Agnes to Salm-Salm

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Agnes Princess zu Salm-Salm (family oil painting)
Agnes Princess of Salm-Salm
Agnes Princess zu Salm-Salm at her wedding to her second husband Charles Heneage (1876)

Agnes Princess of Salm-Salm born when Agnes Elisabeth "Winona" Leclercq Joy (* 25. December 1840 in Swanton , Franklin County , Vermont , USA ; † 20th December 1912 in Karlsruhe , Baden ) began her career as a circus rider in Havana on Cuba , later she became an actress. She served as a nurse on campaigns in the United States, Mexico and France .

Agnes used several names: Winona is her Indian nickname given by her Indian ( Iroquois -?) Grandmother. As a young actress she called herself Agnes Leclerq after her father's middle name; her correct family name was Joy .

family

Agnes was the daughter of the American general William Leclerq Joy (1793-1866) and his second wife Julia Willard (1800 / 1810-1882), whom he had married on July 17, 1834 in their hometown of Montpelier ( Washington County , Vermont) after his first wife Pamela Lee Pemington, to whom he had been married since 1819, had died in 1832. Agnes' sister was Hannah Delilah Johnston.

At the age of 22, Agnes Joy married her first marriage on August 30, 1862 in St. Patrick's Church in Washington, DC, secretly and without parental blessing, twelve years older than Felix Prinz zu Salm-Salm (1828-1870), son of the prince Florentin zu Salm-Salm (see also Prince of Salm ). In her second marriage, she married on September 16, 1876 in Stuttgart the English nobleman Charles Heneage (* December 4, 1841, † September 16, 1901) from Lincolnshire . Heneage was a royal British diplomat at the court of Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden . The marriage with Agnes was divorced before 1899.

Life

Agnes Joy is said to have left her parents' home in the US state of Ohio at an early age and initially appeared at a circus in Havana ( Cuba ) as a rider, later as a dancer and actress .

In 1860 she moved to Washington, DC, to live with her sister Hannah Delilah Joy, who was married there to Captain Edmond Johnston. There she was "notorious" because of her rapid rides on her semi-wild Mustang across the city and past the White House . At one of the receptions President Abraham Lincoln gave for his officers , Agnes met the Prince of Salm-Salm. Lincoln and the Joy sisters had common ancestors.

After her marriage to Prince Felix (1862), she accompanied him as a nurse (although still without any training) and only woman on the battlefields of the American Civil War (1862-1865), in which her husband fought in the service of the Northern States , and in the imperial one Army of Maximilian I in Mexico (1866–1867). When her husband had been sentenced to seven years in prison on San Juan de Ulúa , Agnes, on his knees begging for mercy before Benito Juárez , obtained her husband's release in 1867. Shortly before his death, Maximilian I appointed her Lady of Honor of the San Carlos Order .

After returning to Germany, she initially trained as a nurse at the University of Bonn and in 1870, due to personal relationships with General Karl Friedrich von Steinmetz, she was allowed to return to the French battlefields in the Franco-German War as a nurse (with the salary of a captain ) accompany. Prince Felix fell in the battle of Gravelotte that same year and Agnes brought the body back to his Westphalian homeland, accompanied by an escort .

As a widow she later lived for some time in Switzerland - there she is said to have called herself Baroness or Baroness von Stein - and in Italy and collected money for army hospitals . After separating from her second husband, she went to New York (USA) in 1899 to raise money for hospitals there too. She spent her twilight years in her house in Karlsruhe.

Grave site of Princess Agnes zu Salm-Salm in the old cemetery in Bonn

After her cremation , she was buried on March 20, 1913, three months after her death, under the name Princess Agnes zu Salm-Salm in the old cemetery in Bonn .

Agnes Princess zu Salm-Salm had the reputation of a colorful personality all her life. She was considered a very intelligent and self-confident, extremely eccentric woman who lived her own life without bothering about conventions. She had nothing in mind with the women's movement that was just emerging at her time and did not deal with the theory of feminism , but took her right to freedom and personal development, often to the horror of her male companions, regardless of common opinions or role clichés. So wrote the adjutant of General von Steinmetz, Premier Lieutenant Paul von Collas , in his private diary during the Franco-Prussian War:

“ Jouy, September 12th, 1870. - Even a lady is not missing, it is Princess Salm, who has dedicated herself to voluntary nursing; the lady is more embarrassed than she is useful; somewhat emancipated. "

reception

  • In the 1880s, the writer Karl May took up the conflict between Emperor Maximilian and Benito Juárez in his colportage novel Waldröschen . As Princess Salm , Agnes zu Salm-Salm appears in a supporting role; her first husband Felix also appears briefly.
  • The writer Juliana von Stockhausen processed the story of Agnes zu Salm-Salm in her novel Wilder Lorbeer , published in 1964 .

medal

Fonts

  • Ten Years of My Life - 1862–1872 , 3 volumes, Stuttgart 1875 (English edition: Ten Years of My Life , Ruchard Bentley & Sons, London 1876; US edition: Ten Years of My Life , R. Worthington, New York 1877 )

literature

  • David Coffey: Soldier Princess. The Life & Legend of Agnes Salm-Salm in North America, 1861-1867 . USA 1960, ISBN 1-58544-168-6 ( online )
  • Robert N. White: The Prince and The Yankee. The Tale of a Country Girl Who Became a Princess. Her Adventures in the American Civil War, the Mexican Uprising and the Franco-Prussian War IB Tauris & Company, London et al. 2003, ISBN 1-86064-897-5 .
  • Duco van Krugten:  Salm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , pp. 381-383 ( digitized version ).
  • Petra Weiß: Agnes zu Salm-Salm. An American princess in Koblenz . Fölbach, Koblenz 2012. ISBN 978-3-934795-48-8

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gudrun Wedel: Autobiographies of women. A lexicon . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20585-0 , p. 726 ( online )
  2. ^ Felix zu Salm-Salm: Queretaro . P. 217 f.
  3. ↑ Gothaischer Genealogischer Hofkalender . 114th year, Justus Perthes, Gotha 1877, p. 161 ( Google Books )
  4. ↑ Ordensjournal Edition 8 / May 2007 The list of entrusted to the Cross of Merit for Women and Virgins (PDF; 861 kB) , p. 28.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Salm-Salm, Agnes too
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Salm-Salm, Agnes Princess too; Joy, Agnes Elisabeth Leclerq; Leclerq, Agnes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American circus rider, actress, nurse
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Swanton , Franklin County , Vermont
DATE OF DEATH December 20, 1912
Place of death Karlsruhe , Baden