During a meeting last week with Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, Putin gave the nod to the re-burial of the last Tsar's mother in the Romanov crypt at the Peter and Paul Fortress. No date for the funeral has yet been set, though it will most likely take place in September, 2002.

Maria Fyodorovna was born in 1847 as Maria Sofia Frederick Dagmara, daughter of the Danish king, Christian IX. In 1866, she married Tsarevich Alexander of Russia (the future Tsar Alexander III), converted to the Orthodox faith and changed her name to Maria Fyodorovna Romanova. Together they had six children, among them Nicholas.

After her son abdicated the throne in 1917, she escaped from St. Petersburg with her daughter to the Crimea, and in 1919 from there they escaped Russia for England and later Copenhagen. She was buried in Copenhagen's Roskilde Cathedral in 1928.

The decision to rebury her remains was initiated by Duke Nikolai Romanov, great grandson of Tsar Nicholas I, who now heads the Romanov Dynasty Association in Switzerland. He wrote to both Putin and Yakovlev and met Denmark's Queen Margrethe II.

News source: The St. Petersburg Times
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