Princess Theodora of Greece and Denmark, Margravine of Baden (; 30 May 1906 – 16 October 1969) was a Greek and Danish princess by birth and Margravine of Baden through her marriage to Berthold, most senior pretender to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Baden.
The second of five children of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, Theodora spent a happy childhood between Athens and Corfu. In her youth, however, she witnessed the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), followed by the First World War (1914–1918) and the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). For the young princess and her relatives, these conflicts had dramatic consequences and led to their exile in Switzerland (between 1917 and 1920), then in France and the United Kingdom (from 1922 to 1936). During their exile, Theodora and her family depended on the generosity of their foreign relatives, in particular Marie Bonaparte (who offered them accommodation in Saint-Cloud) and Lady Louis Mountbatten (who supported them financially).
At the end of the 1920s, Theodora's mother was struck by a mental health crisis which led to her confinement in a Swiss psychiatric hospital. Shortly after, in 1931, Theodora married Berthold, Margrave of Baden, son of Chancellor of the German Reich Prince Maximilian. The couple then moved to Salem Castle, where Berthold ran a school with teacher Kurt Hahn. The princess gave birth to three children there: Margarita, Maximilian and Ludwig. Opposed to Nazism, Theodora and her husband kept their distance from the Nazi regime; however, this did not prevent Berthold from enlisting in the Wehrmacht at the start of the Second World War. Affected by the conflict, which divided her family into two factions, Theodora became involved in the German Red Cross and other charitable organizations.
The defeat of Germany and its occupation by the Allies brought new upheavals in the life of Theodora and Berthold. Though not held by the Soviets, responsible for the death of several of their cousins, the couple was ostracized by the British royal family at the time of the marriage of Prince Philip, Theodora's only brother, to Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom (later Queen Elizabeth II) in 1947. Over the years, the couple was nevertheless reintegrated into the life of the European elite, as illustrated by their invitation and presence at the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 and at the wedding of Juan Carlos, Prince of Asturias, and Princess Sophia of Greece and Denmark in 1962. Theodora died of heart problems six years after her husband, in 1969. She was the paternal aunt of the Prince of Wales, who later became King Charles III.
Biography Childhood In Greece and abroad
The second daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, Theodora was born at Tatoi Palace, near Athens,Ricardo Mateos Sainz de Medrano mentions the Hellenic capital as her place of birth, but Hugo Vickers is more precise and names Tatoi Palace as the birthplace . on 30 May 1906. At the time of her birth, her father was traveling to Spain, where he represented the Greek royal family on the occasion of the marriage of King Alfonso XIII of Spain to Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, a cousin of her mother Alice. Baptised "Theodora" in honor of the Byzantine empress, but nicknamed "Dolla" by her family, the princess was raised within a united household, together with her elder sister Margarita, and younger sisters Cecilie, and Sophie. With their mother, Theodora and her sisters communicated in English, but they also used French, German, and Greek in the presence of their relatives and governesses. The princesses were formally educated in English and Greek.
Theodora's early childhood was affected by the instability that the Kingdom of Greece experienced at the start of the twentieth century. Tired of attacks from the press and the opposition, Andrew and Alice found refuge in travel and spent most of the period between 1907 and 1908 outside the borders of their country. With their daughters, they stayed in the United Kingdom, Germany, Malta and Russia, where they reunited with their many relatives including Edward VII of the United Kingdom, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, Alexandra Feodorovna, and Prince and Princess Louis of Battenberg (Alice's parents). At this time, Theodora was introduced to her young maternal uncle and aunt, Louis and Louise, to whom she and her sister Margarita later became very close.
In 1909, the Goudi coup occurred, a military putsch organized against the government of King George I of Greece, Theodora's grandfather. Shortly after this event, Prince Andrew and his brothers were forced to resign from the army. Concerned about the political situation of their country, Andrew and Alice once again found refuge abroad and stayed in the United Kingdom, France and Hesse. After considering a life in exile for a while, the couple returned to live in Greece, where their third daughter was born. At that time, Theodora was described by her maternal grandmother as a funny and imaginative little girl, but also very scatterbrained.
The Balkan Wars and the First World War
Between 1912 and 1913, Greece engaged in the Balkan Wars, which put the country in opposition to the Ottoman Empire and to Bulgaria. Called to join the army again, Prince Andrew served under Crown Prince Constantine, while Princess Alice worked as a nurse for wounded soldiers. Too young to follow their parents, Theodora and her sisters spent the duration of the conflict in Athens, with the exception of a brief stay in Thessaloniki in December 1912. Greece came out of the Balkan Wars with an expanded territory, but the conflict also led to the assassination of George I in March 1913. The death of the King of the Hellenes caused significant changes in the life of Theodora and her relatives. In his will, the sovereign bequeathed the Corfiote palace of Mon Repos to Andrew. After years of living in close proximity to the monarch, in the palaces of Athens and Tatoi, Andrew and his family therefore finally had their own residence.
When peace returned, Andrew, Alice and their daughters left Greece in August 1913. After a visit to Germany, they stayed in the United Kingdom, with Theodora's maternal grandparents. For little princesses, this trip was an opportunity to visit St Paul's Cathedral and London Zoo with their parents. Returning to Greece on 17 November 1913, the family was then retained in the country by Alice's fourth pregnancy and, above all, by the outbreak of the First World War. With Greece having proclaimed its neutrality, this new conflict initially hardly affected Theodora and her relatives. She and her sisters thus spent the summer of 1914 in Corfu, where they enjoyed the sun and the sea for four months.
Things changed as war entered into the life of the country's people. Stationed in Thessaloniki with his garrison, Andrew was thus confronted with the occupation of the city by the Allies in October 1915. Shortly after, in December, the routed Serbian army found refuge in Corfu, leading Alice and her daughters to abandon Mon Repos for the capital. Over the months, the amount of threats against members of the royal dynasty increased. In July 1916, an arsonist attacked the domain of Tatoi while the king was there with his wife and several of their children. In addition, on 1 December, the French navy bombarded the royal palace in Athens, forcing Theodora and her sisters to take refuge in the cellars with their mother.
Exile in Switzerland
In June 1917, King Constantine I was deposed and driven out of Greece by the Allies, who replaced him on the throne by his second son, the young Alexander. Fifteen days later, Theodora's family was in turn forced into exile in order to remove the possibility of the new monarch being influenced by those close to him. Forced to reside in German-speaking Switzerland, the small group first stayed in a hotel in St. Moritz, before settling in Lucerne, where they lived with uncertainty about their future.
Exile was not the only source of concern for the family, however. Following the Russian Revolution, several of Theodora's relatives (the Romanovs) were executed in Russia. Shortly after these events, the Grand Ducal family of Hesse, to which Theodora was closely related through her mother, was overthrown along with all the other German dynasties during the winter of 1918–1919. Finally, the family went through some health problems, several of them contracting the flu in 1920.
At the beginning of 1919, Theodora nevertheless had the joy of reuniting with her paternal grandmother, the Dowager Queen Olga, spared by the Bolsheviks thanks to the diplomatic intervention of the Danes. In the months that followed, she also reconnected with her maternal grandparents, whom the war had forced to abandon the name of Battenberg for that of Mountbatten. For Theodora, who now formed a duo with her elder sister Margarita, exile was synonymous with sadness but also an opportunity for long family reunions and walks in the mountains.
Young adulthood Brief return to Greece On 2 October 1920, King Alexander, cousin of Theodora, was bitten by a domestic monkey during a walk in Tatoi. Poorly cared for, he contracted sepsis, which prevailed on 25 October, without any member of his family being allowed to come to his bedside. The death of the sovereign caused a violent institutional crisis in Greece. Already stuck, since 1919, in a new war against Turkey, Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos lost the 1920 Greek legislative election. Humiliated, he retired abroad while a referendum reinstalled Constantine I on the throne.
Prince Andrew was received triumphantly in Athens on 23 November 1920, and his wife and four daughters joined him a few days later. Theodora then returned to live in Corfu with her family. At the same time, Princess Alice found out that she was pregnant again. On 10 June 1921, the family welcomed Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark (later Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, 1921–2021). The joy that surrounded this birth, however, was obscured by the absence of Prince Andrew, who joined the Greek forces in Asia Minor during the Occupation of Smyrna. Despite concerns about the war, Theodora and her siblings enjoyed life at Mon Repos, where they received a visit from their maternal grandmother and their aunt Louise in the spring of 1922. In the park near the palace, built on an ancient cemetery, the princesses devoted themselves to archeology and discovered some pottery, bronze pieces and bones.
During this period, Theodora and her sisters also participated, for the first time, in a number of great social events. In March 1921, the princesses attended in Athens the wedding of their cousin Helen to Crown Prince Carol of Romania. In July 1922, they went to the United Kingdom to be bridesmaids at the wedding of their uncle Louis Mountbatten to the wealthy heiress Edwina Ashley.
However, the military defeat of Greece against Turkey and the political unrest that it caused disrupted the life of Theodora and her family. In September 1922, Constantine I abdicated in favor of his eldest son, George II. A month later, Prince Andrew was arrested before being tried by a military tribunal, which declared him responsible for the defeat of the Sakarya. Saved from execution by the intervention of foreign chancelleries, the prince was condemned to banishment and cashiering. After a brief stop in Corfu, the prince and his relatives hurriedly left Greece aboard HMS Calypso in early December 1922.
In the UK and France