Ernestine Raisin Flax Country

Ernestine Rosine Goll (painting by Johann Ludwig Strecker )

Ernestine Rosine Flachsland (married Ernestine Rosine Goll ; born February 15, 1742 in Reichenweier , † after December 13, 1774 in Worms ) was 1761–66 " Maîtresse-en-titre " of Landgrave Ludwig IX. from Hessen-Darmstadt . Her sister Maria Karoline was the wife of Johann Gottfried Herder .

Life

Ernestine was the daughter of the official and church attendant Johann Friedrich Flachsland (* 1716 in Reichenweier; † 1755 ibid.) And his wife Rosina Catharina born. Mauritii (* 1718 in Reichenweier, † 1766 in Pirmasens ). Reichenweier in Alsace was at that time one of the left bank holdings of the House of Württemberg . Ernestine was one of eight siblings, but only five of them reached adulthood. After the early death of her father, it became difficult for her mother to support the large family.

Landgrave Ludwig IX. von Hessen-Darmstadt had commissioned his court painter Johann Ludwig Strecker to paint young beauties. From these portraits he chose Ernestine, who, as the official “Maîtresse en titre”, moved into a house on Alleestraße on January 6, 1761 with the entire family at Ludwig's residence in Pirmasens. On the same day, her sister Friederike (1744–1801) married the court official Andreas Peter Hesse (1728–1803, son of Ernst Christian Hesse ), who was later ennobled .

When Ludwig's wife Henriette Karoline and Ernestine met in their carriages in the summer of 1761, Henriette Karoline shot the pregnant Ernestine with a pistol without hitting her. On November 10, 1761, Ernestine was given birth to her son Ernst Ludwig von Hessenzweig. He was appointed adjutant by his father at the age of two and a year later lieutenant grenadier. He was nominally in the care of Countess Henriette Karoline. In 1773 his aunt Maria Karoline Herder wanted to adopt him, but her husband was against it. Ernst Ludwig died on December 22, 1774 at the age of 13.

When her mother died in 1766, Ernestine tried to live on her own terms. She fell in love with the office assistant Philipp Jakob Goll, about whom her sister Karoline wrote that he was a "wretched person" who could not even earn his own living, but wanted to "marry Ernestine by force". The Landgrave then threw her out of her apartment, but provided her with an annual pension of 500  guilders , more than the average earnings at the time. She married Goll in 1766 and had a daughter with him in 1771. She later separated from her husband and temporarily moved homeless with her young daughter from one pub to the next.

It is said that she suffered from a mental disorder ( paranoia ). In 1772 she turned up confused at her sister Friederike, who was married in Darmstadt. Karoline, who married Johann Gottfried Herder on May 2, 1773, lived there since her mother's death. Landgrave Ludwig gave her and Herder the pension for Ernestine and also the guardianship over her. Ernestine Goll quickly became a burden in the Herder family's household. She believed they were being poisoned there. Her relatives spent her in an "asylum" in Worms, where she lived "in a kind of captivity" and died soon after on an unknown day after December 13, 1774. Her daughter stayed with the Herder family and later moved with them to Weimar.

Memory and aftermath

Anna Eunike Röhrig believes that Ernestine Rosine Flachsland would have long been forgotten without her sister Karoline, whose life as the wife of Johann Gottfried Herder is continuously reported. This is how her life and with it a harrowing example of dealing with mentally ill people was passed down at that time.

A portrait of Ernestine, painted by Johann Ludwig Strecker, is preserved in the holdings of the Goethe House in Frankfurt. She is probably also on a portrait in that of Karl Friedrich Hirschberg for Ludwig IX. partly shown as a copy of other pictures painted beauty gallery. This portrait without a name is now in the Prinz-Georg-Palais in Darmstadt.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Anna Eunike Röhrig : Mistresses and favorites - A biographical handbook , MatrixMedia Verlag GmbH, 2010, ISBN 978-3-932313-40-0 , pp. 138-140.