Olga Feodorovna of Baden - Final Years

Final Years

With the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 the governorship ended in the Caucasus. During the reign of the new Tsar Alexander III of Russia, Grand Duke Michael Nikolayevich served as chairman of the Imperial Council and the family moved back permanently to St. Petersburg. Alexander III, who did not like Olga Fedorovna, sometimes referred to her behind her back as “Auntie Haber”, hinting at her alleged Jewish heritage and illegitimacy. Such rumors of Jewish paternity followed Olga Feodorovna through her life. Her husband was protective of her. The Romanovs were anti-Semitic and Olga Feodorovna, who was not a popular member of the family, was mocked as Frau Haber.

Grand Duchess Olga Feodorovna was witty and had a strong personality. Her sharp tongue brought her a lot of trouble at the Russian court. She despised the morganatic wife of Alexander II and later she was particularly indignant at Alexander III's decision to limit the number of Grand Dukes, a title her own grandchildren would be deprived of. While her husband busied himself with his military and governmental career, Grand Duchess Olga ruled her family with an iron hand. She demanded complete obedience from her children. She was particularly close to her eldest son Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich of Russia, whose intellectual interests were like hers, but she remained aloof and cold towards the others. Her second son, Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich, who was not intellectually gifted (she called him a fool), was a constant source of disappointment for her. In 1879 Olga Feodorovna with Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna arranged the marriage between her only daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna of Russia, with Frederick Francis III, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Maria Pavlovna's brother. Anastasia carried some bitterness about her upbringing and relationship with her mother - her daughter Cecilie recounts that at a party to celebrate her engagement, when she committed some infraction she was sent to bed (by Olga) like a naughty child. There was also an incident involving an apricot tree which belonged to Anastasia but whose fruit she was not allowed to eat.

In his journals, Alexander Polovtsov, State Secretary during Alexander III's reign, left an unsympathetic portrayal of Grand Duchess Olga. Although he admitted she was clever, he described her as an acid-tongued, quarrelsome, idle woman (without any social duties such as charity, for example) who did nothing but sit in her palace on the bank of the Neva river and gaze through the window onto the walking people and speak nasty things about them. Just a sharp-tongued high-society lady without any other hobbies but gossiping and caring about privileges for her children.