Maria Golitzyna

Princess Maria Mikhailovna Golitzyna (1834-1910) was a Russian noble, courtier and philanthropist. She served as Ober-Hofmeisterin (Mistress of the Robes) to empress Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse) from 1894 until 1910.

She was the daughter of general lieutenant Michail Vasiljevitj Pashkov and Maria Baranova Trofimovna. In 1857, she married prince Vladimir Dmitrievich Golitsyn (1815-1888). She had one child, Maria Vladimirovna Golitsyna (1860-1933), who at one point served as maid of honour.

Golitzyna was made a dame of the Order of Saint Catherine in 1879. She served as deputy chair of the prestigious Patriotic Society (Russia) in 1896-1910. Maria Golitzyna is described by contemporaries as an imposing character and as an extreme reactionary conservative, opponent to all forms of liberal reforms of the autocratic monarchy. In 1894 she was appointed to the post of senior lady-in-waiting to the new empress with the responsibility of all the female employees of the empress' court, which had been selected by the dowager empress Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark). According to general A. A. Mosolov, no one was better suited to supervise the ladies-in-waiting: "it would be hard to find a lady better suited than the princess Golitsyna to personify the high rank of mistress of the robes... She had a well developed feeling for anything not belonging to etiquette." She carried all the children of the last empress to their baptism.

She was succeeded in her court office by Elizaveta Alekseevna Narishkina (1838-1928).