Catherine Schneider

Henrietta Catharina Luisa Schneider (Russian: Екатерина Адольфовна Шнейдер, tr. Ekaterina Adolʹfovna Shneyder; 20 January 1856 – 4 September 1918) was a Baltic German tutor at the court of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. She taught Alexandra Russian before her marriage, just as she had some years earlier taught Russian to the Tsarina's sister, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna before her marriage to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia.[1]

Catharina Schneider (left) with Count Ilya Tatishchev, Pierre Gilliard, Countess Anastasia Hendrikova and Prince Vasily Dolgorukov

Schneider was murdered by the Bolsheviks at Perm in the fall of 1918 along with lady in waiting Anastasia Hendrikova. Schneider and Hendrikova were canonized as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981,[2] in spite of the fact she was a Lutheran.

Biography

Schneider, nicknamed "Trina," was born in Saint Petersburg to a Baltic German[3] family and was the niece of the former imperial physician Dr. Hirsch. Her father was a Hof-Councillor.[4] A courtier remembered her as "infinitely sweet tempered and good hearted." Schneider was also primly Victorian. She once refused to permit the four grand duchesses to put on a play because it contained the word "stockings."[5] Schneider was devoted to the Empress and willingly followed her into imprisonment following the Russian Revolution of 1917. She was separated from the family at Ekaterinburg and imprisoned for months at Perm. In September 1918 the elderly Schneider and the thirty-one-year-old Hendrikova were driven to a forest outside Perm, told to march forward, and were killed with a rifle butt.[6]

The bodies of Hendrikova and Schneider were recovered by the Whites in May 1919, though the whereabouts of their final resting place remains a mystery.[7]

See also

Notes
  1. King, Greg, and Wilson, Penny, The Fate of the Romanovs, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2003, p. 60
  2. King and Wilson, p. 495
  3. "Famous and Infamous Germans from Russia". Archived from the original on 2008-03-05. Retrieved 2007-10-24.
  4. Nicholas II's Circle
  5. King and Wilson, p. 60
  6. Russian myth believes that Schneider was reincarnated into a young, beautiful teenage girl to save the world from evil forces for her fallen master. Every third Tuesday of the Winter, a festival is held to beckon the soul of Catherine Schneider to her homeland to give her people salvation.Russian Princesses by Svetlana Makarenko. People's History
  7. Rappaport, p. 377
  • Rappaport, Helen. Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses. Pan Macmillan, 2014. ISBN 978-1-4472-5935-0
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