Amalie of Saxony (1794–1870)
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Amalie von Sachsen (born August 10, 1794 in Dresden , † September 18, 1870 in Pillnitz ), full name Maria Amalia Friederike Augusta Karolina Ludovica Josepha Aloysia Anna Nepomucena Philippina Vincentia Franziska de Paula Franziska de Chantal , was a princess of Saxony. She worked under the pseudonym A. Serena as a composer of operas and cantatas and was a student of Carl Maria von Weber . Under the pseudonym Amalie Heiter she also wrote numerous plays and “mastered [in the 1830s and 1840s] the comedy repertoire of her time”.
Life
childhood
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Princess Amalie of Saxony was born in Dresden as the eldest daughter of Prince Maximilian of Saxony and Princess Caroline of Bourbon-Parma . Her uncle was at the time when Friedrich August III. Elector of Saxony and became the first Saxon king in 1806 as Friedrich August I. Her brothers Friedrich August and Johann became kings of Saxony in 1836 and 1854, respectively. Amalie and her six siblings were the first children to be vaccinated against smallpox in Dresden . A pavilion at the Pillnitz Castle pond still reminds of the successful vaccination.
Amalie's mother died in 1804, so that the ten-year-old was raised by her aunt Maria Theresia of Saxony under the strictest court etiquette. In the course of the Napoleonic occupation , the royal family was also threatened. Amalie therefore lived in exile in Prague with her uncle Anton and her aunt from 1813 . Only when King Friedrich August I returned to Saxony in 1815 did Princess Amalie return to Dresden.
The composer A. Serena
Amalie von Sachsen received a very careful upbringing. She took music lessons from Kapellmeister Joseph Schuster and began composing at an early age. At the age of 16 she wrote her first opera with an Italian libretto, Una Donna , and from 1813 new compositions of operas, cantatas and smaller vocal pieces followed regularly. The premiere of Una Donna took place in 1816 with the participation of musicians from the Dresden court orchestra in the small theater on Brühl's terrace in front of members of the royal family. Amalie had learned to play the piano and was introduced to music theory by Franz Anton Schubert . From 1817 she completed a vocal training with the Dresden singers Vincenzo Rastrelli and Johann Aloys Miksch . In the years 1824 and 1825, Amalie also received composition lessons from Carl Maria von Weber.
Amalie von Sachsen composed a total of twelve operas, for which she also wrote the Italian libretti and some of which were published under the pseudonym A. Serena . She also composed chamber music and church music, among which a stabat mater in particular was praised by experts. With a few exceptions, their works were not played publicly, but were performed in private circles of the royal family. All of the princess's operas were performed by the Dresden court orchestra, which was then the most prestigious orchestra in Europe. The family's summer residence at Pillnitz Castle was often used as a concert venue.
The author Amalie Heiter
In addition to her love of music, Amalie von Sachsen was also active in literature. She already wrote several pieces at a young age. In 1817 her first drama Die Abentheurer von Thornburg premiered anonymously at the Hoftheater in Dresden and was panned by critics . King Friedrich August I also saw the work as a writer as a breach of court etiquette, so that no further plays by Amalie were performed in public until his death. Like her compositions, many dramatic works were performed in private performances in front of the royal family in the 1820s, such as The Coronation Day (1823) or Mesru, King of Bactriana (1824 or 1826), a play based on one of the fairy tales from 1001 Nights . At that time the pieces were already published under their pseudonyms A. Heiter and Amalie Heiter .
After the death of Friedrich August I in 1827, Mesru, King of Bactriana, became the first play by Amalie of Saxony to be performed publicly at the court theater. In 1833 she anonymously sent her comedy Lie and Truth to the Berlin Hoftheater, where it was successfully performed and made the author known overnight as a comedy writer. Around 30 pieces were written between 1834 and 1845, and they were successfully performed throughout Germany. Many of her works became repertoire pieces that could still be seen on German stages after the author's death. Many of her comedies have also been translated into French, Hungarian, Russian and Italian, and Anna Jameson has translated six comedies by Amalie von Sachsens into English under the collective title Pictures of the Social Life of Germany, as represented in the dramas of the Princess Amelia of Saxony . The book was published in two volumes in London in 1840.
Old age and death
Despite her success as a writer, Amalie von Sachsen lived extremely modestly. She often donated the income from her pieces to charity, so from 1836 many of her comedies were published in the series Original Contributions to the German Schaubühne , the proceeds of which went to the women's association in Dresden. She donated 80,000 thalers to build the first Semper Opera House .
Princess Amalie remained unmarried throughout her life. She lived a secluded life and worked on her musical and literary works. She liked to travel and stayed temporarily in Italy (including 1819, 1829), Spain (1825) and Vienna. Contacts to important personalities of her time were of little importance to her, but she was in friendly contact with Karl Gottfried Theodor Winkler, who was literary as Theodor Hell and who edited her plays.
In 1851, Princess Amalie fell ill with cataracts , and an operation in 1853 resulted in blindness. After another operation two years later, one eye was restored.
Amalie von Sachsen died in Pillnitz near Dresden in 1870. She was buried as a member of the royal family in the crypt of the Catholic Court Church. Her sarcophagus is in the second right-hand row of the Great Crypt .
meaning
While Amalie von Sachsen was one of the most popular comedy writers in Germany, especially in the 30s and 40s of the 19th century, her plays were rated as shallow or outdated after her death. The style of her works was considered to be "time-bound" and was initially based on late Romantic works, but without being able to approach the pieces of Romanticism themselves. Performances of her play Der Oheim in 1871 and 1887 at the Dresden Court Theater were unsuccessful, so that Karl Goedeke assumed that “Amalie Heiter's time was gone”.
In honor of Amalie von Sachsen is the orchid genus Amalia Rchb. been named.
ancestors
| Pedigree of Amalie von Sachsen | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great-great-grandparents |
King |
Emperor |
Elector |
Emperor |
King |
King |
Duke |
Emperor |
| Great grandparents |
King August III. (1696–1763) |
Emperor Charles VII (1697–1745) |
Duke Philip of Parma (1720–1765) |
Emperor Franz I Stephan (1708–1765) |
||||
| Grandparents |
Elector Friedrich Christian of Saxony (1722–1763) |
Duke Ferdinand von Bourbon (1751–1802) |
||||||
| parents |
Maximilian von Sachsen (1759–1838) |
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| Amalie of Saxony | ||||||||
Works
Dramas
- The adventurers of Thornburg (1817)
- Mesru, King of Bactriana (1828)
- Mesru, King of Bactriana (modified, abridged version 1829)
- Coronation Day (1829)
-
Original contributions to the German Schaubühne
- Volume I (1836) : contains the plays Lies and Truth , The Bride from the Residence and The Uncle
- Volume II (1837) : The princely bride , the farmer , the engagement ring
- Volume III (1838) : The pupil , cousin Heinrich , the undecided
- Volume IV (1839) : The Majoratserbe , The Foster Father , The Fraulein vom Lande
- Volume V (1841) : The Unread One , The Stepdaughter , Duty and Love
- Volume VI (1842) : Capitain Firnewald , The homecoming of the son , consequences of garden lighting
- New series, volume 1 (1841): The signet ring , The old man , Regine
Amalie von Sachsen also translated numerous works by Eugène Scribe into German.
Compositions with libretti
The dates given refer to the date of the premiere.
- On our good father's day (romance, unrecorded, 1814)
- Una Donna (1816) Libretto: Maximilian von Sachsen
- Le Nozze funeste (1816) Libretto: Maximilian von Sachsen
- Le tre cinture (1817) Libretto: Maximilian von Sachsen
- Il Prigioniero (around 1820)
- L 'Americana (around 1820)
- Elvira (1821)
- Elisa ed Ernesto (1823)
- La Fedeltà alla prova (1826)
- Vecchiezza e gioventù ( Age and Youth ; 1828)
- Il Figlio pentito (1831)
- Il Marchesino (1833)
- The Victory Flag (Operetta, 1834) - Libretto Pauline v. Brochowska, pseudonym Theophania
- La Casa disabitata (1835)
Libretti
- Prince Johann - Hantzens Science (1814)
- Prince Johann - Our Fritz (1815)
- Prince Johann - The two volunteer chairs (1815)
- Prince Johann - The Hussar (1815)
- Prince Johann - The Happy Day (1815)
- By Amalie and Anton on May 5th. Songs ( Anton refers to her brother Johann here; 1815)
- E. Baron von Miltitz - The Condottiere (1836)
Compositions
- The cannon shot (1828) - libretto by Prince Johann
- Douze Variations pour le Piano Forte. Composé et dedié a SAR le Prince Antoine de Saxe. par A.
- String quartet
literature
- Robert Waldmüller (Hrsg.): Dramatic works of Princess Amalie, Duchess of Saxony. 6 volumes. Tauchnitz, Leipzig 1873–1874.
- K. Goedeke: Amalie, Marie Fr. Aug. In: General German Biography (ADB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 385 f.
- Wilhelm Haan : Amalie, Duchess of Saxony . In: Saxon Writer's Lexicon . Robert Schaefer's Verlag, Leipzig 1875, pp. XI – XII.
- Duchess Amalia of Saxony. In: Dr. J. Petzoldt (Ed.): New indicator for bibliography and library studies. Issue January, 1871, pp. 1–5.
- Moritz Fürstenau: The musical occupations of Princess Amalie, Duchess of Saxony. Zahn, Dresden 1874.
- Robert Waldmüller (= Charles Edouard Duboc): From the memoirs of a princess' daughter. Reinhold, Dresden 1883.
- Otto Schmid: Princely composers from the Saxon royal house. Beyer, Langensalza 1910.
- Christian Ponader: Princess Amalie of Saxony. A contribution to the history of bourgeois drama. Dissertation Würzburg 1922.
- Friedrich Kummer (Ed.): Dresden and its theater world. Heimatwerk Sachsen, Dresden 1938.
- Walter Kunze: Amalie Marie Friederike Auguste. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 239 ( digitized version ).
- Susanne Kord: A look behind the scenes. German-speaking playwrights in the 18th and 19th centuries. Metzler, Stuttgart 1992, pp. 243f.
- Katharina Hofmann: A Saxon princess in Weber's Dresden environment. Weber and the Dresden royal family. In: Weberiana. Volume 10, 2000, pp. 65-77.
- Petra Andrejewski: The good tone. Amalie of Saxony. Edition Serena, Moritzburg, 2020.
Web links
- Literature by and about Amalie von Sachsen in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Amalie von Sachsen in the German Digital Library
Individual evidence
- ^ Karl Goedeke: Outline of the history of German poetry from the sources. Ehlermann, Dresden 1966, p. 211.
- ↑ Amalie's biography on Frauenwiki-dresden.de.
- ↑ Kord states 1816 as the beginning of some composition lessons with von Weber.
- ^ New gazette for bibliography and library studies. P. 2.
- ↑ The flag of victory was also performed in the Dresden court theater.
- ↑ Your diary entries mention encounters with, among others, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Napoleon I and Louis-Philippe I. See Kord, p. 243.
- ^ Kord, p. 243.
- ↑ NDB, p. 239
- ^ Karl Goedeke: Outline of the history of German poetry from the sources. Ehlermann, Dresden 1966, p. 212.
- ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Amalie of Saxony |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Heiter, Amalie (pseudonym); Serena, A. (pseudonym); Maria Amalia Friederike Augusta Karolina Ludovica Josepha Aloysia Anna Nepomucena Philippina Vincentia Franziska de Paula Franziska de Chantal of Saxony |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German writer, composer and librettist and member of the Saxon royal family |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 10, 1794 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dresden |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 18, 1870 |
| Place of death | Pillnitz |