Emilie Kraus from Wolfsberg

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Emilie Kraus Baroness von Wolfsberg (born October 17, 1785 in Idria , Duchy of Krain ; † April 15, 1845 in Gnigl ; real name is Emilie Victoria Kraus , baptized Eva Lucia Cecilia Victoria , known as “the dog countess”) was the lover of the French Emperor Napoléon I.

Life

Idria's mercury mine 1689

childhood

Emilie Victoria Kraus was the daughter of the mining shift foreman Jože Kraus from the Idrian mercury mines (including where the mineral Idrialin was found ) and the teacher's daughter Rosalia Schlibar. She grew up in poor conditions. The Austro-Hungarian officer Philipp (von) Mainoni (1765–1832) offered her parents to ensure that the girl would get a good education in Vienna. After the early death of the father, the mother finally agreed in 1795 and gave the 10-year-old into the hands of her foster father.

Mainoni married soon after in 1798 and continued his career in the military civil service (in 1785 he joined the Austrian army and was later appointed Imperial and Royal Court War Secretary in the Artillery Directorate; in 1809 he became court advisor in the court war council (later the war ministry ) and in 1810 head of department in Artillery Headquarters).

Her good upbringing and demeanor made Emilie Victoria socially acceptable. When Napoleon marched into Vienna in 1805, Mainoni took the now 20-year-old, described as a beauty, to a reception given by executives of the imperial and royal administration in Schönbrunn Palace , where the Emperor of the French noticed her and a passionate affair broke out.

Napoleon

Napoleon had his lover Emilie Victoria Kraus painted as Venus by the then most famous Viennese portraitist Johann Baptist von Lampi . For years she accompanied Napoleon on his campaigns disguised as a lad (Page "Felix" or Adjutant "Graf von Wolfsberg"), which was not difficult for her due to her slim figure. During the brief peacetime in between, she lived near Paris . There she was not allowed to appear at court, especially not to Napoleon's first wife Josephine, and had to lead a double life. She lived hidden in the Tuileries ; only a valet knew their identity.

After the reoccupation of Austria in November 1809, Napoleon resided again in Schönbrunn Palace. With Maria Countess Walewska (1786–1817) he had taken a second mistress from Warsaw to Vienna. In May 1810, four days apart, they gave birth to two illegitimate sons of the French emperor who went down in history as personalities and died in 1868 in the same year: Maria Walewska gave birth to the future Count Alexandre von Colonna-Walewski (born May 4, 1810 in Warsaw; † October 27, 1868).

Shortly before, on March 10, 1810 Napoleon had the Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria (1791-1847), the daughter of Emperor Francis I married.

After the lost battle of Waterloo, Napoleon awarded Emilie's foster father, Philipp Mainoni, the officer's cross of the Legion of Honor he had created and, according to Schallhammer, ennobled Emilie to baroness or baroness von Wolfsberg . In addition, he deposited a large sum of money (480,000 guilders) in the loyal hands of Mainoni in the Bank of London for his lover, from which she was to receive an annual donation of 24,000 guilders.

After Napoleon's death on St. Helena in May 1821, Mainoni arbitrarily lowered the annual pension amount to 9,000 guilders, took possession of the priceless jewelry and, despite repeated requests, did not return it.

Hundsgräfinhaus in Bregenz

Bregenz

The baroness married the Viennese lawyer Johannes Michael Schönauer in 1817, but after the unfortunate outcome of the marriage divorced him again in December 1820 and moved to Bregenz in 1824 with her mother Rosalia and sister . There she lived in a villa from 1824 to 1828 at Columbanstrasse 2, which is still known today as the Hundsgräfinhaus and is a listed building. Before her, in this house u. a. Franz Josef Weizenegger (from 1815 to 1822) and after her Faustin Ens (from 1848 to 1858) lived. Her mother died in 1826 and she dedicated an elaborate tomb to her memory. In the same year she met Vinzenz Brauner, a 14-year-old Vorarlberg journeyman barber who became her partner.

Salzburg

After two years (1828) the couple moved to Salzburg, where Brauner had received a position as a local surgeon through Emilie . He also taught obstetrics at the health department for some time.

Rauchbichlerhof in Salzburg-Schallmoos, garden side

With the help of her Napoleonic severance payment ( Apanage ), Emilia Viktoria bought two houses in the Dreifaltigkeitsgasse in Salzburg and, in 1831, a small castle in Schallmoos (neighboring Gnigl ) with the Rauchbichlerhof . In the two-story building with a hipped roof, she had 19 rooms furnished generously and led a princely life with numerous servants.

During the years as Napoleon's secret lover, she was under constant psychological pressure to deny her identity and to have to keep hiding and not be able to dare to contact other people. After the human disappointment of her marriage to Schönauer, Emilie developed a strong love for animals. A zoo with dozens of dogs of all races, horses, donkeys, monkeys, parrots and exotic songbirds, which Salzburgers called “Noah's Ark”, was created on the site of the Rauchbichlerhof. A total of 160 individuals were counted. Some strange habits of Emilie Victoria promoted the rumors about her and gave her the popular name "the dog countess". For example, the dogs ate from silver harness and were given a tombstone in the garden after their death. The maintenance of the private zoo devoured enormous amounts of money in addition to the princely lifestyle of the lady of the court. That went well as long as the assets deposited in London were sufficient.

Decline

After it initially looked like a happy and carefree life for Emilie Victoria, she received news of the suicide of her adoptive father and asset manager Philipp Mainoni in 1832 at the age of 47. He jumped from the third floor of his apartment onto the sidewalk in Vienna. Retired in 1827 and addicted to gambling, he had also brought through the trust assets in daring transactions. In the end, he burned all of his papers including the documents about Emilie's relationship with Napoleon under the pension contract. He appointed his nephew, the artillery officer Dominik Mainoni, as the sole heir. All of a sudden, Emilie Victoria stopped all donations and her precious jewelry disappeared without a trace.

In order to keep her property, she got into deeper and deeper debts. Beautiful silk clothes, jewelry, silverware and other valuable objects came to the pawn shop. With certain restrictions, she could actually have lived well, since she had no rent to pay. However, she could not and did not want to part with her animals and feeding them (the dogs received the finest meat) devoured her last money. The creditors could not be held off any longer. Eventually she had to sell her horses and from then on use a donkey to move around hidden paths.

While the emotional strain increased for Emilia, her loyal friend Vinzenz Brauner, who had stood by her for 12 years, fell ill and died of dropsy in 1838 at the age of 39. She had looked after him to the last and now stood there without any support. She sold part of the property and moved her jewelry, part of the animals was seized. After long trials, the debt continued to grow, although she starved herself to feed the 80 birds and 30 dogs that were left to her. In her need she turned to Marie-Luise, Napoleon's widow, who helped her to a grace pension . She also received financial support from the Empress widow Carolina Augusta . But since she could not part with her animals, things continued to decline.

The end

Because of the accumulated debts, the Rauchbichlerhof and the personal property of Emilie Victoria were auctioned off in 1843. All that was left for her was the bed, a table, two armchairs, the most essential clothes and some household utensils, and she was relocated to the unheated “Fischerhäusl” on the Alterbach in Gnigl ​​in the middle of winter. Of the animals that were also at auction, only a monkey and a magpie were auctioned. This left her menagerie of five parrots, eight songbirds, two mourning doves , eight peacocks, twelve dogs, countless cats and a few monkeys as a reflection of her former wealth .

Despite their bitter poverty, their pride did not allow them to accept 6 blouses and 4 sheets as gifts; she preferred to lie in bed without clothes for weeks. Nobody could convince her to clean her apartment, which was still inhabited by the remaining animals and for whose food she wandered around begging. She became neglected, got sick, suffered from gout, teeth and hair fell out, and her body became emaciated to a skeleton.

They were accused of "wasting" and placed under a curate . She persistently resisted being admitted to hospital because of her sickness because of the animals. The Archbishop of Salzburg, Cardinal Schwarzenberg, commissioned by the Viennese court to help, provided her with asylum. But she soon fled to her animals in the fisherman's hut, where her death on April 15, 1845 released her from her fate.

memory

A plaque in the church wall at Gnigler Friedhof notes: “In memory of the dog countess Emilie Freiin von Wolfsberg, geb. Kraus, the long-time companion of Napoleon I on all campaigns and his loyal companion until his fall. "And:" Whoever is free from guilt and error, throw the first stone at her. "

A contemporary observer described an encounter with her: “You could tell from this woman that she had once seen better days. On her face was the expression of aristocratic arrogance, around her body hung the tatters of dead wealth and faded splendor, and in her whole appearance she offered the sad image of fallen glory, every inch a ragged queen. "

literature

Notes of the Salzburg officer and historian Anton Ritter von Schallhammer (1800–1868), Imperial and Royal captain, member of several learned societies and author of historical articles. The other sources are more or less based on Schallhammer's writings, which he bequeathed to the Salzburg State Museum.

  • Anton Ritter von Schallhammer: Emilia Victorine Freiin von Wolfsberg, Maitresse Napoleon I from 1805-1813. Edited from official files and their own manuscripts.
  • Eduard Breier : The lady with the hammer . Wiener Vereins-Buchdr, Vienna 1879 ( limited preview in the Google book search [accessed on August 12, 2020]). From page 253 onwards, the excerpt contains the life story of the “beautiful Mili” and later “Emilie Victorine Freiin von Wolfsberg”. It is based on a print copy by the Imperial and Royal Captain Anton von Schallhammer, the content of which was published in the summer of 1879 by “H. Wnn ”was published in excerpts in the Neue Freie Presse.
  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Wolfsberg, Emilie Victorine Freiin von . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 58th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1889, pp. 34–37 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Emilie Kraus von Wolfsberg  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the sources, different first names are sometimes mentioned, such as Eva, Emilia, Lucia, Cäcilia and Victorine
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n see web link Darko Viler: Eva Lucia Cecilia Victoria Kraus
  3. ↑ According to Darko Viler, Victoria had inherited the Mediterranean appearance and complexion from her father and the beautiful blond hair from her mother.
  4. ↑ see web link Karl Irresberger: Emilie Kraus Baronin von Wolfsberg (the "Hundsgräfin")
  5. ↑ Austrian nobility registers do not mention a nobility elevation to Baroness von Wolfsberg .
  6. ↑ see web link Richard Wunderer: Paris, Sittengeschichte einer Weltstadt
  7. ↑ see web link Karl Heinz Burmeister: Montfort volumes 58–59
  8. ↑ see web link Ferdinand Strobl von Ravelsberg: Metternich and his time 1773-1859
personal data
SURNAME Kraus von Wolfsberg, Emilie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wolfsberg, Emilie Kraus Baroness von (full name); Kraus, Emilie Victoria; Dog countess
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Beloved Napoléon Bonaparte
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1785
PLACE OF BIRTH Idria , Carniola (Slovenia)
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1845
Place of death Gnigl (Salzburg)