Princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld

Princess Juliane, oil on canvas, 1794.

Juliane Henriette Ulrike, Princess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (b. Coburg, 23 September 1781 - d. Elfenau, near Berne, Switzerland, 15 August 1860), was a German princess of the ducal house of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (after 1826, the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha).

Family

She was the third daughter of Franz Frederick Anton, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and Countess Augusta Caroline Reuss of Ebersdorf. King Leopold I of the Belgians was her younger brother, whilst Queen Victoria of United Kingdom was her niece and King Ferdinand II of Portugal was her nephew.

"**La Grande Duchesse Anna Feodorovna**", Portrait by Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun, realized shortly after her wedding (ca.1795-1796). This painting was destroyed by bombs during World War II.

Grand Duchess of Russia

Juliane, along with her two elder sisters, Sophie and Antoinette, traveled to Saint Petersburg. The Empress Catherine II of Russia chose her to be the bride of her second grandson, the Grand Duke Constantine. Juliane, who was not yet fifteen years of age, took the name of Anna Feodorovna in a Russian Orthodox baptismal ceremony and married Constantine (who was only seventeen years old at the time) in St.Petersburg on 26 February 1796. The Empress died nine months later, on 6 November.

The marriage was deeply unhappy. Constantine, a raw and immature boy, made his young wife intensely miserable. After three years, in 1799, Anna left her husband and returned to Coburg.

Shortly thereafter, however, she returned to Russia in an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile. In 1801, Anna, who had become involved in several frivolous intrigues, was sent home permanently to Coburg.

File:Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.jpg

Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld in her adulthood.

Life after separation

On 28 October 1808 Anna gave birth to an illegitimate son, named Eduard Edgar Schmidt-Löwe. The father of this child possibly was Jules Gabriel Emile de Seigneux, a minor French nobleman. Eduard was enobled by his mother's younger brother, Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and assumed the surname von Löwenfels by decree on 10 January 1818.

Later, Anna moved to Berne, Switzerland, and gave birth to a second illegitimate child in 1812, a daughter, named Louise Hilda Agnes. Her father was Rodolphe Abraham de Schiferli, a Swiss surgeon, professor and Guard of Honor (French:Cavalier d'Honneur, German:Oberhofmeister) of Anna from 1812 to 1837. In order to cover another scandal in Anna's life, the baby was adopted by Jean François Joseph d'Aubert, a french refugee.

Two years later, in 1814, Constantine tried to get her to return to him but her firm opposition prevented this attempt from succeeding. That year, Anna acquired an estate on the banks of Aare River and gave it the name of Elfenau. She spent the rest of her life there, and, as a big lover of music, made this home a center of the domestic and foreign musical society of that time.

Finally, on 20 March 1820, after nineteen years of separation, her marriage with the Grand Duke Constantine was formally annulled. He remarried two months later and died on 27 June 1831. Anna survived her former husband for twenty-nine years.

Later, her son Eduard married his cousin Bertha von Schauenstein, an illegitimate daughter of the Duke Ernst I, and had descendants who are still alive. Her daughter Louise married Jean Samuel Edouard Dapples in 1834 and died three years later in 1837 at the tender age of twenty-five.