After her father's assassination in 1881, her mother brought her up in France. In 1895, she married a German nobleman, becoming Countess Merenberg, and spent most of the rest of her life in Germany.
Early life
Olga was born at Saint Petersburg, Russia, on 7 November 1873, while her mother was still the mistress of Tsar Alexander II.[1] Her parents' morganatic marriage on 6 July 1880 legitimated her, and she acquired the surname of Yurievsky, the title of Princess (knyagina) and the style of Serene Highness (Svetlost).[2]
Her father was assassinated in March 1881, when she was seven, and after that her mother took her three surviving children, Olga, George, and Catherine, to live in France. A second brother, Boris, had died in infancy.[3]
France and Germany
Olga's mother took a house in Paris and later others on the French Riviera. In 1891, she bought a house in Nice which she called the Villa Georges, in the boulevard Dubouchage. In France, the family was able to afford some twenty servants and a private railway carriage.[3][4] However, the immediate family of the new Tsar, Nicholas II, looked on Catherine and her children with some disdain.[5]
Most of the rest of Olga's life was spent in Germany, including the war years of 1914 to 1918. She had three children, one of whom died in infancy, and herself died in 1925 at Wiesbaden, aged 51.[3]
Count George Michael (1897–1965), who married firstly in 1926 (divorced 1928) Polett von Köver de Györgyös-Szent-Miklos, and secondly in 1940 Elizabeth Müller-Uri (1903–1963)
^Catherine Radziwill (as Paul Vasili), Behind the veil at the Russian court (London and New York: Cassell & Co., 1913), p. 106
^Lindsey Hughes, The Romanovs: Ruling Russia 1613–1917 (New York: 2008), p. 185
^ abcdJohn Bergamini, The Tragic Dynasty: A History of the Romanovs (1969), pp. 370 & 464
^Raymond de Ponfilly, Guide des Russes en France (Horay, 1990), p. 407: "Villa Georges : boulevard Dubouchage, n° 10 Villa achetée en janvier 1891 par la princesse..."
^ abSergei Mironenko, Andrei Maylunas, tr. Darya Galy, A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra: Their Own Story (Doubleday, 1997, ISBN0-385-48673-1), p. 133