Brief history
BY PHILIPPE DELORME
MOURNING IN Romanoff
Ia sad week for the Russian imperial family! A few hours
intervals, two heirs of the old tsars come to make their
soul to God. Distant descendant of Nicolas I, Michel Andréïevitch,
87 years, died September 21 in Sydney, Australia, where he
lived since 1941. The next day, his cousin Michel Feodorovitch
(photo) died in Paris. In this city, in the sixteenth
district, then "capital" of exiled White Russians, that the
Prince was born on 4 May 1924, told the state under the Civil
name "Romanoff of Russia." His father, Prince Feodor
Alexandrovich, was rear-grand son of Nicolas I, but also nephew
of Nicolas II, as the son of Archduchess Xenia
Alexandrovna. As for his mother, Princess Irene Paley, it was
After the marriage of Archduke morganatic Paul, son of Alexander II.
Thus, Michel Romanoff belonged to Russia by all fibers
of his being, carnal. But he was also very
French, "of heart and mind" and "grateful to France for
hospitality, "as emphasized in the do-part of mourning. High
between Paris and Biarritz, the Lord, who always combines simplicity and
nobility, grew up in a bohemian atmosphere of warm,
between his parents and aunt. The latter, Princess Nathalie Paley,
wife of couturier Lucien Lelong, will be a star of the arts
and mundane, muse of Jean Cocteau, Serge Lifar close, then
Luchino Visconti.
During the Second
World War,
Prince served in
infantry before
to begin from
1949, a
dazzling career
in the cinema.
During a
fifteen years,
he will attend the
large working
Edited by
Duvivier, Clouzot, Bresson, but also Americans Anatole Litvak
or Carol Reed. His name appears in the credits of
Evil, of Mutiny on the Bounty, Demoiselles de Rochefort,
the Wages of Fear, or ... Anastasia, on both sides of
Atlantic, his friends would be called Simone Signoret, Catherine
Deneuve, Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, Yu! Brynner. Its first
union with Austria, Helga Stauffenberg, Michel had a
only son, named him and disappeared in early 2001.
Divorced, Michel Romanoff remarry with its companion
son, Mercedes Ustrell Cabana, of Catalan origin, and adopt its
own granddaughter, Tatiana. Since the fall of the USSR, Michel
Feodorovitch had the joy of discovering the land of his ancestors and
fought tirelessly to rehabilitate the memory of Romanoff.
His ashes, however, not based in Russia, but in
the island of Mainau on Lake Constance, Germany, near
those of his cousin, Count Lennart Bernadotte.
