Prince Andrew of Greece and Danish was the seventh child and the fourth son of King George and Queen Olga. He was the grandson of the King of Denmark.
Andrei Greek was born in 1882 in Athens, inthe great family of His Royal Majesty King George I of Greece, the son of the Danish King Christian IX, and the Russian princess Olga Nikolaevna, the granddaughter of Emperor Nicholas I. His father was the founder of the dynasty of the Glücksburgs, who was in kinship with the English royal house. The family had five sons and two daughters. King George I about fifty years ruled the country, significantly bringing it closer through dynastic marriages with Russia, which significantly weakened Turkey in the Balkans and strengthened Russia's influence in the Mediterranean.
The royal couple talked to each other onGerman. Their children, including Andrei of Greece, were fluent in seven languages, but they spoke with each other in Greek, and with their parents - in English. The hero of our article, despite myopia, was preparing for military service. Andrew Greek graduated from the cadet school and college in Athens and received an additional private military education under the program of General Panagiotis Danglis. In May 1901 he entered the cavalry.
In 1902, Prince Andrew Greek and Alice Battenberg (1885-1969) met at the coronation ceremonies of King Edward VII in London.
The German princess was in kindredRelations with the Queen Victoria and the House of the Romanovs. Young people took each other seriously. And only a year later, in early October 1903, when the prince was 21 years old, and the princess - eighteen, they registered a civil marriage in Darmstadt.
The next day Lutheran marriage took place in the castle evangelical church and a wedding in the Greek Orthodox chapel.
The prince and the princess had 4 daughters and one son, who all had descendants.
Name | Birth | Death | Notes |
Princess Margarita | April 18, 1905 | April 24, 1981 | Was married since 1931 for Prince Hohenlohe |
Princess Theodore | May 30, 1906 | October 16, 1969 | In 1931, Mr .. married the prince Berthold of Baden |
Princess Cecile | June 22, 1911 | November 16, 1931 | Was married since 1931 |
Princess Sophie | June 26, 1926 | November 21, 2001 | The first marriage was in 1930, the second in 1946. |
Prince Philippe | June 10, 1921 | He is married to Princess Elizabeth since 1947, subsequently to the Queen of Great Britain |
So it looked like Prince Andrew Greek (photo below) with his numerous family.
In 1909 in Greece there was a coup.The thing was that the government in Athens did not want to support the Cretan parliament, which called for the unification of Crete (the island was still under Ottoman rule) with mainland Greece. A group of officers, dissatisfied with this position, created the Greek national Military League. His Highness Prince Andrew retired from the army, and Venizelos came to power.
Three years later the Balkan wars began.Prince Andrew of Greece was restored in the army in the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the third cavalry regiment. He was in charge of the field hospital. At the behest of his heart, his wife acted as a nurse. She even courageously participated in the operations. At that time Andrei's father was killed, and the prince inherited from him the villa "My rest".
By 1914, His Highness had military awards to Russia, Prussia, Italy and Denmark, and also held military posts in the Russian and German empires.
During the First World War, he continuedvisiting relatives in the United Kingdom, despite the deaf protests of the British House of Commons, who considered him a German agent. His brother, King Constantine, pursued a policy of neutrality.
But the French Republic, the Russian and British empires supported the government of Venizelos. The Greek king abdicated the throne in 1917, and since then almost the entire royal family lived in Switzerland.
Some time on the throne was the son of Constantine Alexander, but then the king was again restored. The whole family settled in the Crown Villa in Corfu.
During the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-1922Prince Andrew commanded the second army corps. His work was hampered by the weak training of officers. He refused to execute the order of the commander-in-chief and attack the Turkish positions because of the panic mood of the officers. Prince for two months was removed from command, but later returned to the army. And when in 1922 Greece swept the revolutionary movement, the prince was arrested and was in the balance from death.
On board the British cruiser "Calypso" familyPrince was taken to a safe place and settled on the western outskirts of Paris. Wife Alice suffered a nervous breakdown and was placed in a psychiatric clinic in Switzerland. One after another, their daughters married and lived in Germany, and their son studied in Britain. Due to illness, Alice could not attend the weddings of her daughters.
After healing, she lived separately from her husband, althoughthey were not divorced. Princess Alice did a lot of charity work. During the fascist occupation, she remained in Athens, where she tried to help the Jews to avoid raids and concentration camps.
Его Высочество поселился на небольшой яхте своей friends of Countess Andre de la Bin. During the fascist attack on France, he was forced to live only in Vichy, in a territory that was nominally free from the presence of the Nazis. His son Philip fought on the side of the British. But his father did not have the opportunity to see him for five years and died of heart failure at the Metropol Hotel in Monaco in 1944. He did not even know how the world war ended, and about the happy marriage of his son.
