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| Empress Dagmar - Maria Fjodorovna - Returns to Russia |
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| Written by Christian Roar Pedersen | |
| Saturday, 23 September 2006 | |
 Denmark, 23 Oct –Today Empress Dagmar, the mother of Russia’s last tsar Nikolaj II, started her last journey from Denmark to St. Petersburg where she will be re-buried at the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral Thursday by Patriarch Alexei II.
Empress Dagmar was originally buried in Denmark 78 years ago. The transfer and re-burial started with a ceremony in the Cathedral of Roskilde today where the Danish Queen Margrethe II and the royal family were present together with representatives from Russia. The ceremony was celebrated by the Lutheran Bishop Jan Lindhardt and confessor to Queen Margrethe II, Professor Christian Todberg. The coffin is transferred through the streets of Copenhagen by horse carriage and is send by ship to St. Petersburg where she is put to rest beside her husband tsar Alexander III. In Copenhagen a short stop is made in front of the Orthodox Alexander Nevski Church where a small religious ceremony takes place. The Alexander Nevski Church was build in order that the Russian tsar could celebrate church services when he and his wife visited Denmark. Currently the church belongs to The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) and not the Moscow Patriarchate. Thus the prayers in front of the church were done by Archbishop Mark of Berlin (ROCOR). The re-burial takes place on the request of the Romanoff family and is in accordance with Dagmar’s own wishes the family tells.  Who was Princess Dagmar? Princess Dagmar was born in Copenhagen in 1847 as the daughter of the later King Christian IX. Among her siblings were the later kings Frederik VII of Denmark, Georg I of Greece, and the later queen Alexandra of England. Princess Dagmar was married to the Russian heir to the throne Alexander in November 1866. Alexander was tsar of Russia from 1881 until his death in 1894. In connection with the wedding princess Dagmar converted to The Russian Orthodox Church and was named Maria Fjodorovna. She had six children, among which was the last tzar of Russia Nikolaj II, who reigned from 1894 to 1917. Empress Maria Fjodorovna lived in Russia for over 50 years. She survived the revolution were two of her sons and five grandchildren were killed. During the revolution she lived first in Kiev and later at Krim by the Black See. I 1919 she left Russia on board the British warship Marlborough and lived some month with her sister the widowed queen Alexandra in England. Subsequently she moved to Denmark and from1920 she lived winters at the castle Amalienborg and the rest of the year at the smaller castle Hvidøre north of Copenhagen where she died the 13th of October 1928. She was buried from the Russian Alexander Nevski Church in Copenhagen and was put to rest in the Cathedral of Roskilde where the Danish royal family is normally buried. Read more:
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 29 September 2006 ) |
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