Lucy Christalnigg

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Portrait of Lucia Countess von Bellegarde and Oskar Graf Christalnigg von und zu Gillitzstein on the occasion of their engagement in spring 1893

Lucia Countess Christalnigg von und zu Gillitzstein (* June 24, 1872 as Lucia Countess Bellegarde zu Klingenstein in Klingenstein ; † August 10, 1914 in Serpenitz ), usually simply called Lucy Countess Christalnigg , was an Austrian motorist and philanthropist . Countess Christalnigg was one of the first women of her class to drive a car herself. She gained particular fame through her unfortunate death. Shortly after the outbreak of World War I , she drove a vehicle with relief supplies to Gorizia on her own for the Red Cross. In the vicinity of the Predil Pass , the "mad countess", known as a notorious fast driver, did not react (or did not react in time) to the calls of a soldier and was shot by him as a result.

biography

Original captionː "Countess Lucy Christalnigg (X) at the steering seat of her car." The editors of the magazine that published the photo in 1914 apparently wanted to make it clear that the person behind the wheel was actually the Countess.

Lucy Christalnigg came from the originally Savoyard noble family of the Counts Bellegarde . Her parents were Count Heinrich and Countess Paula Bellegarde. On September 9, 1893, she married First Lieutenant Oskar Graf Christalnigg von und zu Gillitzstein , a distant relative, in the Herz-Jesu Church in Graz . The originally Carinthian noble family of the Christalnigg had got prosperous through the beginning of the coal and steel industry , were wealthy and socially highly regarded. As an expression of this, Archduchess Stephanie , widow of Crown Prince Rudolf , attended the wedding.

The couple owned the Eberstein Castle in Carinthia , the Christalnigg Palace in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee and a villa in Rosenthal near Gorizia, where the family spent a lot of time. The city of Gorizia, then part of Austria, was a popular holiday destination for the upper class. Since Gorizia was split into Gorizia and Nova Gorica in 1947, the Rosenthal has been part of Nova Gorica under the name "Rožna Dolina".

The marriage of the Christalniggs, which was concluded for social reasons, was unhappy and was additionally burdened by blood poisoning with the death of their only child (the four-year-old daughter Maria Immaculata). Lucy Christalnigg took refuge in various charitable activities; Among other things, she was committed to the Red Cross . She was particularly fond of fast horses, then fast automobiles. Completely unthinkable for a lady of her class at that time, she did not let a chauffeur drive her, but drove herself and even took part in car races. Because of her speeding, she received numerous penalties and was generally known as a "speeder". In Carinthia, Christalnigg had a second car-loving Countess, Melanie Khevenhüller-Metsch, as a sporty competitor and colleague. In 1908 Christalnigg bought his Itala racing car (model 25/40 HP) from the Graz car dealer Schiller , with which he had won the giant race shortly before . She had it redesigned and in the same year won first prize (the so-called “challenge cup”) in the club competition of the Carinthian Automobile Club with this car. The Wiener Allgemeine Automobil-Zeitung commented Christalnigg's success as follows:

“The victory of Countess Christalnigg-Bellegarde is very remarkable; the lady is an enthusiastic motorist who always drives her Itala car herself, and, which is rarely the case with a lady, is technically trained so that she does not even take a trained chauffeur with her on her journeys, but only a servant who in the event of a fault, provides the necessary assistance under their guidance. "

- Allgemeine Automobil-Zeitung, 23 August 1908, p. 2

Circumstances of death

The accident site with the memorial cross in 2014

Shortly after the outbreak of World War I , the Red Cross set up a military hospital in Gorizia on what was then the Austrian coast . Due to her commitment to the Red Cross, Christalnigg agreed to bring a delivery of relief supplies and the two vehicles transporting them, one of which was to serve as an ambulance, from Klagenfurt to support them in Gorizia. The way to get there was well known to her from numerous stays in her villa in Rosenthal. For unexplained reasons, the departure on August 9, 1914 was delayed until the evening hours. Christalnigg drove ahead with her dog in the car, her chauffeur and an assistant followed in the second car. A permit for quick passage through the military checkpoints had been organized in advance. There were many of them in the strategically important border area between Carinthia, Carniola and Italy, whose behavior at this early point in the war was not yet clear and in the past was often charged with tension (see also Austrian fortifications on the border with Italy ). Many officers, especially the Austro-Hungarian Chief of Staff Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf , considered Italy's entry into the war against Austria-Hungary realistic. At the same time, the forces of the Austro-Hungarian army were focused on the battle in Galicia and the Serbian campaign at that time . The still quiet southern border with Italy was only secured by a mixture of different troop units, training battalions, reservists and gendarmes . Despite all the war euphoria, the soldiers were nervous about the unclear situation.

Due to the late departure, it was already after midnight when the convoy crossed the Predil Pass . Christalnigg and her chauffeur were driving at high speed along a long straight stretch of road near the village of Serpenitz (now called Srpenica part of the Slovenian municipality of Bovec ) when they encountered a guard post (probably the kk Landsturm ). The exact course of the following events is not conclusively certain. Apparently Christalnigg did not react to warning and stop calls from the soldier or did not hear them at the high speed and loud volume of the cars of the time. After even a warning shot had not had the desired effect, the soldier fired according to the instructions at the driver of the car that had already passed him and fatally hit Christalnigg in the back of the head. The driverless car then rolled into a wall. A soldier named Peter Fon has been handed down as a shooter. A soldier of that name, born in the area in 1872, retired from regular military service in 1910. It is therefore plausible that he was drafted into the Landsturm in 1914 and was now on guard duty in his homeland. Two other soldiers named Sloser and Boos then rushed over immediately after the shooting. The three stopped the vehicle behind, heard the occupants and recognized the mistake. Apparently, even then, it was unclear whether the Countess's permit was an official document or an informal permit based on Christalnigg's social relationships. Possibly this permit contained (at least as the Countess understood) permission to pass the post without stopping. Bad communication beforehand could explain the fatal error.

Development after a violent death

The countess's body remained in the wreck until it was examined by a commission traveling from Trieste on the following evening of August 10th. Christalnigg was then temporarily buried in the grave of the friends of the Coronini-Cronberg family at the St. Peter cemetery in Gorizia. On October 1, 1914, the body was exhumed and transferred to Carinthia. It is not clear whether the soldiers involved had to answer in court. Since the transfer, Christalnigg's grave has been in St. Michael am Zollfeld . At the scene of the accident, a memorial cross that her husband had commissioned commemorates her. He married the German noblewoman Maria Lippe-Weißenfeld on February 4, 1917 , and the marriage lasted until Oskar Christalnigg's death in 1934. In 1937, his widow published her memoir. In addition to the newspaper reports and archives relating to the accident, they are the most important contemporary source on Lucy Christalnigg's life.

Perception then and now

In the press at the time and among motorists, it was speculated that Christalnigg was not able to bring the heavy vehicle to a standstill in time. The body was reportedly found with one foot on the car's brake pedal. In addition, the prescribed warning procedure was not suitable for motorized vehicles. Drivers were repeatedly shot at because they could not hear calls from security personnel. Numerous media reported Christalnigg's unfortunate death. In disbelief that the countess herself could have been behind the wheel of a car, some newspapers assumed a mistake by the (non-existent) chauffeur. The mistake is understandable, because in Lucy Christalnigg's lifetime women at the wheel were extremely rare - especially in car races and long-distance drives. In 1909, a year after Christalnigg bought her racing car, 59 women were among the 1145 members of the Austrian Automobile Club as extraordinary members . The majority of these, in turn, did not come to automobilism on their own initiative, but as the wife of a club member. The independence and personal responsibility (cf. the ideal of the new woman ) that went hand in hand with driving a car made it a symbol of emancipation, which only slowly found wider social acceptance in the 1920s. Against this background, Christalnigg appeared in a selection of female candidates for the naming of a street in Sankt Veit an der Glan in 2015 , but in a public vote her name came in second behind Dolores Viesèr .

After the First World War, however, Christalnigg's fate was initially forgotten. Around the centenary of her death in 2014, the Italian university professor Nello Cristianini from Gorizia, formerly Gorizia , published a biography of Christalnigg, inspired by family connections. In the subsequent media rediscovery of the Countess, she was referred to in retrospect as the first civilian victim of the war (at least on the Isonzo ) and her unfortunate end was stylized as symbolic of the destruction of Gorizia that followed shortly afterwards and the political tearing of the cultural landscape of that area.

literature

  • Maria Christalnigg-Lippe: Figures and Fates. A life novel . Felizian Rauch, Innsbruck / Leipzig 1937 (revised and greatly expanded new edition by Verlag Context, St. Veit 2002).
  • Nello Cristianini: The Last Summer: The Story of Lucy Christalnigg and the End of a World . CreateSpace, North Charleston 2014, ISBN 978-1-5005-2008-3 .
  • Roman Sandgruber : "Women in Motion". Transport and women's emancipation . In: Emil Brix, Lisa Fischer (ed.): The women of Viennese modernism . Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-486-56290-8 .

Web links

Commons : Lucy Christalnigg  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Lucy Christalnigg: The "raging countess". In: kaernten.orf.at. January 10, 2015, accessed October 7, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c The death of Countess Christalnigg. In:  Free Voices. German Kärntner Landes-Zeitung / Free votes. Southern German-Alpine daily newspaper. Deutsche Kärntner Landeszeitung , August 15, 1914, p. 6 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / fst
  3. ^ Comtesse Lucia Bellegarde - Count Oskar Christalnigg. In:  Wiener Salonblatt , June 18, 1893, p. 2 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wsb
  4. ↑ Hymen. In:  Wiener Salonblatt , September 17, 1893, p. 2 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wsb
  5. ↑ a b Nello Cristianini: The last summer: The story of Lucy Christalnigg and of the end of a world . CreateSpace, North Charleston 2014, ISBN 978-1-5005-2008-3 , pp. 93 f .
  6. ↑ Two Countesses as Mobile Amazons. In: kleinezeitung.at. September 19, 2014, accessed October 7, 2020 .
  7. ^ Automobile establishment Schiller Graz. In:  Grazer Volksblatt , May 21, 1911, p. 33 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / gre
  8. ↑ Article  in:  Allgemeine Automobil-Zeitung , 23 August 1908, p. 2 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / aaz
  9. ↑ a b c d e E a Gorizia l'irrequieta Lucy diventò per un errore la prima vittima della Guerra. In: Il Piccolo . July 29, 2014, accessed October 7, 2020 (Italian).
  10. ^ John R. Schindler: Isonzo: The Forgotten Sacrifice of the Great War . Praeger Publishers, Santa Barbara 2001, ISBN 978-0-275-97204-2 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  11. ↑ The tragic death of Countess Christalnigg. In:  Grazer Volksblatt , August 12, 1914, p. 14 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / gre
  12. ↑ a b c Nello Cristianini: The Last Summer: The Story of Lucy Christalnigg and the End of a World . CreateSpace, North Charleston 2014, ISBN 978-1-5005-2008-3 , pp. 95 f .
  13. ↑ A warning to automobile drivers. In:  Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Democratic organ / Neues Wiener Abendblatt. Evening edition of the (") Neue Wiener Tagblatt (") / Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Evening edition of the New Wiener Tagblatt / Wiener Mittagsausgabe with Sportblatt / 6 o'clock evening paper / Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Neue Freie Presse - Neues Wiener Journal / Neues Wiener Tagblatt , August 11, 1914, p. 33 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nwg
  14. ↑ In selection (other titles also in Italian and Slovenian):
  15. ↑ A Red Cross lady as a victim of the military path security. In:  Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt , August 12, 1914, p. 11 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nwb
  16. ↑ Roman Sandgruber: "Women in Motion". Transport and women's emancipation . In: Emil Brix, Lisa Fischer (ed.): The women of Viennese modernism . Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-486-56290-8 , p. 60 .
  17. ↑ The auto pioneers. In: emma.de. Retrieved October 11, 2020 .
  18. ↑ Anke Hertling: Representing gender. Automobility in discourse of femininity in the Weimar Republic . University of Kassel IAG Kulturforschung ( carstudies.de ).
  19. ↑ St. Veit: The author has the most votes. In: kleinezeitung.at. July 10, 2015, accessed October 17, 2020 .
  20. ↑ Lucy, simbol pozabljene Gorice. In: Primorske novice. August 22, 2015, accessed October 7, 2020 (Slovenian).
  21. ↑ Prva žrtev je bila grofica Lucy. In: Slovenske novice. January 14, 2014, accessed October 7, 2020 (Slovenian).
personal data
SURNAME Christalnigg, Lucy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Christalnigg from and to Gillitzstein, Lucia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Noble motorist and philanthropist
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Klingenstein (bluestone)
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 1914
Place of death Serpenitz , today's Slovenia