Elisabeth zu Carolath-Beuthen

Elisabeth zu Carolath-Beuthen. Painting by Gustav Richter , 1875

Elisabeth Natalia Julia Johanna Princess zu Carolath-Beuthen, b. Countess von Hatzfeldt zu Trachenberg (born  November 19, 1839 in Trachenberg ; † January 12, 1914 in Venice ) was Herbert von Bismarck's partner around 1880.

Life

origin

Elisabeth Countess von Hatzfeldt came from the first marriage of Prince Hermann Anton von Hatzfeldt zu Trachenberg (1808–1874) with Mathilde, Countess von Reichenbach-Goschütz , divorced Countess von Götzen (1799–1858). She grew up under the rule of her father in Lower Silesia , was brought up in the Catholic faith and played a major role in Berlin's social life . Philipp zu Eulenburg describes her as a "beautiful woman" and describes the attraction she exerted on numerous members of the courtly circles; like many others, he himself was in love with her in his youth.

The lady “well known in Berlin salons for her charm, wit and her strong gambling addiction”, who was said to have “gambled away her inheritance of 110,000 thalers in one evening”, and her much-praised beauty Gustav Richter in one evening famous portrait (1872), her unfortunate affair with Herbert Graf von Bismarck , the eldest son of Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck , became the focus of political trench warfare at the Prussian-German imperial court. After her divorce in 1881 and the end of the liaison with Count Bismarck, she lived in Venice, where she died in 1914, half a year before the outbreak of the First World War .

Affair with Herbert von Bismarck

After she had been married for some time to the Silesian nobleman and member of the Reichstag, Prince Carl Ludwig zu Carolath-Beuthen , Herbert von Bismarck met Princess Elisabeth, who was ten years his senior, and fell madly in love with her. Judging by the contemporaries, this was the great love in the life of Herbert, otherwise known for his rough, sometimes brutal manner. The two began a stormy affair in 1879, and Elisabeth divorced her husband in April 1881 in order to marry Herbert, who made the news of the impending marriage known to society in advance. Philipp zu Eulenburg , who - equally good friends with both of them, but also a welcome guest with old Bismarck - played an important role as mediator in this affair, writes about the princess:

“But Princess Elisabeth loved Herbert from the bottom of her soul. She was a rich, gifted nature. Beautiful, vain, as most beautiful women are, but too ingenious to succumb to vanity. Filled with an ardent interest in art. Unusually musical. A proud, distinguished character who had gone through a very tough school of life in the father's house, where the most unpleasant family conditions prevailed. "

The desired connection between his son and the princess met with the determined and bitter resistance of old Bismarck . Not only from his point of view, several circumstances spoke against the marriage: Elisabeth was, on the one hand, Catholic and, on the other, divorced, both characteristics that blatantly contradicted the strict conventions of the Protestant Prussian court society. The unusual age gap between an older woman and a younger man also caused a stir. In addition, of course, there were other objections that were clearly personal in character and exacerbated the existing tension: Princess Elisabeth came from the Hatzfeldt-Trachenberg family , which he hated because of their Greater German Catholic and moderately liberal attitude. In addition, the older sister of the future bride, Franziska, was married to the imperial adjutant general Walter von Loë, who was also a Catholic, who had excelled in the still smoldering cultural war against Bismarck and who vigorously advocated a connection between Herbert and Elisabeth. while her stepsister was precisely the intimate enemy of the "Iron Chancellor", Marie Countess von Schleinitz , whose Berlin salon had been "the" meeting place of the liberal Bismarck- Fronde since the 1960s .

In the spring of 1881 the affair, which all of Berlin was talking about, was reaching its climax. The opposition Vossische Zeitung brought the following mocking note:

“The member of the Reichstag, Prince Carolath-Beuthen, has asked for a longer vacation to retire to his property. - The Princess Carolath has arrived in Messina in Sicily. - Count Herbert Bismarck left Berlin some time ago. The news that he is said to have gone to Italy on a special mission has not yet been confirmed. "

In fact, the court society had long known about the romance that was going on between Herbert and Elisabeth. In the meantime the princess had divorced, which ultimately put Herbert before a decision. After he had asked his father, whose subordinate he was formally a member of the Foreign Office , for the necessary marriage consensus , violent scenes broke out in the Bismarck house. The Chancellor raged and threatened his son to disinherit him and to transfer the Bismarck Majorat to his younger brother Wilhelm , whereby Herbert would have been as good as penniless in the event of a marriage. After all, the father even threatened suicide if his son Elisabeth married: "If the princess bore his name, it would make him suicide!" Herbert reported to his friend Eulenburg.

When Princess Elisabeth traveled to Venice in May 1881 and Herbert wanted to follow her, his father ultimately threatened to follow him and confront the Princess herself, which would have made the Chancellor ridiculous, especially in the liberal press around the world. In the words of Philipp Eulenburg:

“The threat that the great Bismarck, as soon as he found out that Herbert was going to Venice, would go there in turn - and that the whole world would be thrown into a storm of joy - was by no means an empty word. [...] Ridiculousness is the strongest means of coercion in the world. He knew very well that Herbert would never put him in such a position. "

And this threat actually took hold: Herbert gave in, while Elisabeth, disappointed by his collapse, stopped correspondence with him and spent the rest of her life in Venice, in the Palazzo Modena on the Canale Reggio . Herbert von Bismarck was a broken man after the forced end of the affair, and the princess was socially ostracized. Bernhard von Bülow sums up the affair and its effects on the psyche of Herbert, who after separating from Elisabeth tended to become more and more drunk and violent outbreaks:

“He had loved Princess Carolath passionately. He still loved her and, I believe, never stopped loving her. He never got rid of the feeling that he had failed towards this great love of his life, that his behavior in this life crisis was neither wise nor entirely correct. "

The later Admiralty Councilor Paul Felisch reports in his memoirs of an intervention by the Ministry of Justice in the divorce proceedings in favor of Prince zu Carolath-Beuthen:

“Because of this occurrence [...] the prince's marriage was divorced. It is characteristic, by the way, that the princess stipulated in her marriage contract that she would receive an annual payment of - I think I can certainly remember the sum - 10,000 marks in the event of a divorce due to her own fault. In the Ministry of Justice I was now informed that because of these circumstances they wanted to appoint a judge to Carolath who would emphatically safeguard the judicial interests of the prince , all the more so since the difficult majorat conditions also made a confident demeanor necessary. [...] The debate ended with the fact that I was referred to the State Secretary, who congratulated me as Carolath's new magistrate. "

Suspected ulterior motives of Bismarck

Above all, the critics of Otto von Bismarck speculated that behind his rabid, even hysterical rejection of the connection, there was another, secret motive: the plan, Herbert, which he consistently built up as his successor in the Chancellery, with a Prussian princess, possibly a daughter of Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm , and thus to found a kind of house Meier dynasty next to the Hohenzollern , which of course would have required that Herbert would have remained single for so long. However, this opinion is hardly shared by current research.

family

Marriage and offspring

Elisabeth von Hatzfeldt married Prince Carl Ludwig Erdmann Ferdinand zu Carolath-Beuthen (1845–1912) on April 23, 1866 . The marriage was divorced in 1881. The couple had a daughter:

• Karoline Elisabeth Oktavie Sibylla Margarete Princess von Schoenaich-Carolath (1867–1911)

⚭ 1894 Count Hans von Königsmarck (1865–1943)

Famous relatives

Her paternal aunt was Sophie von Hatzfeldt .

Elisabeth's biological siblings were:

• Count Stanislaus von Hatzfeldt zu Trachenberg (1831–1870), killed at Amiens
• Franziska von Hatzfeld zu Trachenberg (1833–1922) ⚭ (1) Paul von Nimptsch ⚭ (2) Walter von Loë

Her half-siblings from her father's second marriage were:

• Hermann, Prince of Hatzfeldt, Duke of Trachenberg (1848–1933)
• Hermine von Hatzfeldt zu Trachenberg (1852–1906)

Her stepsister from the first marriage of her stepmother Marie von Buch, b. von Nimptsch, with Ludwig August von Buch was:

• Marie von Buch (1842–1912) ⚭ (1865) Alexander von Schleinitz

swell

• Philipp zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld , Herbert Bismarck's tragedy , in: From fifty years , Berlin 1923, pp. 81–107.
• Bernhard von Bülow , Memoirs , Vol. 4, Berlin 1931.
• Louis Leo Snyder , Political Implications of Herbert von Bismarck's Marital Affairs, 1881, 1892 , in: The Journal of Modern History , Vol. 36/2 (June 1964), pp. 155-169.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Eulenburg, p. 86.
2. ↑ Cf. Georg Brandes , Aus der Deutschen Reichshauptstadt (German by Peter Urban-Halle ), Berlin 1989, p. 419 (March 15, 1881).
3. ↑ See Brandes, ibid.
4. ↑ See Sebastian Haffner , Philipp zu Eulenburg , in: ders., Wolfgang Venohr , Preußische Profile , Munich 2001, p. 205.
5. ↑ See Eulenburg, p. 106.
6. ↑ See Bülow, p. 252.
7. ↑ Quoted in Brandes, ibid.
8. ↑ Herbert v. Bismarck to Eulenburg, April 30, 1881, in: Eulenburg, p. 93.
9. ↑ Eulenburg, p. 99.
10. ↑ See Bülow, p. 585.
11. ↑ Paul Felisch: Memoirs. A career in the empire . Eick-Verlag, Kiel 2015, p. 59-60 .
12. ↑ Cf. Eberhard Straub , Drei last Kaiser , Berlin 1998, p. 263.