Behind the scenes of history, there is something about Maria.

 

Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia - Wikipedia

I don't know why, maybe it's just my imagination running wild with nothing else to do - but, there's something about Maria. Her eyes are like beacons telling you to pay attention, there's more to. her than that photo - her story and one yet to be written.  There's twists, there are turns, and there she was a young woman still wondered about over a hundred years later. Her message was lasting, it still speaks. 

Maybe it is the cry of an innocent heart wanting to live forever but knowing the end is sooner than we think. 

I don't know. 

There's something about Maria and the way I landed here on her story in my own path that wants to believe she wasn't assassinated along with members of her royal Russian family, the Romanovs. This is what history tells us: When the revolution broke out the Bolsheviks ordered the family to be moved from their initial exile in Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg. That was in April 1918. The family was forced to split up: Maria's younger brother, 13-year-old Alexei,  suffered a hemophilia attack right before the move, leaving him weak and  too ill to travel.  It was decided that Maria would accompany her parents, Nicholas and Alexandra, to their new location,  Alexia and the other three sisters (Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia) stayed behind in Tobolsk to nurse Alexei back to health.

Once Alexei was stable enough to travel the remaining siblings were reunited with Maria and their parents at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, where the entire family remained together until they were reportedly slaughtered by the Bolsheviks. 

                                       YEKATERINBURG 

Prior to splitting up and reuniting in Yekaterinburg, and because of WWI, the girls were trained to be nurses to the wounded soldiers as the royal family dedicated some of their residences to military hospitals - According to research their hands-on caregiving lasted from 1914 until the Russian Revolution in early 1917, at which time the family then was placed under house arrest ,  losing their freedom.

It is that hands on caregiving experience which has taken flight in my imagination as this story converges with my own ancestors, and their steps in East Prussia near Guttstadt, and in Rosengarth. 

The area had been ripe for decades with battles fought over the land, spilling the blood of East Prussians and Slavs. When the Russian army marched through East Prussia, they weren't just invading foreign territory; they were stepping onto a historic battleground where their tsarist ancestors had fought and died for generations -where stories ended and some began behind the scenes of history. 

It is the same area where the cold war took some nasty turns in 1961 and with the capture of a Russian double agent known as the Sniper-  Michał Goleniewski, who claimed to Tsarevich Alexei,  Maria's younger brother. He also claimed Romanov survivors had lived in Poland and East Prussia, that Warmia region. 

1961 was also the year my father,  a Korean Vet, took his Rosengarth born mother back to the homeland she left in 1929, and right...weeks- before the wall would go up and divide East and West Germany. Research has informed me this wasn't a vacation and most likely it and the photos Dad took served a purpose during those bitter cold war years. 

It's hard not to wonder about it all, especially when I am stuck in bed hoping to heal a back that fights me every step of the way.  

It was just a few weeks ago I was thinking about Maria, some of Dad's photos and one older lady in one..I don't know who she is, nor anything about it other than I see Maria in her. 

Coincidence? Probably. Wanting to see something intriguing ? Sure, why not? And that's when I got a flash of a building I come to find out was in Guttstadt -  I doodled the shape and had to research to find it but I did and was shocked when it was in Guttstadt. 

Maybe I've seen it before in my research wanderings, that is more than likely but for some reason that night it stuck out - that older woman did, and so did Maria. The building is called the Stork Tower. The 14th century tower stands directly at the northeastern corner of what used to be the old walled town, right along the Łyna River.  The tower had an underground prison- basically a dungeon and thick walls meant to withstand the siege of the Teutonic Knights, Polish kings, and later, the heavy artillery of the 1807 Battle of Guttstadt. 

Research also told me the medieval city wall system attached to the Stork Tower featured a dedicated water gate - giving ease of access. 

St. Josef Krankenhaus, the Catholic hospital, was a short walk from Stork Tower and those water gates. The Catholic church in Guttstadt during the time period the Romanov family was supposedly murdered had a strong foothold and leverage in the Vatican - it was the hometown of Canon expert Fr. Stanislaus Woywod. 

Google: "Just months before the Romanovs perished, the Catholic Church underwent its most radical legal transformation in centuries. In May 1918, the Vatican officially enacted the 1917 Code of Canon Law (Codex Juris Canonici)—the first time in history that the Church's vast, chaotic web of laws was consolidated into a single, supreme legal code"

He also happened to be my grandfather's, August Woywod of Rosengarth,  cousin. 

Now the following is Google opinion's on the matter - "The "Conversion of Russia" Mandate: In May 1917—right between the first Russian revolution and the Bolshevik takeover—the famous Marian apparitions at Fatima, Portugal, explicitly called for the "conversion of Russia". This deeply influenced the Vatican's view of the revolution; they saw it not just as a political crisis, but as a cosmic spiritual battleground."

As for what Catholics thought - Catholicism.org state's the following: "A certain historical continuity will be reinforced if we also briefly consider that, similar to the very strong Catholic influence which had existed in early 19th-century Russia, so also a Catholic influence was beginning to grow there again in the years immediately before and after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Seeds of Russia’s conversion of which Our Lady of Fatima spoke have been planted in the past. The ground has been prepared, more than once."

The Romanov lineage was one with ties to the Catholic Church, it had DNA ties to nobility around the globe. A lot was riding on the revolution, politically, for religions and not just Russian Orthodox. 

Guttstadt could easily live up to its name as a good town, for some Holy ordained protection.  Isn't it? 

So, yes, that is where my imagination went, piecing this all together. I started asking What if? What if Maria did get away - maybe Alexi, too. They'd take him somewhere for care considering his health, Maria had been trained as a young girl to know to do that and make sure he was safe. Guttstadt was East Europe's Vatican during that time. While Fr. Woywod was in New York by then, he was very much still a Catholic boy from East Prussia, Germany - the last German Catholic stronghold. 

Maria could easily hide under those heavy habits the nuns wore - she could have stayed in the convent or with any of the villagers whose farms surrounded the area.  Potato farms and horse breeders were in abundance. 

1961- Rosengarth/Rozynka area East Prussia- Grandma Woywod's family.

So many chapters- stories - could be untold behind my imagination's wanderings..and all because, there's something about Maria...Did she find love? Have children? Know joy? Did she ever heal?