The Battenbergs - discussion, pictures

[VN]

She still looked very charming. I wonder if she ever visited Britain ?

Yes, a couple years after Sandro died she was in Britain. She also met with Queen Victoria. Maybe Johanna was invited by her Sister in Law Beatrice?

[VN]

I do not know for sure. But considering the facts that the translator has said that he used the original manuscript and that countess von Hartenau has donated more than 2, 000 personal  belongings of Alexander to the National Museum Of Military History in Bulgaria during the 1930's, it's very likely to be in Bulgaria.
Anyway, Sandro is not Leo Tolstoy when it comes to writing, he is a soldier and he is very laconic. Most of the entries are: I got up, I was invited to luncheon with grand duke X, then we had to advance to point Y.
There are a couple of interesting moments, if you allow me to share them:
1. He has been shocked by the cruelty of the war \massacres of civilians, etc\;
2. He has been through some bad illness. His regiment has been left to starve for almost 2 days, he has written that he was so hungry that he scavenged the backpack of a dead turkish soldier and ate his stale bread. The translator applies that his death may be a postponed result from the horrible privations during this war. \He died from peritonitis. \
3. This one is very indicative of his character. During his vacations he definitely enjoyed the pleasures of life. He writes something like: “At the evening I went to the opera with X and two gorgeous ladies. After that lady Y allow me to escort her home. I returned home at the morning.” Lucky girl, lol.
4. And there was one very awkward situation,  that made me laugh. It’s not a joke at all. He ….  went to relieve himself in the bushes around the camp, when an angry bull came out of nowhere and started chasing him to the tents with the pants open.  And he has written that, I am not making it up. 

Thank you for your information. I did a lot of research on Sandro. It is too bad, that I can't read bulgarian. Do post pictures here. He is a Battenberg :-).

[Eric_Lowe]

Thanks for the info. They seem to be on the fringe of royalty. The morganetic marriage of a morganetic prince.

[MariaIIILuisa]

156 years since Alexander's birthday \April 5th\. In honour of this LostBulgaria.com has published that picture:

[Eric_Lowe]

He was very handsome and dashing !

[MariaIIILuisa]

A while ago I found this picture at Getty. The caption says it's Louis, but it's not. It's Sandro. Am I right?



This one you've probably already seen it, but let's have it here, too. It's from Wikipedia. It's circa 1894 having the original signature of countess von Hartenau. It was a present for Konstantin Stoilov, the godfather of the children. It's located now at the Central State Archive in Sofia.



And these I found at the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek today \Lucky me!\:

[Eric_Lowe]

Yes that is Sandro !

Nice photo. You have a link to the archives in Sofia ?

She was really attractive. The Battenbergs have great taste in beautiful women. His brother Louis almost married Lily Langtry.

[Eric_Lowe]

Nice to have information from Sandro's family. Most books did not have much detail on his life and family.

[MariaIIILuisa]

Nice photo. You have a link to the archives in Sofia ?

This is the official website. But when you enter for search Батенберг \Battenberg\ in the first field of the green box to the right \search at the digital archives\ only documents pop up.
This is another big archive, The National Library at Sofia \again partially digitalized\, but the search interface is horrible and I couldn't find anything.

I guess the best way to find anything is to go on foot. Too bad I live in the dak province. :-(

[Eric_Lowe]

Thanks for the info MariaIIILuisa. 

[MariaIIILuisa]

Ok, here we go again.

This image floats in the internet as portrait of Sultana Racho Petrova, mistress of Ferdinand I of Bulgaria \I even linked it in his thread, when explaining the living picture\. But after I compared it with the finds from  Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek \especially №4\, it's clearly Johanna.


This one from the ulsteinbild also looks good. \I don't have registration there, sorry.\

Sandro during the Russo-Turkish war 1877-78. Source - LostBulgaria.com:



My favourite session as newly elected prince of Bulgaria, circa 1879 \from various sources including the British Royal Collection\:



Another one circa 1880:



Probably his most famous photoportrait, featured in schoolbooks /again from LostBulgaria/:



With one of the many cabinets \screenshot from a documentary video\:



And scans of two photos \with hyper resolution!!!\ from some bg online auction house:



The prince on a walk through Sofia, source: Stara-Sofia.com



Hope you liked these. I have a few more, I'll post them tomorrow when I find them :-)

[Eric_Lowe]

Very Impressive. I am glad he is still popular in Bulgaria.

[MariaIIILuisa]

Very Impressive. I am glad he is still popular in Bulgaria.

He isn't a royal celebrity, you know :-). He's part of our history, for good or bad.

Ok. This is the last part of my "collection". The first two are from the Serbo-Bulgarian war, source - Facebook:



From the Russian state archives:



And these are from here:

[MariaIIILuisa]

It appears that there's no much info about Franz Joseph of Battenberg, not to mention photographs. Anyway, here's a picture of him and prince Mirko of Montenegro.

[Eric_Lowe]

Yes. He was the one who married Princess Anna of Montenegro. There was a photo of her and Ena.