Lady in waiting

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"Admonition of the ladies-in-waiting", Gu Kaizhi around 370

The dignity of a lady-in-waiting , also called lady of honor or lady of a palace , was given to noble ladies belonging to a court on the basis of their status or the status of their husbands.

Court ladies performed honorary services and acted as partners . Such court offices were only hoffähigen dressed nobleman. In contrast to the maid , for example , they were not court officials in Europe. The knight - and later the chamberlain - can be seen as the male equivalent of the lady-in-waiting .

Both levels were presumably already with the first strong princely and royal courts in appearance. The first written records of this social class are over 3000 years old, for example in Egypt (see Nefertiti ) or in Chinese and the Persian Empire .

Artistically gifted personalities have always been among the people at the royal courts . The work of the minstrels is well documented , but some works by court ladies are also part of world literature . A Far Eastern example of this is the classic Japanese novel Genji Monogatari (the story of [Prince] Genji), written by Murasaki Shikibu , the Empress's lady-in-waiting around the year 1000.

Examples of well-known court ladies

literature

  • Katrin Keller : Court ladies. Office bearers in the Viennese court of the 17th century. Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2005, ISBN 3-205-77418-3 ( online ).
  • Susan Richter : Lady-in-waiting - a job for women? Fields of activity of noble ladies using the example of the Electoral Palatinate court in the 18th century. In: Journal for History on the Upper Rhine. NF 114 (2005), pp. 441-480.

Web links

Commons : Court ladies  - collection of images, videos and audio files