Today in History - December 5th. 1969 - Princess Alice of Battenberg

Princess Alice of Battenberg was born on February 25th. 1885 in Windsor Castle.

Princess Alice of Battenberg - Source picture: Wikipedia

Her parents were Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Princess Alice of Battenberg was a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

In 1902 (at King Edward VII's coronation) Princess Alice of Battenberg met Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark. They married in 1903. The Royals had 5 children together inter alia, Prince Philip (Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom).

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip (Duke of Edinburgh) on the coronation

During the Balkan Wars in 1912, Alice does not want to watch. She rolls up her sleeves, sets up field hospitals and works as a nurse. She assists in operations.

"God, we have seen so much", she writes in a letter to her mother. "Shattered arms and legs... what horrible scenes. The corridor full of blood."

In 1922, a revolution is looming in Greece. The country suffers a defeat in the war against Turkey. Alice and Andrew are banished.

With the help of King George V, they flee on a British warship, where baby Philip is quickly placed in a makeshift cradle (an orange crate).

Their new home is the outskirts of Paris. The couple becomes estranged from each other. Alice converts to the Greek Orthodox faith, Andrew has affairs.

In treatment with Freud

The princess suffers a kind of 'nervous breakdown'. She claims to have conversations with Jesus. Her mother vaguely speculates that she has "anemia of the brain", but a doctor diagnoses her with schizophrenia.

Alice is interned in a German and Swiss sanatorium. This is not easy: the princess has to be forcibly sedated in order to be transported.

While his sisters all marry Germans in 1930 and 1931, Philip, the youngest, ends up in boarding schools in England and Scotland. Father Andrew wanders aimlessly between Paris, Monte Carlo and Germany.

"I just had to keep going. That's what you do", says Philip about those lonely years.

In the meantime, Alice is treated by none other than Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. He attributes her condition to sexual frustration and fluctuating hormone levels. He wants to accelerate her menopause and decides to take X-rays of her ovaries.

Alice makes several attempts to escape. In the 1930s, she succeeds in leaving the sanatorium behind.

The Cohen family saved

A family reunion follows in 1937, unfortunately at the funeral of daughter Cecilia (26). She, her husband and 2 sons die in a plane crash in Belgium. Pregnant Cecilia was on her way to a wedding in London. Alice returns to Greece, to her brother-in-law's palace to work for the poor and the Red Cross.

During the Second World War, the Nazis occupy the capital in 1943. The princess hears that the Jewish Cohen family is in need. She knows Haimaki Cohen, a former member of parliament, from the past. His widow Rachel and her children seek refuge. Alice offers shelter to Rachel, her daughter Tilde and son Michel at her home.

A daring decision, because there is political division within her own family: 3 sons-in-law are Nazis, one of Alice's grandsons is even called Karl Adolf (named after Hitler). Only son Philip serves in the British navy.

Princess Alice of Battenberg died on December 5th. 1969 in Buckingham Palace.