Anna Åkerhielm

Anna Åkerhielm (also Anna Åkerhjelm , nee Anna Agriconia; born March 18, 1642 in Nyköping ; died February 11, 1698 in Stade ) was a Swedish lady-in-waiting , traveler and diary writer .

Life

Anna Åkerhielm was born as the daughter of the teacher and priest Magnus Jonae Agriconius (1604–1655) and Sofia Kempe (1604–1658) under the name Anna Agriconia . The marriage had at least four children, and the mother had brought three children into the family from a first marriage. Anna - also known as Anna Månsdotter ("Anna, Magnus's daughter") because of her father's name - received her first training under her father's direction. At the age of 16 she became an orphan, but the three younger siblings supported the education of their older brother Samuel Månsson Agriconius (1639–1702), who studied at Uppsala University . In return, Samuel promoted Anna's talents, who, thanks to his efforts, developed into an excellent Latinist and on this basis acquired other modern languages ​​herself.

In 1671 Samuel joined the Swedish Chancellor Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie as secretary . He got his sister Anna the position of maid of honor for the wife of the Chancellor, Marie Euphrosine . In 1682 she became the chambermaid of Catharina Charlotta De la Gardie , the daughter of Marie Euphrosine, who in that year married the later Venetian generalissimo and war hero Otto Wilhelm Graf von Königsmarck . An intimate relationship developed between the women and Anna stayed by Catharina Charlotta's side until her death in 1697.

In 1684 von Königsmarck entered the service of the Republic of Venice as a representative of the Holy League as part of the Great Turkish War . His wife and Anna Agriconia accompanied him along with much of his house-state. The journey led via Venice to the Morea and to Athens . From 1686 Anna kept a diary while traveling and wrote letters to her brother Samuel about the war, the ship journeys and the circumstances under which they lived. Your records are among the oldest evidence of modern war reporting. The group also found time to study the ancient legacies of Greece . In 1687 she was an eyewitness to the destruction of the Parthenon when the Venetian fire hit the Ottoman powder magazine in the temple . In a letter dated October 18 of that year, a few days after the event, she reported to her brother and expressed her regret that this "Temple of Minerva", which had existed for 3000 years, could never be rebuilt. Her brother later bequeathed an Arabic manuscript she found in the ruins to the University Library of Uppsala.

Otto Wilhelm Graf von Königsmarck died of the plague in Greece in 1688 and Anna Agriconia returned to Germany with Catharina Charlotta, where they settled on the von Königsmarck estate in Stade . They returned to Sweden again in 1691. Here Anna Agriconia was the formation of which was met with high appreciation due to their own achievements ennobled - one towards women rarely awarded honor - and carried from now on, as you already ennobled in 1679 brother the name Åkerhielm. Her diary entries end in 1691. She returned to Stade, where Catharina Charlotta died in 1697. The following year Anna Åkerhielm also died. Excerpts from her diary and her letters, which were among the first Swedish travel reports, were printed as early as 1759.

Fonts

• Letters and diary excerpts partly printed in Carl Christoffer Gjörwell: Det Swenska Biblioteket. Volume 3. Carl Gottlieb Ulf, Stockholm 1759, pp. 25-66 ( digitized version ).

literature

• Thomas Watts : Åkerhjelm, Anna Månsdotter Agriconia. In: Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Volume 1, Part 1. Longmann, Brown et al., London 1842, p. 589.
• Åkerhjelm, Anna. In: Wilhelmina Stålberg , Per Gustaf Berg : Anteckningar om svenska qvinnor. Berg, Stockholm 1864-1866, pp. 412-413 ( digitized ).
• Åkerhjelm, Anna Månsdotter. In: Frithiof Heurlin, Viktor Millqvist, Olof Rubenson (eds.): Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon . 2nd Edition. Volume 2. Albert Bonniers Förlag, Stockholm 1906, p. 771 ( digitized version ).
• Silvia Müller: Swedish private prose 1650–1710. Language and text patterns of women and men in comparison. Francke, Tübingen / Basel 2005, pp. 216–221.

Web links

• Anna Agriconia in Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon (English; accessed on July 5, 2020)
• Anna Agriconia Åkerhielm in The History of Nordic Women's Literature (accessed July 5, 2020)