Exile
In March 1918, Marianne's half-brother, the poet Prince Vladimir Paley, was arrested by the Bolsheviks and sent to the Urals. He was executed there on 18 July 1918, his body dumped in a mine shaft near Alapayevsk.
At about this time, Marianne and her new husband, Count Nicholas von Zarnekau, made an effort to help the remaining family of the Grand Duke Paul to escape.
According to the memoirs of Marianne's stepsister, the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, "Once in the beginning of July, late at night, when we had been long asleep, there was a knock at my door. Waking, I saw upon the threshold of my bedroom Marianne Zarnikau, one of my stepmother's daughters by her first marriage. She explained that we must immediately dress and go to Petrograd. She had come from there in an automobile to fetch us. According to information which had come to her the uprising of the Bolsheviks was set for the next day . . . "
It proved a false alarm. The family returned to their homes in St. Petersburg, a decision that was a fatal error. The Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich was arrested in August 1918, sent to the St. Peter and St. Paul Fortress, and despite constant pleas for his release by Princess Paley, he was shot on 29 January 1919 and buried in a mass grave. His remains were not discovered until 2011.
The Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna and her second husband, Prince Roman Putiatin, chose to stay in St. Petersburg, finally escaping to Romania in 1919. Princess Olga Paley escaped via Finland in 1920, and died in Paris on 2 December 1929, age 64.
Marianne and Nicholas von Zarnekau managed to escape Russia some time after 1923 with the help of her first husband, Peter Dournovo, who arranged for their passage to Finland. They settled in Belgium, and Marianne is mentioned in Anthony Summer's book The File on the Tsar:
"Countess de Zarnekau, an ex-patriate living in Brussels, told how in about 1923 a nun arrived at their home in Moscow and announced mysteriously that the Tsar and all the family were alive 'somewhere close to the border'. She asked for, and was given, wooly socks to warm the imperial feet. Those who had been able to deal with the little matter of the Tsar's rescue were now apparently having trouble in getting him the right size in socks."
Read more about this topic: Marianne Pistohlkors
Famous quotes containing the word exile:
“The bond between a man and his profession is similar to that which ties him to his country; it is just as complex, often ambivalent, and in general it is understood completely only when it is broken: by exile or emigration in the case of one’s country, by retirement in the case of a trade or profession.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say “death”;
For exile hath more terror in his look,
Much more than death. Do not say “banishment!””
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)