That's my article on Elisabeth in Majesty. She's rather a pet subject of mine -- and I was lucky enough to get to see her personal photo albums when I was at the Staatsarchiv in Darmstadt in the summer of 2000. At that point in time, the archivists were only just beginning to archive the personal items of the Grand Ducal family that had arrived at the Staatsarchiv from Wolfsgarten in the wake of Princess Margaret's death.
We were, of course, researching Alexandra's early life, and the whole Anastasia issue, but I had asked Professor Franz about Elisabeth during the private interview that we had with him -- just as an aside, as we had been talking about Ernie and Anastasia.
A little later that day, when we were in the reading room going through some stuff, Prof. Franz arrived with an armload of "treats" for us -- wiring plans of the Neues Palais, which showed the floorplan that Greg had been interested in seeing, and Elizabeth's photo albums and postcard albums for me. I couldn't tell you where to find them today in terms of call-numbers, as they were unarchived then, but I know that they are somewhere in the Staatsarchiv.
I learned quite a bit about her, for all that she only lived eight years -- and I look forward to including everything I know in our bio of Ernst-Ludwig, because she was so very important to his story.
There are loads of memorials to her in and around Darmstadt, one of which was raised right after her death by the children of Darmstadt, and is in the little park right being the Staatsarchiv building on the Karolinenplatz. We were unfortunately unable to photograph it, because it was absolutely pouring with rain on our last day there, which was when we had planned on doing a lot of photography. Wouldn't you know it? Murphy's Law in action...
Edited to add: The Staatsarchiv had nothing about Sucky in their library until I handed over my copy of Sullivan's A Fatal Passion. That always makes me smile -- that I made such a little contribution to poor Ducky's memory there...
