Fanny Caspers

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Fanny Caspers , black and white illustration of a painting by Louise Seidler , Rome 1818/1819 - Seidler presented the colored original, today in the Thorvaldsen Museum , in the Nazarenes exhibition in the Palazzo Caffarelli in Rome in 1819 , which was also by the Austrian Emperor Franz I. was visited. According to Seidler, the suggestion to depict her friend in front of a background with the Coliseum came from Thorvaldsen.

Franziska "Fanny" Johanna Caspers , later Fanny Doré ( May 1, 1787 in Mannheim , Electoral Palatinate, Bavaria ; † May 18, 1835 in Vienna ), was a German actress , governess and partner of a princess . She gained importance as a young court actress in Weimar under the direction of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , as a friend of the painter Louise Seidler and through a short-term relationship with the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen in Rome , for whom she sat as a model and wrote poetry.

Life

Caspers, daughter of the Baden government secretary Laurenz Caspers and his wife Agnès, née Sartorius, was discovered early on as an acting talent. Mostly in the roles of girls she worked from 1800 to 1802 - supported by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - at the Weimar court theater . In 1801 she played the role of Aménaïde in Goethe's first performance of the dramatic adaptation of Voltaire's Tancrède . Her older sister Manon (actually Maria Anna Lambertina) Caspers (1781–1814) also played at this theater, who first appeared at the Mannheim Theater (July to October 1798), then (from October 1798) engaged in Frankfurt / Main and continued from there Weimar had been recommended.

Fanny Caspers left the theater in 1802 after becoming engaged to the doctor and pharmacist Johann Georg Knispel from Zittau. In preparation for marriage, she attended the female educational and training institute in Gotha from 1802 . There she made friends with the painter Louise Seidler . The engagement to Knispel was soon broken off.

From 1803 she worked as an educator or governess, including in Regensburg . Around 1812 she entered Vienna as a governess and partner in the service of Princess Maria Leopoldine Grassalkovics von Gyarak (1776–1864), a born Princess Esterházy . She stayed in their entourage in the winter of 1815/16 and from autumn to spring 1818/19 in Rome and in April / May 1819 in Naples . On New Year's Eve of 1818/1819 she met the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen at a ball that Princess Grassalkovics gave in Rome , who was passionate about her, although he was already in a relationship with the Scottish woman Frances Mackenzie (~ 1786-1840). The dissolution of the liaison with the disavowed Scottish woman, a previous love affair with Anna Maria Uhden, née Magnani , who continued to influence the artist, and the new romantic relationship with the companion, who was praised for her grace and social agility, formed a popular talk in town the circles of the German Romans until spring 1819, when the romance between Thorvaldsen and Caspers suddenly ended. Thorvaldson gave the Danish ambassador Peter Oluf Brøndsted to understand that he could not break a promise to his former fiancée Mackenzie not to extend his hand to anyone else.

On August 2, 1823 Caspers married the banker Stanislaus Doré de Beauville (1796–1860) in Vienna. Her friend Dorothea Schlegel led her to the altar . The couple had a daughter, Marie Vincenzia Cornelia Franziska Doré de Beauville (1827-1896), who later became a valet of Empress Elisabeth , who married the officer and later Imperial and Royal Colonel Leonhard Stankiewicz von Mogila (1834-1896) in 1863.

literature

  • Louis Bobé : Thorvaldsen i Kærlighedens Aldre . Copenhagen 1938, pp. 132-166.
  • Leopold Göller: The actresses Manon and Fanny Caspers, their relationships with Goethe and Thorvaldsen . In: Mannheimer Geschichtsblätter 33, 1932, No. 12, Sp. 223-238.
  • Hermann Uhde (ed.): Memories of the painter Louise Seidler . 2nd edition, Propylaea, Berlin 1922, p. 154.

Web links

  • Caspers, Fanny , biographical entry in the Carl Maria von Weber Complete Edition , digital edition
  • Franziska Caspers , biography in the portal arkivet.thorvaldsensmuseum.dk

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In some sources, May 2 and May 31, 1787 are given as the date of birth.
  2. ^ Friedrich Noack : The Germanness in Rome since the end of the Middle Ages . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1927, Volume 2, p. 122
  3. ^ Fanny Lewald : From the Sund to the Posilip! Letters from the years 1879 to 1881 . New edition, dearbooks, Bremen 2012, p. 69 f. ( Google Books )
  4. ^ Adolf Rosenberg : Thorvaldsen . In: Artist Monographs . Volume XVI, Verlag von Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld and Leipzig 1896, p. 58 f. ( Google Books )
  5. ^ Eugène Plon: Thorwaldsen. His life and works . Verlag von Carl Gerold's Sohn, Vienna 1875, p. 97 ff. ( Digitized version )
personal data
SURNAME Caspers, Fanny
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Caspers, Franziska Johanna (full name); Doré, Fanny (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actress, governess and partner of a princess
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1787
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim , Electoral Palatinate Bavaria
DATE OF DEATH May 18, 1835
Place of death Vienna