Lili Dehn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
9 August 1888
Catherine Horvat
Lili Dehn | |
|---|---|
.jpg) | |
| Born | Yulia Alexandrovna Smolskaia 9 August 1888 |
| Died | 8 October 1963 (aged 75) |
| Spouse |
Karl von Dehn
(m. 1907; died 1932) |
| Parent(s) | Ismail Selim Bek Smolsky Catherine Horvat |
Yulia Alexandrovna von Dehn (Russian: Юлия Александровна фон Ден; 9 August [O.S. 27 July] 1888 – 8 October 1963),[1] known as Lili Dehn, or Lili von Dehn, was a Russian aristocrat and memoirist. She was the wife of a Russian naval officer and a friend to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Dehn wrote a biography, The Real Tsaritsa, to refute rumors that were circulating in Europe during the 1920s about the Empress and Grigori Rasputin.
Dehn was born Yulia Alexandrovna Smolskaia on her family's southern Russian estate, Revovka, a home of her ancestor General Mikhail Kutuzov, who defeated Napoleon during the 1812 invasion of Russia. Her parents were Ismail Selim Bek Smolsky and Catherine Horvat. Both sides of her family had a long history in Russia, according to her memoirs.[2] Her parents divorced when she was eleven and her mother later remarried. Her maternal grandmother helped to raise her.[3]
She was educated by tutors at home and wrote that she understood very little Russian as a child because her family spoke French. As a young girl, she enjoyed listening to folk stories of old Russia told by her maternal grandmother and her childhood nurse. "The peasants at Revovka were extremely superstitious, and they believed implicitly in witches and warlocks," wrote Dehn. Later, she had an English governess. She loved her childhood estate and, whenever she went to visit an uncle in Livadiya, took a bit of dirt with her from Revovka to remind her of home.[2]
Marriage and friendship with the Empress
Dehn married 1907 in Yalta, Carl Alexander Akimovich (or "Joachimovitch") von Dehn (1877–1932), a Russian naval officer whose family were Baltic Germans which came from Tallinn, Estonia, from Finland and from Sweden. Dehn was an officer on the imperial yacht, Standart, and was a favorite with the imperial children. The Empress took an interest in Dehn's new wife and befriended her following the marriage.[2]
The Empress was the godmother for the Dehns' son, Alexander Leonide, who was born on 9 August 1908 and nicknamed "Titi". Dehn wrote that Titi was baptized Lutheran, which was required by her husband's family to maintain an inheritance. Alexandra remained disturbed that her godchild had had a Lutheran baptism and insisted seven years later that the child must be rebaptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. The Dehns complied with her request.[2]
Dehn was skeptical about the holiness of the starets in making Grigori Rasputin and the Empress's reliance upon him, but wrote that Rasputin once prayed over her own son, Titi, when the child was dangerously ill and the boy made a quick recovery.[2]
