The Russian Empress Maria Feodorovna, born Danish Princess Dagmar, was the wife of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and the mother of Nicholas II, the last Russian Tsar. Maria Feodorovna spent 52 years in Russia, where she found her second home. She lived through the chaos of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and fled back to Denmark in 1919. She died in Copenhagen in 1928 and was buried in the Danish royal family’s vault in Roskilde Cathedral. 78 years later in 2006 the earthly remains of the Empress will be transferred to St. Petersburg and buried at the SS Peter and Paul Cathedral next to her beloved husband, Emperor Alexander III.

Re-entombment of Relics

     The two foreign ministers of Russia and Denmark have spent a year arranging the transfer. His Holiness Alexii II, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, and His Excellency Lars Vissing, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom of Denmark to Russia, at their meeting on June 14 2005, settled all issues concerning the ceremony of re-entombment of the relics of Empress Maria Feodorovna. It will take place on 28 September 2006 in St. Petersburg, 140 years after the Danish Princess first arrived in Russia. The head of the Romanov Family, His Highness Prince Nicholas Romanov, the initiator of this deeply human as well as historical event, expressed his great joy about the coming re-burial: “Maria Feodorovna did so much for Denmark, but she did even more for Russia. This is an excellent postscript to a tragic chapter in Russian history”.
     Destiny prepared a heavy cross for Maria Feodorovna. Few people could have survived the great deal of bloody dramas that this charming, intelligent, romantic woman lived through.

Marriage to Russian Tsar

     Maria-Sophia-Frederica-Dagmar, the daughter of the Danish King Christian IX and Queen Louise was born in Copenhagen on 26 November 1847. At the age of 17 she was engaged to the eldest son of Russian Tsar Alexander II, Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovich. He was next in the line of succession and many still rack their brains over what future Russia would have had if this great young man hadn’t died so tragically and untimely in Nice. The poor young bride witnessed her handsome groom’s fading away from what some called a wasting disease and others rumoured poison. On his deathbed Nicholas had expressed a wish that Princess Dagmar of Denmark, his bride should marry his successor – his younger brother Alexander.
     This wish was fulfilled on November 9, 1866, and following the assassination of Alexander II, the Danish Princess became the Russian Empress Maria Feodorovna. Maria and Alexander’s almost 30-year-long union proved a most happy one and remained unclouded to the end. The couple cut an interesting figure because Alexander III was around two meters tall and Maria was quite small, the Tsar affectionately referred to her as Minni. Alexander loved Maria tenderly and with the years their love only grew. She bore him six children: Nicholas, Alexander (died in infancy), Georgi, Xenia, Mikhail and Olga. The children, though very much loved and pampered, were brought up to believe in God, to respect their elders, to love Russia and respect its traditions and ideals. Mother’s word was decisive in the family matters. Maria Feodorovna seldom separated from Alexander. She accompanied her husband everywhere: to balls and receptions, on trips to holy places and military parades, even went hunting with him. They missed each other desperately when circumstances forced them to part, and were always exchanging long affectionate letters.
     Her romantic devotion to her husband, her maternal affection for her children, and her personal charm as Empress produced a magical effect on all around her. “Despite her short height, her manners were so stately and dignified that whenever she entered a room all attention immediately focused on her... Her natural intelligence and political flair played an identifiable role in the Empire’s affairs”, recalled Prince Felix Yusupov.

Her Social Flair

     Pretty and popular, Maria Feodorovna devoted all her time and energy to her family, to her charities and to the social sides of her position. Due to her initiative, the Mariinsky Schools were founded in 1882; these schools took in poor and uneducated young girls of St. Petersburg. She was the patroness of the Woman’s Patriotic Society, the Society for Salvation at Waters, the Society for Protection of Animals and others. Numerous schools, hospitals, orphanages and alms-houses were established under the jurisdiction of the Mariinsky Institute in all big Russian cities. There were 27 of them just between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Maria Feodorovna also headed the Russian Red Cross Society. During the years of the First World War while in Kiev she wrote to Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich: “I often visit hospitals, meet our brave wounded men… It is astonishing how patient they are. I want to bend my knees before each of them”.
     The Empress’s humanitarian role and mission in the civil life of Russian people won her great respect and admiration. A legendary story of her kindness says: “Tsar Alexander III once decreed that a certain prisoner be sent to Siberia for hard labour. “Pardon impossible,” he wrote in a letter, “to be sent to Siberia”. The Tsarina, Maria Feodorovna, famed for her generous and philanthropic nature, altered her husband’s missive and secured the man’s freedom. The new reading: “Pardon, impossible to be sent to Siberia”.
     The Danish Princess, Maria Feodorovna, never forgot her homeland and when possible helped her fellow countrymen – entrepreneurs, merchants, engineers. Through her support in 1869 a special agreement with Danish companies was signed for laying telegraph cable across the Baltic Sea. In 1895 the Russian-Danish Commercial Treaty was concluded, which gave a spur to trade relations between the two countries. From 1875 to 1914 over two thousand Danes immigrated to the western Russian provinces to farm and work as agronomists.
     Royal privileges, universal love and esteem, and a happy family life was rightly destined for Maria Feodorovna. Yet fate decreed that she would also pass through a dreadful ordeal of terrible trials and tribulations.

Great Losses

     From the first years of Maria Feodorovna’s stay in Russia, terrorists’ attempts on the life of her father-in-law, Tsar Alexander II, followed one after another till in 1881 Alexander II was assassinated.
     A token of future misfortunes for Maria Feodorovna and her family included the dangerous crash of the Tsar’s train in 1888 with Alexander III on board and the attempt on the life of her elder son, Crown Prince Nicholas Alexandrovich, in 1891. The untimely death of her beloved husband at the age of 49 on the 20 October 1894 put an end to the family happiness. For 33 long years thereafter she would bear the title of Dowager Empress awaiting the encounter in Heaven with the dearest man of her life. None of the Russian Empresses were so long in mourning for a deceased spouse.
     After the death of her husband and accession to the throne of her elder son Nicholas (Nicholas II) the Dowager Empress was trying to exert her influence upon her soft-hearted son. During the first years of reign he used to seek her advice before making any important decision.
     Within the next decade Maria Feodorovna buried three more of her loved ones. In 1898 her mother, Queen Louise, and in 1906 her father, King Christian IX, passed away. Still the worst tragedy for a mother is the loss of a child. In 1899 her son Georgi died of consumption at the age of 28.
     Maria Feodorovna lived through Russia’s most tragic historical events of the 20th century: the First World War, the downfall of the empire, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War. 1917 and the following years brought Maria Feodorovna real shock. She resented bitterly the abdication of Nicholas II. She met him last in March 1917. They spent three days together, after which Nicholas was taken under arrest to Tsarskoye Selo. She herself, to escape persecution left for Kiev. She would never see her elder son or grandchildren again, although some would say that she refused the opportunity to see Anastacia again.
     In June 1918 the Empress-mother lost her youngest son, Mikhail, who was brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks in Perm. A month later the horrible massacre took place in Ekaterinburg: her son – Russian Tsar Nicholas II, her daughter-in-law Tsarina Alexandra, her grandson – heir to the throne Alexei and her beautiful granddaughters: Olga, Tatiana, Maria and maybe also Anastacia were slaughtered in the basement of Ipatiev house. Maria Feodorovna took these awful events very hard. Until the end of her life, she refused to acknowledge that they had ever taken place. This dream to cut the events completely out of her memory is probably why Maria, normally so compassioante, refused an audience with Anastasia after it seems she had survived the brutal massacre of her family done by the Bolsheviks and later fled Russia.

Leaving Russia

     Despite the overthrow of the monarchy, Empress Maria at first refused to leave Russia. It was only in 1919 at the urging of her sister Alexandra that she grudgingly departed. The British cruiser “Marlboro” was specially sent by Alexandra and her husband British King George V to save the 72-yearold Maria Feodorovna and her daughters Xenia and Olga with their children. After a brief visit to London, she returned to her native Denmark and lived there until her death in 1928. Till the very last moment of her life Maria Feodorovna remained the Russian Tsarina, faithful to her second homeland, always compassionate to people’s grief, believing in God and hoping for divine mercy.
     Through all her life Maria Feodorovna kept diaries. Written in an elegant female cursive in Danish they contain a lot of historical, everyday-life and private material. They represent an authentic view of what was going on inside the elite strata of authority and reflect the unique coloring of the Tsar’s family life. The diaries were reported as lost for a long time. Luckily this was not the case. In February 2005 Vagrius publishing house has issued these previously never published documents under the title “Empress Maria Feodorovna’s Diaries”.