page_title: Princess Cecilie of Baden
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Princess Cecilie of Baden / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Cecilie Auguste, Princess and Margravine of Baden, Grand Duchess Olga Feodorovna of Baden
context_page_description: Grand Duchess Olga Feodorovna of Russia, born Princess Cäcilie Auguste of Baden, was the youngest daughter of Grand Duke Leopold of Baden and Sophie Wilhelmine of Sweden.
  She received a strict education at the court of Baden in Karlsruhe, becoming a cultured woman. On 28 August 1857, she married Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich of Russia, the youngest son of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. Upon her marriage, she converted to the Russian Orthodox faith and took the name Olga Feodorovna with the title of Grand Duchess of Russia. Unusually among the Romanovs of her generation, her marriage was a long and happy union. The couple remained devoted to each other. She raised their seven children with an iron hand.
  Between 1862 and 1882, she lived with her husband and their children in the Caucasus in a palace in Tiflis. She was a strong supporter of her husband's governmental activities as a viceroy of the region and she took an interest in charities, particularly in the field of female education. In 1882, the family moved back to the Imperial court in St Petersburg to a large palace on the bank of the Neva river.
context_section_description: Grand Duchess Olga Feodorovna was born on 20 September 1839, in Karlsruhe as Cäcilie Auguste, Princess and Margravine of Baden. She was the youngest daughter among the seven children of Grand Duke Leopold of Baden and his half-grandniece Princess Sophie Wilhelmine of Sweden. She was a descendant of King George II of Great Britain and the Russian Rurik Dynasty through Anne of Kiev, Queen of France and daughter of the Kievan Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise.
  Cäcilie's father, Grand Duke Leopold, descended from a morganatic branch of the Baden family (his mother was Luise Geyer von Geyersberg, a noblewoman) and thus did not have rights to a princely status or the sovereign rights of the House of Zähringen of Baden. However, in 1830 he ascended to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Baden after the main male line of his family died out. Leopold was considered the first German ruler who held in his country's liberal reforms.
  Cäcilie's mother, Sophie Wilhelmine of Sweden, was a daughter of King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden and Frederica of Baden, a sister of Elizabeth Alexeievna (Louise of Baden). Unlike her husband, Sophie Wilhelmine supported conservative policies. During the tumult caused by the appearance of Kaspar Hauser, Sophie was rumoured to have ordered Hauser's assassination in 1833. This damaged the relationship between the couple and Sophie was said to have had an affair. Court rumours attributed the paternity of Cäcilie, the couple's last child, to a Jewish banker named Haber. No historical evidence has surfaced to confirm this allegation.
  During Cäcilie's childhood, the 1848-49 revolution forced the Grand Ducal family to flee from Karlsruhe to Koblenz. Cäcilie was 12 years old at the death of her father in 1852. Princess Cäcilie received a Spartan upbringing. Her relationship with her parents was formal rather than affectionate. She would later apply these same principles raising her own children. She grew into a sharp-tongued girl, witty and well-educated. With high cheekbones and oblique eyes, she had striking Eurasian looks.
caption: Cäcilie Auguste, Princess and Margravine of Baden
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