Charles Joseph de Ligne

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Charles Joseph Prince von Ligne (1735–1814), 7th prince since 1766; Officer, diplomat, writer

Prince Charles Joseph de Ligne , also Charles-Joseph de Ligne (born May 23, 1735 in Brussels , † December 13, 1814 in Vienna ) was an officer and diplomat in the Austrian service and a writer . In Vienna he was also known as the Pink Prince .

Life

Charles Joseph Prince von Ligne, Austrian Field Marshal General

Charles Joseph de Ligne came from the old southern Dutch noble family Ligne from Hainaut , who traditionally served the Holy Roman Empire . His father, Claude Lamoral II, 6th Prince of Ligne, was Imperial Privy Councilor , Field Marshal and Councilor of State ; his mother Elisabeth was born in Salm-Salm . At the age of four he lost his mother and was raised by his father, an uncle and various private tutors. He came into contact with the imperial court early on, traveled to Vienna at the age of 16 and was appointed chamberlain by Maria Theresa . After studying classical philology , history and military science , he joined his father's regiment in 1752 , the "Regiment de Ligne Infanterie". In 1755 he married Françoise Marie Xavière von Liechtenstein , a palace lady .

In 1757 and 1758 he took an active part in the Seven Years' War against Prussia and made it to the rank of colonel ; in the War of the Bavarian Succession he was promoted to field marshal lieutenant. He later published widely acclaimed books about his war experiences. He also later processed personal encounters with the Enlightenmentists Voltaire and Rousseau into books that were rich in spirit and knowledge.

In 1766, after the death of his father, he became the 7th prince of the House of Ligne.

In September 1770 he took part in a meeting between Emperor Joseph II and King Friedrich II of Prussia, at which he was introduced to Friedrich by Emperor Joseph. From this meeting a long lasting affection and appreciation developed for the two, who cultivated the same witty spirit. De Ligne jotted down gorgeous memories of the table conversations. He and his son visited the king in Potsdam in 1780 while passing through to Russia , where he was sent again two years later as a close confidante and advisor to Joseph II on a diplomatic mission to the Tsar's court in St. Petersburg . He won the trust of Catherine II and accompanied her on trips. In 1788 and 1789 he fought for Russia and Austria in the Russo-Turkish War .

Belœil Castle , Hainaut

In peacetime, de Ligne lived almost exclusively in Brussels and on the family seat of Belœil Castle in Hainaut . Since the 17th century, the de Ligne family owned barony Fagnolle was on 20 July 1770 by the friend of the prince Emperor Joseph II. The kingdom County Fagnolles levied. Because of this imperial direct possession, the prince immediately applied for his admission to the seat and vote in the Lower Rhine-Westphalian Reichskreis of the Reichstag , which, however, was only approved with a document dated October 31, 1786 due to the slowness of political decision-making. The prince was assigned the rank between the last (1715) included counties Kerpen and Lommersum and the imperial city of Cologne. With an imperial decree of March 21, 1789, the admission of the prince to the Reichstag was ordered , but the necessary resolution of the three colleges of the Reichstag on this was suspended because of the death of Emperor Joseph II and the brief reign of Emperor Leopold II. The two imperial elections and also the outbreak of the French Revolution prevented the decree from being implemented at short notice; In the list of members from 1792 the Prince de Ligne is then included as Count of Fagnolles . In the same year France occupied the southern Netherlands.

After the French Revolution had reached Belgium and Austria suffered a defeat against the rebellious southern Netherlands , to which Belgium was largely part at the time, de Ligne lost most of his possessions and in 1794 went to Vienna forever. He retired into private life and developed an extensive writing activity. Under Napoléon Bonaparte , his work was again published by Gaumont in Paris. Napoleon also returned the goods confiscated by the revolutionary troops in Belgium to the family, whereupon Prince Charles Joseph gave them to his son Prince Ludwig to manage.

The immediately imperial county Fagnolles was withdrawn from the House of Ligne, dissolved and the area was added to the Ardennes department . However, the Prince of Ligne was compensated in the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of February 25, 1803 with the also imperial direct monastery Edelstetten near Günzburg. For this he even received a virile vote in the Imperial Councilor , the penultimate one, and thus received the 126th rank (before the Duke of Looz ). Only two years before the dissolution of the Old Empire and its institutions, the prince, who urgently needed money for his life in exile in Vienna, sold the county of Edelstetten, including his hard-won virile vote in the Reichstag on May 22, 1804 to Prince Esterházy von Galantha, who until then had only been an imperial titular prince (without imperial estates ), but remained as a personal member - without a virile vote - in the imperial counts college. His family had thus lost the coveted status of hereditary imperial princes again, but this was overtaken by the historical events because of the dissolution of the Old Kingdom two years later.

Grave in the Kahlenberger Friedhof in Vienna

In 1808 he was appointed field marshal . He died in 1814 during the Congress of Vienna and was buried in the Josefsdorf forest cemetery on Kahlenberg , one of his favorite places in Vienna.

meaning

De Ligne, one of the last typical representatives of the so-called Ancien Régime , was not only regarded as an excellent military expert and diplomat, but above all as a brilliant and enlightened thinker, essayist , biographer and letter writer. He corresponded with the intellectual greats of his time such as Voltaire and Rousseau, Goethe and Wieland . He was friends with Madame de Staël and together with her brought out excerpts from his works. He was very popular in the highest circles of his time because of his intelligence, his elegant and clever demeanor and wit.

The subjects of his literary work were extremely broad and ranged from military treatises and biographies , for example about Prince Eugene , to essays , aphorisms and a work on garden art . In the salons of Vienna, the charming, urbane prince was popular as a witty chatterbox and intelligent mocker.

De Ligne's literary work, written exclusively in French , comprises around forty volumes and was not without influence on Belgian literature. In addition to translations into English, Albert von Pappenheim arranged for a translation of the military writings into German in 1815, and various collections of letters and excerpts from the memory books also appeared in German. Most recently, in 1995, Ludwig Trauschein obtained the reprint of a de Ligneschen work on European garden art from the Dessau- Wörlitz Cultural Foundation , in particular the Belœil garden .

De Ligne was a member of the Brussels Masonic Lodge L'Heureuse Rencontre . In 1785, the officers' lodge Ligne Equitable of the Regiment de Ligne was founded, of which he was chairman .

His grandson Eugène de Ligne became an important Belgian politician , he was offered the Belgian royal crown during the revolution of 1830, but he turned it down.

Quotes

Charles Joseph Prince von Ligne while writing

He wrote the bon mot "Le congrès danse beaucoup, mais il ne marche pas" (German: The congress dances a lot, but it does not advance ), with which he criticized the sluggishness of the negotiations at the Vienna Congress and that in a shortened form “ The Congress Dances ” became famous not least because of the films with this title.

Works (selection)

  • Mélanges militaires, littéraires et sentimentaires , 34 vols., Paris 1795-1811
  • Vie du prince Eugène de Savoie , Paris 1809
  • Man of letters and field marshal. Letters and memories of Prince Charles Joseph de Ligne , Ed. Günther Elbin, Stuttgart 1979
  • The garden at Beloeil along with a critical overview of most of Europe's gardens . Translated from the French by Prince de Ligne and accompanied by a few comments and a preface by WG Becker. Reprint of the Dresden 1799 edition, with follow-up comments and a register by Ludwig Trauoppel, Wörlitz 1995
  • Mon Journal de la guerre de Sept Ans. Edited by Jeroom Vercruysse and Bruno Colson. Editions Honoré Champion, Paris 2008 (= L'Âge des Lumières 44). ISBN 978-2-7453-1711-7
  • Fritz Schalk , ed., Foreword and Translator: The French Moralists. Vol. 2: Galiani , Prince of Ligne, Joubert . Dieterich Collection, 45. 4. reworked. Edition Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung , Wiesbaden o. J. & Leipzig 1962

literature

sorted alphabetically by author

Web links

Commons : Charles-Joseph de Ligne  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.bezirksmuseum.at/default/index.php?id=329
  2. ↑ Grave monument in Josefsdorfer Waldfriedhof renovated town hall correspondence of October 30, 2003 (accessed on June 1, 2010)
  3. ↑ Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurer Lexikon . 5th edition 2006, Herbig Verlag, ISBN 978-3-7766-2478-6 , p. 517
  4. ↑ http://www.bon-a-tirer.com/volume10/pd.html
  5. ↑ on the various editions and overviews since 1938 see French Moralists , Lit. - NOT in the later dtv edition!
personal data
SURNAME Ligne, Charles Joseph de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ligne, Charles-Joseph de (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Officer and diplomat in the Austrian service and writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1735
PLACE OF BIRTH Brussels
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1814
Place of death Vienna