Alice Memorial Darmstadt

Refurbishment works on Heidelberg Street require a cycling detour, so I passed by this peculiar memorial for Darmstadt’s much loved Archduchess and Princess of Britain Alice. She founded and sponsored the nursing services in Hessen, encouraging many local women by her personal engagement. She played the piano four-handed with Johannes Brahms, and died young from diphtheria, infected at her children’s sickbed, nursing them herself (not a thing of course for a Princess in those days). Her fame lives on in Darmstadt’s memory to the day. Here the inscription reads: “To the unforgotten Archduchess of Hessen and by the Rhine “.