Lili Dehn - Marriage and Friendship With The Tsarina

Marriage and Friendship With The Tsarina

Dehn married 1907 in Yalta, Carl Alexander "Joachimovitch" Akimovich von Dehn (1877–1932), a Russian naval officer whose family originally came from Tallinn Estonia, from Finnland and from Sweden. Dehn was an officer on the imperial yacht, Standart, and was a favorite with the imperial children. The Tsarina took an interest in Dehn's new wife and befriended her following the marriage.

The Tsarina was the godmother for the Dehns' son, Alexander Leonide, who was born on August 9, 1908, and nicknamed "Titi." Dehn wrote that Titi was baptized Lutheran, which was required by her husband's family to maintain an inheritance. Alexandra remained disturbed that her godchild had had a Lutheran baptism and insisted seven years later that the child must be rebaptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. The Dehns complied with her request.

Dehn was skeptical about the holiness of the starets Grigori Rasputin and the Tsarina's reliance upon him, but wrote that Rasputin once prayed over her own son, Titi, when the child was dangerously ill and the boy made a quick recovery.