Joanna Grudzińska

Joanna Grudzińska ( born May 17, 1795 in Poznań † November 29, 1831 in Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg ) was a Polish noblewoman, mistress and later second wife of the Russian Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich Romanov.

Life

Joanna Grudzińska was the youngest daughter of three children of the governor of Chodzież, Anton Grudziński. Joanna was considered precocious, intelligent and a true beauty.

At a ball in honor of the Russian Tsar Alexander I. She learned ( 1815), his younger brother, the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich Romanov ( 1779-1831 ) know and shortly afterwards went with this one a liaison. The existing since 1796 marriage of the Grand Duke Constantine to Princess Juliane of Saxe- Coburg -Saalfeld ( 1781-1860 ), a sister of the Belgian King Leopold I was not a happy one. Juliane had fled from Russia to settle in 1813 in Bern. In order to enter into a new marriage with Joanna, the Grand Duke declared during the lifetime of Alexander I in a secret file from the January 14, 1822 his renunciation of the throne.

On May 24, 1820 Joanna Grudzińska married in Saint Petersburg to Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, second son of Tsar Paul I and his second wife, Princess Sophie Dorothee of Württemberg. The marriage remained childless. With the decree of Tsar Alexander from July 4, 1820 Łowicz former possessions of the Primates went to his brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, got the Erbnutzungsrechte. On July 20, 1820 was then his wife, Joanna Grudzińska raised to the Princess of Łowicz. During the November Uprising in 1830 Joanna Grudzińska was the Poles as a traitor because she was faithful to her husband. It is interesting that her twin sister Mary was married to the responsible General Dezydery Chłapowski.

The couple fled to Bialystok and in June 1831 the Grand Duke Constantine died of cholera. His widow had converted his body to Saint Petersburg, where she also died on 17 November 1831 of the disease. 1929 were reburied their remains and buried again next to her twin sister and her husband in Rabin in Srem.

Portrait of Joanna Grudzińska (1831 )