Laure-Adelaide Abrantès
Laure-Adelaide Abrantès , or Laure (Laurette) Junot, Duchesse d'Abrantès , née Permond (born November 6, 1784 in Montpellier , † June 7, 1838 in Paris ) was a lady-in-waiting at the Napoleonic court and a French writer.
Life
Abrantès came from an old Corsican family and was the daughter of Charles Permond and a Greek mother. Due to the political events, her family, like the Bonapartes , went into exile in Paris. When the revolution broke out there in 1789 , she and her family fled to Toulouse .
In the middle of the reign of terror , Abrantès returned to Paris in 1794. It was there in one of the salons that she saw the young General Napoleon Bonaparte for the first time . In her memoirs she later described this meeting impressively and the impression she had of the future emperor.
At the age of 16, Abrantès married General Andoche Junot , an adjutant of Napoleon , in 1800 . This marriage resulted in four children: Josephine (* 1802), Constance (* 1803), Louis Napoléon (* 1807) and Andoche Alfred (* 1810). At that time Napoleon was already First Consul , gave the young couple a fully furnished house and was a regular guest there.
When General Junot was sent to Portugal as ambassador , Abrantès followed him. The couple returned to France in 1806 and settled again in Paris. There, at the center of power, General Junot's career took him through the ranks of “ Général de division ”, “Grand officer of the Legion of Honor”, “ Military Governor of Paris ” and “Commander of the 1st Military Division”, to the ennoblement as “ Duke of Abrantes” ". In addition, there were properties in Westphalia , Prussia , Hanover and Italy , which were given to them by the emperor.
Since Napoleon was a regular guest at Junot, larger and larger receptions were held there, which quickly became famous. The Haute Volee was always invited to these evening parties ; the entourage of the emperor and the military (up to the Marshal of France ) were always disproportionately represented. The duties as lady-in-waiting meant that Abrantès also stayed with Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais frequently . Because of her beauty, extravagance and her proximity to the imperial family, Abrantès was called " Femme fatale de Paris" by contemporaries .
His military defeats in Spain and Portugal soon brought financial ruin to the general. Therefore, he committed suicide in depressed mood in 1813 on 29 July suicide by throwing himself from a window. Abrantès was able to maintain her usual lifestyle for some time and shine as a hostess. But when Napoleon abdicated after the Battle of Paris (March 31, 1814), she broke off her social obligations, sold her palace and moved into an apartment with her children.
Since Abrantès had already made her debut as a successful writer by this time, her apartment gradually developed into a literary salon. One regularly met many great talents from Paris, scholars, poets, musicians and artists for tea and an exchange of ideas. On the occasion of such a meeting, she met the young writer Honoré de Balzac in 1829 . She paved his way into society, was seen with him at many receptions, parties and theater performances and had a passionate affair with him.
Abrantès was less and less able to support herself in her last years. Despite her feverish work as a writer, she died in utter poverty on June 7, 1838 at the age of almost 54 in an attic in Paris.
Napoleon's Greek ancestry
In her memoir, the Duchess of Abrantès, herself a half-Greek, sets out the thesis of Napoleon's Greek origin: According to this, his family name in its original version "Buonaparte" represents the Italianized form of the Greek name "Kalomero" (= good part), which in turn is detectable in Mani in the south of the Peloponnese . Members of the Kalomero are said to have emigrated to Italy after the conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Turks in the 16th century and finally settled in Corsica, where they changed their name to "Buonaparte". In fact, the Italianization of Greek surnames was not uncommon among Byzantine refugees.
A relationship of this family with the Byzantine imperial family of the Comnenes , who ruled Byzantium until 1185 and even the Empire of Trebizond until 1461 , is discussed by her there.
reception
In addition to her “memoirs”, which are still known today, Abrantès also wrote a few novels and plays. These "memoirs" were created between 1830 and 1834 and are considered her most important work. Since they were written down out of subjective feelings, they naturally cannot withstand scientific objectivity, but are not uninteresting as cultural evidence of the Napoleonic era.
Works (selection)
- Les femmes celèbres de tous les pays, leurs vies et leurs portraits . Lachevardiere, Paris 1834 (with Joseph Straszewicz)
- Memoirs or historical memorabilia on Napoleon, the Revolution, the Directory and the Restoration (“Mémoires”). Bookstore Peters, Leipzig 1831/36 (18 vol.).
- Memoirs about the Restoration or: Historical memorabilia from the time of the Restoration, the revolution of 1830 and the first years of Ludwig Philip's government ("Mémoires"). Hochhausen & Fournes, Leipzig 1836/38 (7 vol.)
- Les salons révolutionaires . Edition France-Empire, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-7048-0617-9 (reprint of the Paris 1830 edition).
- Salons of Paris ("Salons de Paris"). (7 vols.)
literature
- Susan P. Conner: Laure Permond Junot, Duchesse d'Abrantès, 1784-1838 . University Press, Tallahassee, Fl. 1977.
- Karl G. Jacob: Contributions to French history . Vogel publishing house, Leipzig 1866.
- Jacques Presser: Napoleon. Life and legends (“Napoléon, histoire et legende”). Manesse-Verlag, Zurich 1990, ISBN 3-7175-8156-2 .
- Jean Tulard : Napoleon or the Myth of the Savior. A biography ("Napoléon ou le mythe du saveur"). Ullstein, Frankfurt / M. 1982, ISBN 3-548-27514-1 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Laure-Adelaide Abrantès in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Laure Junot, duchesse d'Abrantès: Mémoires de Madame la duchesse d'Abrantès . Vol. 1, Paris 1831, p. 42 ff.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Abrantès, Laure-Adelaide |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Laure Junot d'Abrantès |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French lady-in-waiting and writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 6, 1784 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Montpellier |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 7, 1838 |
| Place of death | Paris |