Ernst Ludwig of Hesse

Ernst Ludwig Karl Albrecht Wilhelm Großherzog von Hessen und bei Rhine or Ernest Louis of Hesse (25 November 1868-9 October 1937) was Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt from 1892 until his abdication in 1918.

Born at Darmstadt in Hesse, he was the son of Ludwig IV Großherzog von Hessen und bei Rhine (1837–1892) and his wife Alice, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland (1843–1878), daughter of Queen Victoria.

He was known as a patron of the arts, founding the Darmstadt Artists' Colony, and was himself an author of poems, plays, essays, and piano compositions.

Ernest Louis was caught in bed with the kitchen boy by his first wife, Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg ("Ducky"), whom he had married 19 April 1894. On December 21, 1901, they were divorced (on the grounds of "invincible mutual antipathy") by a special verdict of the Supreme Court of Hesse and the Rhine.

"No boy was safe," Ducky said, "from the stable hands to the kitchen help. He slept quite openly with them all."

On 2 February 1905, he married Eleonore of Solms-Hohensolms-Lich.

By his first wife he had a daughter, Elisabeth, who died of typhus at the age of eight; by his second wife he had two sons, Georg Donatus and Louis. He has no living descendants, as all his grandchildren died before marriage.

He died at Schloß Wolfsgarten, near Darmstadt in Hesse.

References

• Sullivan, Michael John, A Fatal Passion: The Story of the Uncrowned Last Empress of Russia, Random House, New York, 1997.