Jeanne Louise Henriette Campan
Jeanne Louise Henriette Campan , née Genet (born October 2, 1752 in Paris , † March 16, 1822 in Mantes-la-Jolie ), was Marie Antoinette's first maid ( French première femme de chambre ) .
Life
She was the daughter of Edme-Jacques Genet, a high-level interpreter in the royal external office. By the age of fifteen she was fluent in French, English and Italian. She became the reader of the three daughters of Louis XV. A few years later she became Marie Antoinette's closest confidante when she came to Versailles . In 1774 she married the son of a cabinet secretary, Pierre Dominique François Berthollet, called Campan. A son was born in 1784; the unhappy marriage was divorced in 1790.
During the Tuileries Storm on August 10, 1792, Marie Antoinette protected her from popular anger and was therefore separated from the captured Queen and left Paris. After Robespierre's fall , she returned to Paris and founded a school in Saint-Germain-en-Laye to finance her living . a. was visited by Napoleon's stepdaughter Hortense de Beauharnais and the daughter of the then US envoy James Monroe . At the intercession of Hortense, Campan was appointed head of the boarding school in Écouen by Napoleon in 1807 , which was intended for the daughters of members of the Legion of Honor.
In 1823 her famous memoirs Mémoires sur la vie privée de Marie-Antoinette, suivis de souvenirs et anecdotes historiques sur les règnes de Louis XIV, de Louis XV et de Louis XVI , were published, which provide an illuminating insight into the life of the French nobility before the revolution , especially to the collar affair. Courtly anecdotes were also published; Portraits of European personalities (including Tsar Alexander I , Robespierre and Napoleon); and her correspondence with Queen Hortense.
literature
- Antal Szerb : The Queen's Collar (= dtv 13365). Translated from the Hungarian by Alexander Lenard. Revised by Ernö and Renate Zeltner. Unabridged, revised new edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-423-13365-1 .
- Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 93.
Web links
- Entry Jeanne Louise Henriette Campan on page 121 in Volume 5 of the Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1911 (English)
- Digitized of her memoirs on Gallica : Volume 1 , Volume 2 and Volume 3
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Campan, Jeanne Louise Henriette |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Genet, Jeanne Louise Henriette (maiden name); Madame Campan |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Marie Antoinette's first lady-in-waiting |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 2, 1752 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 16, 1822 |
| Place of death | Mantes-la-Jolie |