Today marks the 160th Anniversary of the Birth of Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine, Princess Henry of Prussia, who was born on this day in 1866. Queen Victoria’s granddaughter and the sister of the last Russian Tsarina married her ‘Very Amiable’ Prussian Cousin and suffered several family tragedies!
The third daughter of Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and by Rhine and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, Princess Irene was the sister of Princess Victoria, Marchioness of Milford Haven, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, as well as being a granddaughter of Queen Victoria who helped raise her Hesse grandchildren after the tragic early death of their mother in 1878.
In 1888, Princess Irene married Prince Henry of Prussia, son of Emperor Frederik III of Germany and Victoria, the Princess Royal. Prince Henry held various commands in the Imperial German Navy and eventually rose to the rank of Grand Admiral and the office of Inspector General of the Navy, serving as the Commander-in-Chief of the Baltic Fleet during World War I.
The couple, known as ‘The Very Amiables’ had three sons, of whom two had haemophilia, with the youngest, Prince Henry passing away at the age of 4 in 1904 and the eldest, Prince Waldemar, passing away while fleeing the Red Army at the end of the Second World War.
Prince Henry and Princess Irene resided at Schloss Hemmelmark and Schloss Paretz through the upheavals of the First and Second World War, with the Princess losing her sisters, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, during the Russian Revolution, and lost Schloss Paretz and her elder son at the end of the Second World War, with her last surviving son, Prince Sigismund, moving to Costa Rica in the 1930s. In her later years, Princess Irene adopted her granddaughter, Princess Barbara, who inherited Schloss Hemmelmark upon her death in 1953.
