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.
Read more about this topic: Lili Dehn
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or friendship:
“A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there’s no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it’s an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
“Ties of blood are not always ties of friendship; but friendship founded on merit, on esteem, and on mutual trust, becomes more vital and more tender when strengthened by the ties of blood.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)