Caroline von Linsingen

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Marianne Caroline Dorothee von Linsingen , called Caroline (born November 27, 1768 in Hanover , † January 31, 1815 in Blansko , Moravia ) was the daughter of General Wilhelm von Linsingen from the Electorate of Hanover . She was said to have married the Duke of Clarence , who later became King William IV of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover.

Caroline's tombstone in Blansko

Life

The father Carolines Wilhelm von Linsingen was the companion of Sophie Charlotte von Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1761 on her marriage to Georg III. to London; in this way he maintained good relations with the London court.

Caroline suffered tetanus after 1792 and was believed to be dead. The young doctor Dr. Adolph Meineke vehemently took the view of her coffin that it was only seemingly dead , and thus saved her life. The two married shortly afterwards. Meineke did not gain a foothold economically, even after moving to Berlin. He then got a job at the ironworks of the old count Salm-Reifferscheidt in Blansko in Moravia, where Caroline died. The grave in Blansko's cemetery has been preserved. Meineke later became custodian of the Natural History Museum in Brno and died around 1832.

Caroline, the alleged wife of an English prince

Caroline and the Prince in the Park of Pyrmont (wood engraving by Arthur von Ramberg after a painting by his uncle Johann Heinrich Ramberg )

In 1880 under the title Caroline v. Linsingen, the wife of an English prince. Unprinted letters and treatises from the estate of Baron K. v. Reichenbach, edited and with an introduction provided by * * * at Duncker & Humblot an alleged correspondence between Caroline Linsingen and the Duke Wilhelm published without the alleged origins of the estate of working previously in Blansko Carl Reichenbach is verifiably documented. It describes how she met Prince William in 1791, who frequented the Linsingen house during a stay in Hanover, and who fell in love with Caroline.

On August 21, 1791, a Scottish clergyman is said to have secretly married William and Caroline in a forest chapel near Pyrmont . Possibly the Hattenser Church near Ottenstein is meant; this contradicts the manual of the historical sites of Germany , volume Lower Saxony and Bremen, which specifies the chapel in Welsede as the place of the wedding ceremony. However, this assumption is not further explained or even substantiated. At the wedding, only Caroline's younger brother Ernst von Linsingen and Lord Richard Dutton, the prince's confidante, were present as witnesses. Both pairs of parents of the young couple did not find out about the marriage until a year later and immediately proceeded to dissolve this marriage, to which both spouses consented under the pressure of social conditions. The royal Hanoverian officer Hans Georg Meyer is said to have been the child of this relationship.

In popular literature, the material has been taken up and developed several times (see literature ). 15 years after the appearance of Caroline's biography in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie with a description of the facts, Ferdinand Frensdorff reported doubts about the correctness of the depiction of the relationship between Caroline and Wilhelm in his biography of Wilhelm IV in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. Nowadays there is an almost unanimous consensus - especially in the English literature - that a marital relationship between the two never existed.

literature

• Bernhard von Poten :  Linsingen, Karoline von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1883, p. 723 f.
• Eduard Schmidt-Weißenfels : Karoline von Linsingen - From the life of a severely tested woman. According to their letters and notes . In: The Gazebo . Issue 47–49, 1888, pp. 796-802, 814-816, 834-836 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
• Emil Pirchan: The heart must be silent - the story of the secret marriage of Caroline von Linsingen to Wilhelm von England . Cross section publishing house, Graz 1947
• Anna Eunike Röhrig : Caroline von Linsingen. In: Elisabeth Kwan, Anna E. Röhrig, Peter Steckhan: Women of the Welfs . MatrixMedia, Göttingen 2011, p. 309 ff. ISBN 978-3-932313-39-4
• Uta von Kardorff : King Meyer . 1st edition. Rowohlt Verlag, 1986, ISBN 3-498-03449-9

Web links

Commons : Caroline von Linsingen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Linsingen . In: Universal Lexicon of the Present and Past . 4., reworked. and greatly increased edition, Volume 10:  Lack Farbe – Matelen , Eigenverlag, Altenburg 1860, p.  404 .
2. ^ Transliterated new edition, Verlag epubli, Berlin 2012 ( ISBN 978-3-7375-2362-2 ). 2nd Edition. (English) WS Sonnenschein & Allen, London 1881, archive.org
3. ↑ The Chapel in Hattensen. ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Website of the Fleckens Ottenstein, accessed on September 3, 2017. 
4. ↑ Kurt Brüning , Heinrich Schmidt (ed.): Handbook of the historical sites of Germany . Volume 2: Lower Saxony and Bremen (= Kröner's pocket edition , volume 272). 5th, improved edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-520-27205-9 , p. 319.
5. ^ Ferdinand Frensdorff:  Wilhelm IV., King of Great Britain and Ireland, King of Hanover . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 43, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, pp. 13-20.
6. ↑ See (selection): W. Gore Allen: King William IV. Cresset Press, London 1960, p. 50. Jeremy Black: The Hanoverians The History of a Dynasty . Hambledon and London, London / New York 2006, p. 183. Grace E. Thompson: The Patriot King. The Life of William IV . EP Dutton, New York 1933, p. 27.