Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia ( Влади́мирович Александрович) ) (22 April 1847 – 17 February 1909) was a son of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. He was a brother of Tsar Alexander III of Russia and was the Senior Grand Duke of the House of Romanov during the reign of his nephew, Tsar Nicholas II.
Grand Duke Vladimir followed a military career and occupied important military positions during the reigns of his brother and his nephew. Interested in artistic and intellectual pursuits, he was
was President of the Imperial Academy of the Arts, patron of many artist and sponsor of the Imperial ballet.
He was Adjutant-General. In 1868 he was made senator and member of the Council of State in 1872. He was also member of the Council of ministers, Commander of the Imperial Guards and troops of the Military District of Saint Petersburg. On 9 January 1905, he gave orders to fire on the crowd gathered beneath the walls of the winter Palace when they came to deliver a petition to the Tsar.
Early life
Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich was born on April 22, 1847 at Tsarskoye Selo, some twenty miles (32 km) outside Saint Petersburg. He was the fourth child and third son among the eight children of Alexander II of Russia and his wife Maria Alexandrovna, born Duchess Marie of Hesse-Darmstadt.
He was eight years old when at the death of his grand father Nicholas I, his father became Russian Tsar. Grand Duke Vladimir was well educated and through his life he was interested in artistic and intellectual pursuits. However, as all male members of the Romanov family he had to follow a military career. He occupied important military positions during three reigns. With his brother, Grand Duke Alexis, he experienced war for the fist time during the Turkish war of 1877. As only the third son in a numerous family, he was far from the succession to the Russian throne. Nevertheless, in 1863, the early death of his eldest brother the Tsarevich Nicholas left Vladimir unexpectedly close to the throne as heir presumptive after his second brother Alexander. Unlike Alexander, the new heir, Vladimir was witty and ambitious. Rumors circulated at the time, that Alexander II would have his eldest surviving son removed from the succession and placing Vladimir as his heir. Alexander himself would have preferred to step aside from the succession hoping to marry morganatically, but eventually he had to yield to family pressure and married a suitable bride. Relations between the two brothers although cordial were never warm.
A Russian Grand Duke
In 1867 Grand Duke Vladimir was named honorary president of the Russian ethnographic society, the same year he accompanied his father and his brother Alexander to the World Fair in Paris, where his father was shot by a polish nationalist. In 1871 he visited the Caucasus region, Georgia, Chechnya and Dagestan with his father and his brothers. In 1872 he accompanied his father to Vienna at the reunion of the three emperors: Russia, Germany and Austria.
In his youth Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich led a restless life of partying and drinking. A member of the European jet set of his time, he made frequent trips to Paris. At the French capital, he was nicknamed "The Grand Duke, bon vivant". His love for the good life let him to be portly at a young age, although later he slimmed down. He had a wide range of interest. He loved the arts; was a skillful painter himself and gathered an important book collection. Not as tall as his brothers, he was handsome with an imposing personalty but could not stand public criticism. He was known for his thunderous voice; was a keen hunter, and a well known gourmet. He gathered a collection of menus copied after meals with his own impressions about the food.
Marriage
While traveling through Germany in June 1871, Grand Duke Vladimir met Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg Schwerin. She was seventeen years old and was already engage to a distant relative, Prince George Schwarzburg. Grand Duke Vladimir was then twenty four. They were smitten with each other. Maria was a great-granddaughter of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna of Russia, herself a daughter of Emperor Paul I of Russia. Therefore, Vladimir was a second cousin of Maria's father Friedrich Franz II, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. However, in descent from Frederick William III of Prussia, the couple were second cousins. In order to marry Vladimir, Maria broke off her previous engagement, but she refused the necessary conversion to the Orthodox religion. This delayed the couple's engagement for almost two years. Finally, Tsar Alexander II consented the marriage allowing Marie to keep her Lutheran faith and Vladimir would not lose his rights to the Russian throne. The engagement was announced in April 1874.
Vladimir Alexandrovich married, on 28 August 1874 in Saint Petersburg, Princess Marie Alexandrine Elisabeth Eleonore of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (14 May 1854 – 6 September 1920), daughter of Friedrich Franz II, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Augusta of Reuss-Köstritz.
Vladimir's wife was known as Maria Pavlovna of Mecklenburg and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna. When she converted to the Russian Orthodox confession in her later life, Emperor Nicholas II bestowed her the title "the Orthodox Grand Duchess".
Vladimir's palace
By the time of his marriage construction has already been completed in Vladimir's own palace and he moved there with his wife. Named the Vladimir Palace (Russian: Влади́мирский дворе́ц, Vladimirsky dvorets) it was the last imperial palace to be constructed in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was designed by a team of architects (Vasily Kenel, Aleksandr Rezanov, Andrei Huhn, Ieronim Kitner, Vladimir Shreter) for Alexander II's son, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia. The foundation stone was laid on July 15, 1867. Construction work lasted five years, from 1867 to 1872.
The site chosen for the palace was the Embankment near the Winter Palace in the center of St Petersburg. It had been previously been occupied by the house of Count Vorontsov Dashkov which had been bought by the treasury. The lot was enlarge by purchasing the neighboring house of Madame Karatinga. The total construction and furnishing cost of Vladimir palace was 820.00 rubles a much modest amount than the one spent building previous palaces for other grand dukes a decade earlier.
Like the Winter Palace and the Marble Palace, the Vladimir Palace fronts Palace Embankment; water frontage on the Neva was extremely prized by the Russian aristocracy. The façade, richly ornamented with stucco rustication, was patterned after Leon Battista Alberti's palazzi in Florence. The main porch is built of Bremen sandstone and adorned with griffins, coats-of-arms, and cast-iron lanterns. Other details are cast in portland cement.
The palace and its outbuildings contain some 360 rooms, all decorated in disparate historic styles: Neo-Renaissance (reception room, parlor), Gothic Revival (dining room), Russian Revival (Oak Hall), Rococo (White Hall), Byzantine style (study), Louis XIV, various oriental styles, and so on. This interior ornamentation, further augmented by Maximilian Messmacher in 1880-1892, is considered a major monument to the 19th-century passion for historicism.
Children
The couple had five children:
Vladimir's eldest son and heir Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich of Russia married 1905 his first cousin Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, daughter of Vladimir's sister Maria. This marriage was disapproved by Nicholas II and Cyril was stripped of his imperial titles. The treatment of his son created a strife between Vladimir and the Emperor. However, after several deaths in the family put Cyril third in the line of succession to the Imperial Throne, Nicholas agreed to reinstate Cyril's imperial titles, and the latter's wife was given the title Grand Duchess Viktoria Fedorovna. Vladimir died in 1909. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 Cyril was in 1924 proclaimed Emperor in Paris, in exile. Vladimir's line has thus received the headship of the Imperial House. Vladimir was the paternal grandfather and namesake of the future pretender claimant Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia, born 1917.
