Last Years
In the summer of 1914, just before World War I broke out, Grand Duchess Anastasia visited her brother, Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia, and his family in England. When many eagerly greeted the outbreak of war, after the Austrian ultimatum, she wrote to Tsar Nicholas II: "I hope that the war will not happen and that we even can say ‘perhaps in a few days, we’ll all be together again'".
The conflict put her in a terrible situation: two of her children sided with Germany, while her brothers in Russia were fighting to defeat the Central Powers. Technically a German princess, Anastasia could neither remain in France, a country at war with Germany, nor could she return to Schwerin, now an enemy of her native Russia. Therefore, she decided to settle in neutral Switzerland. She spent the war years living at the Savoy Hotel in Lausanne, giving her villa in Cannes for use as a hospital for wounded officers of the Russian Expeditionary Force in France.
During the war, she managed to obtain news of her daughter Cecile and her son, Friedrich Franz, through her daughter, Alexandrine, Queen in neutral Denmark. The Bolsheviks killed three of her brothers, Grand Dukes Nicholas, George and Serge, during the Russian Revolution. The fall of the German monarchy after the war resulted in the loss of the crown for both her son in Schwerin, and her daughter Cecile in Germany.
After the end of the war, Grand Duchess Anastasia decided to go back to France; she could not return as a German Princess, and with her Russian passport, she sneaked inside the country with the entourage of her cousin, Princess Catherine Yourievskaya, who was a refugee in Lausanne and was heading toward Nice. Once in France, Grand Duchess Anastasia moved to the Villa Fantasia at Eze, near Cannes. There she spent her last years, taking up her old social life. In the first week of March 1922, shortly after attending a party given by her nephew, Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich in Cap-d'Ail, she felt ill. She suffered a stroke and died on 11 March 1922 in Èze. She was 61 years-old.
With her death, her children were reunited for the first time since 1914. Her natural son, Alexis Louis de Wenden, remained in France. She was buried beside her husband in Ludwigslust. Among her direct descendants are Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Prince George Frederick of Prussia, head of the House of Hohenzollern. The male line of the House of Mecklenburg-Schwerin died out with her grandson, Hereditary Grand Duke Friedrich Franz, in 2001.
Read more about this topic: Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna Of Russia
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