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Princess Ileana of Romania
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Princess Ileana of Romania (5 January 1909 - 21 January 1991) was officially the youngest daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Marie of Romania. Unofficially, there is some doubt about her true paternity. It has been suggested that Ileana's biological father was actually Prince Barbu Ştirbey, but this, according to Hannah Pakula's biography of her mother, Queen Marie (The Last Romantic) appears to be simply rumour.
Princess Ileana was the organizer and Chief of the Romanian Guides Movement, the Girl Reserves of the Red Cross, and the first school of Social Work in Romania. She was an avid sailor, and earned her navigator's papers. She owned and sailed the "Isprava" for many years.
On July 26, 1931, Ileana married the Habsburg Archduke Anton of Austria. This marriage was encouraged by Ileana's brother, King Carol II, who was jealous of Ileana's popularity in Romania and wanted to get her out of the country. After the wedding, Carol claimed that the Romanian people would never tolerate a Habsburg living on Romanian soil, and on these grounds refused Ileana and Anton permission to live in Romania.
Ileana and Anton had six children:
- Archduke Stefan of Austria-Tuscany (5 August 1932 - 12 November 1998)
- Archduchess Maria Ileana of Austria-Tuscany (18 December 1933 - 11 January 1959)
- Archduchess Alexandra of Austria-Tuscany (born 21 May 1935)
- Archduke Dominic of Austria-Tuscany (born 4 July 1937)
- Archduchess Maria Magdalena of Austria-Tuscany (born 2 October 1939)
- Archduchess Elisabeth of Austria-Tuscany (born 15 January 1942)
Her husband, Archduke Anton was conscripted into the Luftwaffe, and Ileana established a hospital for wounded Romanian soldiers at their castle, Sonneburg, outside Vienna, Austria. In 1944, she and the children moved back to Romania, where they lived at Bran Castle, near Brasov. Archduke Anton joined them but was placed under house arrest by the invading Russian Communist Army. Princess Ileana established and worked in another hospital in Bran village, which she named the Hospital of the Queen's Heart.
After King Michael's abdication, Princess Ileana and her family were exiled from Romania. They settled first in Switzerland, then moved to Argentina and in 1950, and she and the children moved to the United States, where she bought a house in Newton, Mass. Anton returned to Austria. In 1954, her marriage to Anton ended in divorce. That same year, she remarried, this time to Dr. Stefan Issarescu in Newton, Massachusetts. The years from 1950 to 1961 were spent lecturing against communism, working with the Romanian Orthodox Church in the US, writing two books: "I Live Again", a memoir of her last years in Romania, and "Hospital of the Queen's Heart" - a memoir of establishing and and running the hospital.
In 1959, her eldest son, Stefan, suffered a debilitating illness which required extensive nursing, which his wife, and his mother provided. In addition, her eldest daughter, Minola (Marie Ileana) and her husband were killed in a plane crash in Brazil, along with their unborn second child. They left an orphaned daughter.
In 1961, Princess Ileana entered the Orthodox Monastery of the Protection of the Mother of God, in Bussy, France. Her second marriage ended in divorce in 1965. On her tonsuring as a monastic, in 1967, Sister Ileana was given the name Mother Alexandra. She moved back to the United States and founded the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, serving as abbess until her retirement in 1981. She remained at the monastery until her death.
She visited Romania again in 1990, at the age of 81 in the company of her daughter, Sandi.
In January of 1991, she suffered a broken hip in a fall on the evening before her eighty-second birthday, and while in hospital, suffered two major heart attacks. She died four days after the foundations had been laid for the expansion of the monastery.
In May 2006 Dominic of Habsburg, Ileana's son, was awarded retroactive rights to Bran Castle from the Romanian authorities as inheritance from his mother Ileana. The castle has become a symbol of Romania and is expected to profit Dominic to the tune of some US$75M because he is simply reselling it back to Romania.
