Caroline Medon

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Caroline Medon , actually Caroline Wilhelmine Richter , (born January 3, 1802 , died June 6, 1882 ) was a German opera singer and stage actress . She became known as Arthur Schopenhauer's lover .

Life

Caroline Richter came to Berlin around 1819 as a choir player at the Berlin Opera . There she probably met Arthur Schopenhauer in the winter of 1820 or in the spring of 1821, who was lecturing in Berlin. The ebb and flow of relationship between the two lasted about ten years. The "eternal bachelor" Schopenhauer, however, mistrusted her possible motives, which, together with worries about her health and his jealousy of other lovers of the singer, was the reason why an engagement or marriage never took place.

Caroline Richter took the name of secret secretary Louis Medon around 1820, who was the alleged father of their first child Johann Wilhelm Adolf Medon, who however died early. She later claimed to be Medon's widow. Her second son, who later became the royal dancer Carl Gustav Medon (1823-1905), was vehemently rejected by Schopenhauer because he was born on March 27, 1823, ten months after Schopenhauer's departure to Italy, which he did not return until 1825 Berlin returned. Medon's third pregnancy in 1826, for which she even ended her engagement at the Berlin Opera, led to a miscarriage. When Schopenhauer fled Berlin from cholera in 1831 , she refused to leave behind her almost nine-year-old son Carl for his sake; this led to the ultimate break in the relationship, despite her letters to him in the years that followed, in which she emphasized that she was healthy. She finally came back on stage, now as a singer at the Königsstädtisches Theater .

In 1858 she again contacted Schopenhauer in writing, who therefore considered her in his will in February 1859. He bequeathed her the sum of 5000 Prussian thalers, a considerable part of his fortune, on the condition that his inheritance should expressly not go to Carl or any other heir of Medon.

She is also considered to be the originator of a hand-embroidered “rose carpet”, which Schopenhauer's estate administrators thought for a long time to be a gift from Schopenhauer's sister.

The late widow Caroline Medon was buried on June 9, 1882 in the Evangelical Sophien-Friedhof II in Berlin.

literature

  • Robert Gruber: Schopenhauer's lover in Berlin (Caroline Richter-Medon (around 1830)) in Berlin. Documentary. Vienna, 1934.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 391.
  2. ↑ Gruber, Robert: Schopenhauers Geliebte in Berlin , Vienna, 1934, letters and documents p. 43ff.
  3. ↑ Gruber, Robert: Schopenhauers Geliebte in Berlin , Vienna, 1934, letters and documents p. 43ff. (Plate 16): A "large hearse" drawn by two horses was used for the funeral and two mourning wagons were used for the funeral itself.
personal data
SURNAME Medon, Caroline
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Richter, Caroline Wilhelmine (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera singer and stage actress
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1802
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1882