. Petersburg as a wedding gift from his parents with Strelna, on the Gulf of Finland, as their country retreat. A year after his marriage Konstantin inherited Pavlovsk from his uncle Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, and, at the death of his mother, the palace of Oreanda in Crimea.

In 1867, Konstantin's eldest daughter, Olga, married King George I of Greece. She was only sixteen, and Konstantin was initially reluctant to let her marry so young. In July 1868 Olga's first child was born and was named Konstantin after his grandfather. The start of his daughter's family coincided with the breaking up of Konstantin's marriage.

Although he was only forty, Konstantin's struggles and travails of the previous decade-naval and judiciary reforms, the freeing of the serfs-had prematurely aged him. As Alexander II turned away from the reforms that had marked his first decade on the throne, Konstantin's influence began to wane and he began to focus more in his personal life. After twenty years of marriage he had drifted away from his wife, their divergent political views and interests slowly tearing away the foundations of their marriage. Alexandra Iosifovna was as conservative as her husband was liberal, self-absorbed with her own beauty and her mysticism. Soon, Konstantin turned elsewhere for comfort.

At the end of the 1860s, Konstantin embarked on an affair, having an illegitimate daughter, Marie Condousso. In the 1880s, Marie was sent to Greece, later serving as lady in waiting to her half sister, Queen Olga. Marie eventually married a Greek banker. Soon after the birth of Marie, Konstantin began a new liaison. Around 1868, Konstantin began to pursue a young dancer from the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. Anna Vasilyevna Kuznetsova was a talented ballerina and a mime. She was the illegitimate daughter of ballerina Tatyana Markyanovna Kuznetsova and actor Vasily Andreyevich Karatygin. Anna was twenty years younger than Konstantin and initially she resisted his advances, but in 1873 she gave birth to their first child. Four more would follow.

Konstantin bought his second family a large, comfortable dacha on his estate at Pavlovsk, in fact lodging his mistress and their illegitimate children in close proximity to his estranged wife who he now referred to as his "government-issue wife". Once more Konstantin gave ammunition to his enemies and society sided in the scandal with his suffering wife, who tried to bear his infidelity with dignity.

In 1874, scandal erupted when it was discovered that Konstantin's eldest son, Grand Duke Nikolay Konstantinovich, who had lived a dissipated life and had revolutionary ideas, had stolen three valuable diamonds from an icon in the bedroom of Alexandra Iosifovna in complicity with his mistress, an American courtesan. His twenty-four-year-old son was found guilty, declared insane, and banished for life to Central Asia. Konstantin suffered another bitter blow when in 1879, his youngest legitimate son, Vyacheslav, died unexpectedly from a brain hemorrhage.

In 1886, Konstantin was furious when Alexander III restricted the title of Grand Duke to only children and grandchildren of Emperors, as this meant that Konstantin's grandchildren would merely be princes, but there was little he could do. He had been shunned from society and Alexander III only called his uncle to court for the wedding of Konstantin's eldest granddaughter, Alexandra of Greece to his nephew Grand Duke Paul.

At the beginning of August 1889, Konstantin suffered a severe stroke that left his legs paralyzed and him unable to speak. The loss of his health struck the once vibrant Konstantin particularly hard. As an invalid, he depended from then on on the care of adjutants while confined in a bath chair. Konstantin was cared for by his wife, who gained a sort of revenge for his unfaithfulness and past humiliations. Alexandra Iosifovna did not expel Anna Kuznetsova and her children from the nearby house that Konstantin had provided for them, but she made sure that Konstantin's attendants never took him there.

Konstantin tried in vain to convince his attendants to take him to see his second family, but they were under strict orders not to do so and pretended not to understand the invalid's wishes. One day, brought home by his attendants, he grabbed his wife's hair and beat her with a stick before anyone could intervene.

Konstantin died at Pavlovsk on 25 January 1892. Before he died his wife invited his mistress and their two daughters to see him for a last time.

Children
Konstantin and his wife Grand Duchess Alexandra Iosifovna had six children:
Nicholas Konstantinovich (1850-1918)
Olga Konstantinovna, Queen of the Hellenes (1851-1926)
Vera Konstantinovna (1854-1912)
Konstantin Konstantinovich (1858-1915)
Grand Duke Dimitri Konstantinovich of Russia (1860-1919)
Vyacheslav Konstantinovich (1862-1879); died of brain hemorrhage

Konstantin had five illegitimate children with his mistress Anna Kuznetsova (1847-1922); they bore the last name Knyazev:
Sergey Konstantinovich Knyazev (1873-1873)
Marina Konstantinovna Knyazeva (8 December 1875 - 8 June 1941); m. 24 April 1894 Alexander Pavlovich Yershov (b. 6 July 1861), son of Gen. Pavel Yershov
Anna Konstantinovna Knyazeva (16 March 1878 Saint Petersburg - 5 February 1920); died of typhoid fever, (m.) 29 April 1898 in Saint Petersburg to Nikolay Nikolayevich Lyalin (15 August 1869 - 14 February 1920); died of typhoid fever, son of Gen. Nikolay Lyalin, Military Governor of Helsingfors; their son was the Benedictine theologian Dom Clément Lialine
Izmail Konstantinovich Knyazev (1879-1885); died of scarlet fever
Lev Konstantinovich Knyazev (1883-1885); died of scarlet fever

Konstantin was the paternal great-great grandfather of Charles, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the British throne, since his daughter Olga married George I of Greece, whose son Andrew married Alice Battenberg and begat Philip, Charles' father.
SOURCE: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duke_Konstantin_Nikolayevich_of_Russia

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