Elisa Radziwiłł
Princess Elisa Radziwill ( Elisa Friederike Luise Martha * 28. October 1803 in Berlin ; † 27. September 1834 in Bad Freienwalde (Oder) ) went down in history as the first love of Emperor Wilhelm I one.
Life
Elisa Radziwiłł was the fifth of eight children of Prince Anton Radziwiłł and his wife Luise Friederike of Prussia . She grew up in Palais Radziwiłł on Wilhelmstrasse and received a good education. She was considered musically and artistically gifted. Elisa and Prince Wilhelm, who was six years her senior, had known each other since childhood, because Elisa’s parents often visited the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin , the residence of the royal couple Friedrich Wilhelm III. and Luise . The two danced together at the court ball in 1815 - Wilhelm was 18 and Elisa 12 - and fell in love. On January 27, 1821, they performed together at the oriental festival Lalla Rûkh (music: Gaspare Spontini ) in the Berlin City Palace , and Elisa, who took on the role of a peri , aroused general admiration. She was described as the most beautiful lady at the Prussian court . Her nickname "Ewig" comes from Wilhelm's sister Alexandrine . It goes back to a groin poem that her cousin Friederike wrote: “How is love today, only life for me - Eternal love I have such grace”. The first letters of the individual words result in the first names of the two newly in love.
The dramatic story of the planned marriage between Elisa Radziwiłł and Prince Wilhelm was a topic of conversation across Europe from 1820 to 1826. Wilhelm was second in line to the Prussian throne after his brother Friedrich Wilhelm and was therefore bound to the principle of equality in the event of a marriage . Elisa Radziwiłł's parents and Friedrich Wilhelm III. ordered numerous reports, including one from Friedrich Carl von Savigny , which should prove the equality of the Radziwiłł family with various ruling houses. Counter-reports argued that the Radziwiłłs, who were part of the leading aristocracy in Poland and owned large estates, had been German imperial princes since 1515 (they had received the title from Emperor Maximilian I ), but had never had the German imperial status and consequently neither had were represented in the Reichsfürstenrat , nor belonged to the Reichstag . Therefore, they are in Germany not to nobility to count, but as a simple landsässige treat princes.
Since King Friedrich Wilhelm III. was initially fond of the marriage plans, he turned to the childless Tsar Alexander I in 1824 with the request to adopt Elisa Radziwiłł , but the Russian ruler refused for domestic political reasons. The second adoption plan by Elisa Radziwiłł's uncle, Prince August of Prussia , also failed because the commission responsible found that adoption “does not change the blood”. According to other sources, the planned marriage had other powerful enemies: the Mecklenburg relatives of the late Queen Luise , who had great influence at the Berlin and Petersburg courts and who were fundamentally critical of a connection between a Prussian prince and a princess of Polish descent.
Finally, on June 22nd, 1826, the king felt compelled to demand that Prince Wilhelm renounce the marriage. Wilhelm obeyed. He last saw Elisa Radziwiłł in 1831. She later became engaged to Prince Friedrich von Schwarzenberg , but the engagement was dissolved again.
From 1822 to 1830 the Radziwiłłs were rarely in Berlin, they mostly lived in Posen , Antonin and Ruhberg in the Giant Mountains . Around 1831 Elisa Radziwill fell ill with tuberculosis and died during a cure in Freienwalde Castle in 1834. In 1838 her coffin was transferred from Posen to Antonin and buried in the newly built Radziwiłł mausoleum.
Until the end of his life, Kaiser Wilhelm I had a miniature portrait of her on his desk in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Palais Unter den Linden .
Survival
Elisa Radziwiłł's love story was filmed in 1938 with Lída Baarová in the role of Elisa as a Prussian love story . The film was banned in the autumn of 1938 even before the premiere. The reason was Joseph Goebbels' and Lida Baarová's affair , which was ended by Hitler and led to Baarová's deportation to Prague and to the ban on showing all films in which she had participated. In 1950 the film was released in cinemas in the Federal Republic of Germany under the title Liebeslegende .
Frédéric Chopin in the salon of Prince Anton Radziwiłł , 1829; Elisa standing next to her father, sitting to the right: Sister Wanda, mother Luise and Alexander von Humboldt
Drawing by Elisa Radziwiłł: Evening party at Ruhberg Castle in the Hirschberg Valley
Elisa Radziwiłł on her deathbed
literature
- Literature by and about Elisa Radziwiłł in the catalog of the German National Library
- Almanac de Gotha . Gotha 1840.
- Oswald Baer: Princess Elisa Radziwill . Middle u. Sohn, Berlin 1908.
- Szymon Konarski: Armorial de la noblesse polonaise titrée . Paris 1958.
- Friedrich Wielgus: Radziwill, Elisa. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 7, Bautz, Herzberg 1994, ISBN 3-88309-048-4 , Sp. 1233-1234.
- Harald Eschenburg : The Polish Princess. Elisa Radizwill , the childhood sweetheart Kaiser Wilhelm I . Engelhorn-Verlag, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-87203-015-9 .
- Dagmar von Gersdorff : “Only you in the whole world”. The forbidden love between the Princess Elisa Radziwill and Wilhelm of Prussia . Insel Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-458-17579-7 .
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Radziwiłł, Elisa |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Radziwill, Princess Elisa Friederike Luise Martha |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | first love of the emperor Wilhelm I. |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 28, 1803 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 27, 1834 |
| Place of death | Bad Freienwalde (Oder) |