Irene of Greece and Denmark, little sister of Queen Sofia, died this Thursday, January 15, at the age of 83 in Madrid. “Their Majesties the King and Queen and Her Majesty Queen Sofia regret to announce the death of Her Royal Highness Princess Irene of Greece at 11:40 today at the Zarzuela Palace in Madrid. The Communication Department of the House of HM the King will inform of the ceremonies organized for her wake in Spain and the subsequent transfer of the coffin to Greece for burial in the Tatoi cemetery,” reports the note with which announced his death.
According to various sources, he had been suffering from serious cognitive impairment for some time. Granddaughter of kings, daughter of kings, sister of kings and aunt of kings, the princess was one of the most “blue blooded” members of European royalty. In his family tree there were five Hellenic sovereigns, two German emperors, eight Danish monarchs, five Swedes, seven tsars of Russia, a king and a queen of Norway and one of England. But he was also one of the most eccentric characters in the world. Gotha Almanac. She was so unique that her eight nephews, including Felipe VI, called her “Peculiar” or “Aunt Pecu.” She did not receive an official financial allowance, she did not have large possessions, she did not wear jewelry or luxury clothing. She also did not want to have a husband or children, which allowed her to have unusual freedom for a woman of her position and to live several lives. She was an apprentice archaeologist and almost professional concert performer, an advanced student of Hinduism, a philanthropist, an animal activist, an enthusiast of esotericism, and a fan of ufology and the paranormal world.
Nothing in the life of Irene of Greece was very conventional. He was born on May 11, 1942, in the middle of World War II and far from Greece, the country that gave his last name its name. Her mother, Frederick of Hanover, granddaughter of the last emperor of Germany, brought her into the world in a house outside Cape Town, South Africa, while they were fleeing Nazism. His father, King Paul, fifth Hellenic monarch of the House of Glücksburg, the same one that today continues to reign in Denmark and Norway, was still crown prince and was in Cairo, where his brother King George II broadcast messages to the Hellenic people in support of the Greek government in exile.
In the midst of those times of war, Queen Frederick baptized her daughter with the name Irene, which in Greek means “peace.” The estate where they lived, owned by General Jan Smuts, Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, was also called Irene. There she spent her first years of life, surrounded by animals and with her two older brothers, Prince Constantine and Princess Sofia. He did not have a privileged childhood, but he was full of care, with a Scottish nanny who taught him to speak English and a Zulu cook.
Following the defeat of the Axis Powers and the end of World War II, the Greek royal family moved to Alexandria. It was the prelude to his return to Greece. There Irene and her brothers shared afternoons of playing with the children of King Faruk of Egypt. In 1946, after five years of exile, the Grecia returned to Athens. Nearly 70 percent of Greeks voted in a referendum in favor of restoring the monarchy. Paul and Frederick, crown princes, and their three children settled in a villa in the Athenian neighborhood of Psychico. “At that time we already knew that belonging to royalty was not something to have fun with,” the princess told her biographer, Eva Celada, in the biography Irene of Greece, the rebellious princesspublished in 2005.
In Sofia’s footsteps
The life of the Greek royal family changed just six months after returning from exile. On April 1, 1947, King George died and Prince Paul, Irene’s father, became the new king of the Hellenes. The new monarch’s children, Constantine, Sofia and Irene, had a comfortable childhood and adolescence between the royal palace of Athens and Tatoi, on the outskirts of the capital, surrounded by music, literature and nature. They spent their summers in Mon Repos, on the island of Corfu, and their winters in Falken, Austria. During the year they visited their relatives from other dynasties in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
Queen Sofia’s sister began playing the piano because of the admiration she felt for musicians like Menuhin and Rostropovich. The famous Greek concert pianist Gina Bachauer was one of his teachers. In those years he also cultivated his passion for archeology under the tutelage of Teofanas Arranitopoulou. He participated with his sister in the discovery of stones and other archaeological objects. Two publications were born from these findings, Ceramics in Decelia y Archaeological miscellany.
When Princess Sofia went to study at the strict Salem boarding school in Germany, her little sister followed her. In 1951, when he was only ten years old, he entered this exclusive boarding school directed by Professor Kurt Hahn. Salem was governed by a teaching system based on the philosophical doctrine of Plato. There everything revolved around the idea of giving children responsibilities. The princesses and the rest of the students had to get up at half past six in the morning, make their beds and go out to the patio to run and do physical exercise. They showered with cold water, went to class, and then performed community tasks such as washing dishes, waiting tables, or peeling potatoes.
Princess Irene’s coming of age was more turbulent. In 1962, her sister married Juan Carlos de Borbón and left Greece. Two years later, his father, King Paul, died of stomach cancer. In April 1967, his brother, Constantine, the new king, supported the Colonels’ coup. Months later, the young monarch staged a failed countercoup and the royal family had to flee the country.
At only 25 years old, Irene returned to exile with everything she was wearing. This time he settled in Rome. “The princess used one of her passions, music, as an escape from the uprooted situation she had to live in,” says her biographer, Eva Celada. She continued training with the violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin and became a quasi-professional concert pianist, performing throughout Europe and the United States. He also began spending time in Madras, in southeastern India, with his mother. The widowed queen and her young daughter practiced meditation and yoga and studied Hindu philosophy. “When you have to save your soul, you don’t care much what others think,” Irene would say years later.
The death of her father and life in Madras led her to embrace veganism and animal causes. “When my father died, I had very strong spiritual experiences. It was a grace from God, despite his death, to have that comfort. We thought that if God can comfort us in such a serious moment, why couldn’t we give that comfort to the animals and allow them to live?” she explained to Celada.
Witness of the Transition
In 1975, after the restoration of the monarchy in Spain, Juan Carlos I invited Princess Irene and Queen Federica to live in the La Zarzuela palace. He gave them the Spanish passport and the surname “De Grecia”. Queen Sofia’s sister decided to stay a few more years in India and settled permanently in Madrid after the death of her mother in 1981. Federica of Greece died suddenly after undergoing eyelid surgery. That loss brought the sisters even closer. Since then, Irene lived in the right wing of Zarzuela, where she had a room and a small living room. He died there this Thursday. Queen Sofia canceled all her engagements and did not leave his side until the end.
Irene was an exceptional witness of the Transition. On February 23, he was swimming in the palace’s heated pool when he was informed about the coup d’état. He spent that night with the Spanish royal family in a room next to King Juan Carlos’s office. “The blow was such a strong experience that it somewhat attenuated the mourning for the recent death of my mother,” he admitted to his biographer.
He always had a close relationship with his brother-in-law, Juan Carlos I. “We are both like brothers. I can tell him what I want, he plays jokes with me… My father said that Juan Carlos had a very special sensitivity in difficult situations, a very strong intuition,” he revealed to Eva Celada. When she asked her if the King had changed since he came to the throne, she replied: “He is still a rebel.”
She was also a rebel, at least in the eyes of those of her class and position. He never missed getting married or having children. “There are people who are lucky enough to get married and others who are lucky enough not to get married. I consider being single as my luck and my destiny,” he said. “I don’t complain about not having had children. I am too revolutionary and I have become interested in many things.”
His most revolutionary work was the World in Harmony foundation, which he created to send surplus food from the European Union to Third World countries. One day in 1986, while he was in India doing his comparative analysis studies between Greeks and Hindus, he read in a newspaper that the German government was slaughtering cows because there was leftover milk. He traveled to Europe and discovered that four million animals were being killed on the continent. Then he began to ask if he could take them to India, where the cows could be used for work in the fields and their milk could be used.
With the help of King Juan Carlos, he convinced Chancellor Helmut Kohl to have Germany start donating livestock for the first World in Harmony project.
Irene of Greece and Denmark, granddaughter, daughter and sister of kings, made the maiden voyage of her foundation to Bangalore with a hundred cows. He flew for fourteen hours alongside the cattle. The unusual project was a success and attracted the attention of the Spanish and international press. In the following years he convinced winners from Cantabria, Asturias and other regions of Spain and Europe to donate copies for the World in Harmony projects. In the run-up to the Gulf War in 1990, Jordan’s western borders were closed due to war preparations. She arranged for hundreds of cows with their calves to be transported from India, whose milk fed many Jordanian children during the months that the conflict lasted.
In 2002, she suffered from breast cancer and underwent chemotherapy treatment for six months at the Ruber clinic in Madrid. “I wish all patients had the treatment I had,” he acknowledged years later in his biography. She was deeply religious and esoteric, but she also showed great interest in the occult, palmistry, UFOs and everything unknown. After overcoming the illness, he explained to his biographer: “That time [la del cáncer] He taught me that there is no need to be afraid. Things happen even if you are afraid, so it is better to be positive, have faith and accept that you can die. You have to be prepared. Knowing that this life is not everything and that there is another life beyond.”
