Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Lennart will marry a commoner and live on an island

  January 26, 1931

The engagement of Prince Lennart of Sweden and Miss Karin Emma Louise Nissvandt is to be announced formally next summer, according to the Associated Press.
Prince Lennart, 22, is the only child of Prince Vilhelm of Sweden and his former wife, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia.    The 20-year-old bride-to-be is the daughter of Sven Nissvandt of Stockholm.
The wedding will take place in the fall at Stenhammer, the summer residence of Prince Lennart's father, or in Stockholm.  Prince Lennart is now studying agriculture at Bolmbacke.
After the wedding, Prince Lennart and his new wife will live on the island of Mainau in Lake Constance, Germany, which the prince inherited from his grandmother, the late Queen Victoria.
Prince Lennart is a grandson of King Gustav V.

In New York City, where Grand Duchess Marie now lives on Fifth, the news of her son's marriage was "greeted with silence, reports the Associated Press.  The Grand Duchess refused to discuss her son's "matrimonial intentions" with reporters.   She was busy working in a Fifth Avenue shop, where she is employed as a "style creator."
Grand Duchess Marie and Prince Vilhelm were married at Tsarkoe-Selo in 1908.  Lennart was born in 1909.   The couple were not compatible, and after only five years, Maria and Vilhelm separated, and then divorced.  Lennart remained with his father, and Maria returned to live in Russia.  
Lennart grew up at the court in Sweden, and his mother soon encountered "experiences new to a Romanoff."  She worked as a nurse during the war, and then when the revolution came, she and her second husband, Prince Serge Poutiane, fled to to France.  They left their infant son behind with Prince Serge's parents.  The little boy died a few months later. 
The Grand Duchess' second marriage also ended in divorce.  In Paris, she "made her first attempts at earning a living."
She recently published her autobiography, Education of a Princess.

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