Ganna Walska

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Ganna Walska (1920)
Walska after her marriage to Harold F. McCormick (ca.1922)

Ganna Walska , born as Hanna Puacz (born June 26, 1887 in Brest-Litowsk , † March 2, 1984 in Montecito ), was a Polish - American socialite, singer and gardening enthusiast. She was married six times, including four times to wealthy men. From 1941 onwards, with the help of her fortune, she created the Lotusland Botanical Garden in California , which she devoted to planting and maintaining until the end of her life.

biography

Early years

Ganna Walska was born as Hanna Puacz in Brest-Litowsk, which was part of the Russian Empire at the time. In the literature she is consistently referred to as a Pole. Her parents were Napoleon Puacz and Karolina Massalska; the family belonged to the upper middle class.

At the age of 17, Hanna Puacz ran away with the Russian officer Baron Arcadie d'Eingorn. Because of his poor health, the couple moved to Switzerland . According to the "official" version, the marriage was annulled in 1915. Another version is that the husband was an alcoholic and died of tuberculosis ; its exact fate is unknown.

In the USA

Hanna Puacz's greatest wish was to become a singer, which is why she began taking singing lessons every day and dealing with music in a variety of ways. In the 1910s she performed in cabarets and small theaters in Europe. To get away from the war , she went to New York in 1915 and tried her luck as an opera singer there, after adopting the stage name Ganna Walska : "Ganna" as the Russian form of Hannah, and "Walska" referring to hers Favorite music, the waltz . Because of an inflammation of the vocal cords she went to New York to see the neurologist Joseph Fraenkel , who was 20 years her senior , who asked for her hand after ten days of acquaintance, allegedly because she reminded him of Alma Werfel , whom he had also wanted to marry.

In 1918 Walska made her US debut in a performance with Enrico Caruso at the Biltmore Morning Musicals . It was around this time that she met Harold McCormick, the millionaire son of a Chicago entrepreneur who was a patron of the Chicago Opera Company and who would later become her fourth husband. In 1920 the husband Joseph Fraenkel died, and "Ganna Walska was now a member of American high society, her marriages and divorces, her precious jewels, her sometimes scandalous appearances made headlines".

In France

After the death of her husband, Ganna Walska traveled to Paris with friends . On the voyage, she met McCormick again, who introduced her to Alexander Smith Cochran , heir to a carpet factory and supposedly "the richest bachelor in the world". It is said that her real affection was for McCormick, who at the time was still married to the heiress Edith Rockefeller . At the end of the trip, Smith Cochran proposed marriage to her, and the couple married in Paris in September 1920. As a wedding present he gave his wife a “ carte blanche ”. The couple returned to the States shortly after the wedding because Walska wanted to pursue her career as an opera singer. The relationship between the spouses soon deteriorated as the husband is said to have been jealous and possessive. On the other hand, he presented his wife with precious jewels, including a ring with a heart-shaped 21- carat - diamonds that is later than Walska heart became known. The couple divorced in 1922, and within 14 days Walska was remarried to Harold McCormick, who had just divorced Edith Rockefeller.

Consuelo Vanderbilt's Fabergé egg

McCormick invested energy and money in his wife's operatic career, and he also presented her with jewels. For her appearances, Ganna Walska had gorgeous costumes designed by well-known designers such as Erté and the Callot sisters , which she also used for social appearances: For example, in 1924 she attended an opera ball in Paris as "Queen Barbara of Poland" and wore a dress with her an overflowing train carried by two pages. Part of her wardrobe is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art . In 1926 Walska bought a Fabergé egg at a charity auction , the Marlborough egg donated by Consuelo Vanderbilt . Malcolm Forbes later bought this work of art as the first Fabergé egg for his collection.

Against her husband's wishes, Walska continued to travel across Europe and the US in pursuit of her goal of becoming recognized as a singer. In 1922 she acquired the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris , where she put on opera performances. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune she stated that she bought the theater with her own money and not that of her husband: “I will never appear in my own theater until I have gained recognition based solely on my merits as an artist. "(" I will only appear in my own theater when I have found recognition based solely on my merits as an artist. ") In 1929 she moved to Paris and bought the Château de Galluis between Paris and Chartres , where she went extravagant Hosted societies attended by stars like Adolphe Menjou and his wife Kathryn Carver. She also launched her own perfume series. In 1932 McCormick divorced because his wife refused to live with him in the United States.

The extensive support of her ultimately hapless opera career by her husband Harold Fowler McCormick is said to have been processed in the script for the film Citizen Kane (1941). Other interpretations, however, point to Randolph Hearst and his lover Marion Davies .

In the mid-1930s, Ganna Walska accepted the fact of never becoming a famous opera diva as she received consistently poor reviews. She spent most of the time at her chateau in France and turned her interest to esotericism . In 1938 she married the eccentric British inventor and opera lover Harry Grindell Matthews , who tried unsuccessfully to develop a working death ray weapon that would be used in war.

Back in the USA and building up "Lotusland"

In 1939, Walska returned to the States with the last passage by ship before the outbreak of World War II . She married Grindell Matthews in divorce in 1941, and in 1942 Ganna Walska married her sixth marriage to yoga teacher Theos Casimir Bernard , who was nicknamed The White Lama , 20 years her junior . The couple bought the Cuesta Linda gardens in California and renamed them Tibetland because they were supposed to serve as a home for Tibetan monks. The marriage ended in arguments - mostly over money - and a "dirty" divorce. Bernard now had a lover, and one day when Ganna Walska came home from a trip, she found the house emptied. Walska instructed her staff never to mention Bernard's name again, and when he was murdered by insurgents in Punjab in 1947 , there were even rumors that she had hired her husband's murderers.

In 1943 Ganna Walska published her autobiography Always Room At the Top (meaning: there is still air up ). In it, she describes how over time she understood her daily singing exercises, which she continued until her death, as a way to inner fulfillment. In the book she dealt with topics such as astrology, hypnosis, numerology, telepathy and yoga, as well as with the role and rights of women. She was therefore a member of the National Woman's Party and fought for the right of a wife to have a different place of residence than the husband, which she had practiced herself for years. She was good friends with the German singer Lotte Lehmann and supported her Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara .

From then on, Ganna Walska devoted herself to the design of her garden, which she renamed Lotusland in 1946 . She had neither a gardening nor a botanical knowledge, but created the garden in collaboration with experts, not without lending a hand. In order to be able to buy plants for her garden, she sold valuable jewelry. A total of 3200 different plant species can be seen in Lotusland , with an emphasis on non-flowering plants. Reese: "In Lotusland she transferred aspects of what makes opera - staging, drama, beauty - into garden art."

Lotusland Gallery

  • Bathhouse from the 1920s

  • Japanese garden

  • Cacti and milkweed

  • Water lily Madame Ganna Walska

  • Giant clams

Marriages

Ganna Walska was married six times:

  • Fourth husband: Harold Fowler McCormick (1922)

  • Fifth husband: Harry Grindell Matthews (1924)

Honors

literature

  • Kirsten Reese: Ganna Walska - Lotusland - Lotussound . Festschrift for Beatrix Borchard on her 60th birthday. In: Martina Bick / Julia Heimerdinger / Krista Warnke (eds.): Music stories - forms of mediation . Böhlau, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20625-3 , pp. 281-294 .
  • Brian Adams: Ganna: Diva of Lotusland . CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014, ISBN 978-1-5141-6957-5 .

Web links

Commons : Ganna Walska  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Pinkowski Files. In: poles.org. Retrieved July 16, 2016 .
  2. ^ Reese, Ganna Walska , p. 282
  3. ↑ Lotusland History - Ganna Walska Lotusland. In: lotusland.org. September 15, 1993, accessed July 15, 2016 .
  4. ↑ a b c Reese, Ganna Walska , p. 281
  5. ↑ a b c d e The "Walska Briolette Diamond" Brooch: Ganna Walska on Sotheby's Blog. In: sothebys.com. November 7, 2013, accessed March 27, 2016 .
  6. ↑ About Madame Ganna Walska - Ganna Walska Lotusland. In: lotusland.org. February 17, 2016, accessed March 5, 2016 .
  7. ^ Reese, Ganna Walska , p. 283
  8. ^ Reese, Ganna Walska , p. 284
  9. ^ Sean K. Macpherson: Enemy of the Average. In: nytimes.com. April 14, 2002, accessed July 16, 2016 .
  10. ↑ Treasuresofimperialrussia.com. In: treasuresofimperialrussia.com. Retrieved June 16, 2016 .
  11. ^ "Walska Buys Theater." The New York Times , December 15, 1922
  12. ↑ Mary Birkhead: Ganna Walska Hostess at her French Chateau. Chicago Tribune , October 20, 1929, accessed March 27, 2016 .
  13. ^ Reese, Ganna Walska , p. 285
  14. ^ Robert Garis: The Films of Orson Welles. Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-64972-8 , p. 16 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  15. ↑ Citizen Kane (1941) - Trivia - IMDb. In: imdb.com. December 20, 2011, accessed July 24, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Pedro Waloschek: Death rays as a lifesaver. BoD - Books on Demand, 2004, ISBN 978-3-833-41616-3 , p. 19 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  17. ^ Paul G. Hackett: Theos Bernard, the White Lama. Columbia University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-231-15887-9 , p. 310 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  18. ↑ a b c Reese, Ganna Walska , p. 286 f
  19. ^ Reese, Ganna Walska , p. 288
  20. ↑ AS Cochran dies at Saranac Lake. In: The New York Times. June 21, 1929, accessed August 27, 2016 .
  21. ^ Ganna Walska Decorated by Poland for her Art. In: Chicago Tribune . July 24, 1931, accessed July 24, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Walska, Ganna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Puacz, Hanna (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-American society lady, singer, and garden enthusiast
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Brest-Litovsk
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1984
Place of death Montecito