George Maximilianovich, 6th Duke of Leuchtenberg

Prince George Maximilianovich Romanowsky, 6th Duke of Leuchtenberg (29 February 1852 – 16 May 1912), also known as Prince Georgii Romanovsky or Georges de Beauharnais, was the youngest son of Maximilian de Beauharnais, 3rd Duke of Leuchtenberg, and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia.

Family and early life George's father Maximilian de Beauharnais, 3rd Duke of Leuchtenberg had traveled to Saint Petersburg, eventually winning the hand of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, Nicholas I's eldest daughter in 1839. Maximilian was subsequently bestowed with the style Imperial Highness. As the son of a Russian grand duchess and an ennobled Russian prince Romanowsky, George and his siblings were treated as princes and princesses of the blood, bearing the styles Imperial Highness. To his family, he was known as Yuri. As this union was kept secret from her father Emperor Nicholas I (and her brother Emperor Alexander II could not permit the union, preferring instead to feign ignorance), Maria was forced into exile abroad. Thus, despite her German title, Duchess Therese, like her father before her, had grown up entirely in Russia.

George and Theresa had one son:

Alexander Georgievich, 7th Duke of Leuchtenberg (1881–1942); morganatically married Nadezhda Caralli. Two years later, on 19 April 1883, tragedy struck the couple when Duchess Therese died in Saint Petersburg. They remained at the convent for a year after their educations were complete, and made themselves extremely popular by enjoying themselves in society. While staying there in 1905, they witnessed the battleship Potemkin revolt. When told that George was spending his vacations at the coastal town of Biarritz in south-western France, Alexander declared "So the prince is washing his filthy body in the waves of the ocean". Anastasia was able to obtain a divorce from him several years into their marriage, on 15 November 1906. Various sources attribute George to have been good-looking but a "stupid and rather sorry individual", although these reports were most often in connection with his second wife, who, when arranging her divorce from George, was widely reported to want to do so because she could no longer live with a man of "intolerable stupidity". Anastasia later remarried to Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia, a grandson of Nicholas I of Russia (and on his mother's side a nephew of George's first wife Theresa). She and her sister became famous in Russian society as the "black peril" so called because of their home country of Montenegro, their dark complexions and their interest in the occult. Alexander was overthrown and murdered in a military coup, and succeeded by Peter I of Serbia.

George inherited a large collection of paintings, sculptures, and other works of art from his father, who had brought them with him when he moved from Munich to Saint Petersburg to marry Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia. He was buried in tomb #29 of the Grand Ducal Mausoleum in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg.

Legacy George was the only one of his brothers to make a legitimate dynastic union. As both of his sons failed to produce legitimate issue, the Bavarian title Duke of Leuchtenberg went extinct in 1974.

George appears as a character in The White Night of St. Petersburg, written by a relative, Prince Michael of Greece and Denmark.

Honours

He received the following decorations and awards: Russian orders and decorations

50px Knight of St. Vladimir, 4th Class, 1897; 3rd Class, 1908

Foreign orders and decorations

Ancestry