Maria Ernestine Esterházy Starhemberg

Portrait of Marie Ernestine Countess Esterhazy-Starhemberg by Barbara Krafft

Maria Ernestine Esterházy Starhemberg (born June 7, 1754 , † December 26, 1813 in Graz ) was a member of the Austro - Hungarian aristocracy who sparked the Esterházy-Starhemberg social scandal in Vienna in 1774 .

Life

Maria Ernestine Esterházy Starhemberg was born in 1754 as the daughter of Count Gundacker von Starhemberg and his wife, Countess Maria Aloysia Rosa Breunner von Asparn . By decree of Empress Maria Theresa , Maria Ernestine was married to Count Ferenc Esterházy de Galántha (1746–1811), a favorite of the Empress, on November 21, 1770 at the age of 16 . Due to character peculiarities, the couple soon drifted apart. In 1773 the marital problems escalated. Count Karl von Zinzendorf , who was told the story second-hand in 1785, reports in his diaries that Count Ferenc did not consummate the marriage because of a syphilis disease . Maria Ernestine was mistreated by the family in his absence. At the end of 1773, Maria Ernestine began a relationship with Ferdinand Ludwig, Count von Schulenburg-Oeynhausen, and became pregnant. Together with Schulenburg, she tried to escape from Vienna via the Arlberg to Switzerland in June 1774 , but was arrested in Constance and interned in a monastery. From there fled again, she gave birth to a right on the Rhine located inn in the front Austrian Waldshut a child who left her there when they fled with Schulenburg over the Rhine at night on 30 December 1774th The child was placed in a Swabian orphanage on the orders of the Empress. Schulenburg was arrested in Zurich by the local authorities. The Austrian ambassador in Zurich Freiherr von Bartenstein obtained the extradition of Schulenburg. Transferred to Vienna, he was brought before the chastity commission and sentenced to death. Count Ferenc Esterházy obtained a pardon from Maria Theresa for Schulenburg, who was then banished from Vienna . He felt obliged to thank Schulenburg for having freed him from his beautiful but vicious wife. Maria Ernestine lived in poor conditions with a miller in Le Locle in the Prussian Neuchâtel until the Empress's death . After that, Joseph II allowed her to settle in Solothurn under a strange name . She received a pension of 2,000 guilders a year, financed mainly by her husband, Count Ferenc Esterházy . Johann Kaspar Lavater reported in 1789 about an encounter with the countess, who lived under a strange name. In the 1790s, Maria Ernestine reconciled with her husband. The marriage remained childless until Count Ferenc Esterházy's death in Vienna from a stroke in 1811. Maria Ernestine Esterházy Starhemberg died in Graz in 1813 . In Johann Schwerdling's story of the Starhemberg family, Maria Ernestine is said to have had an excellent intellectual education.

Literary aftermath

In January 1775 there is a first journalistic mention of the affair by Matthias Claudius in German, otherwise Wandsbecker Boten : “The beautiful countess ........ y, a born countess ....... ... g who, during their husband's three-year stay in Paris, had a familiar relationship with a local cavalier, the Count of S ........ g and escaped with him in the month of June of last year ... ".

The fact that even Zinzendorf, who had excellent connections, did not find out about the details of the scandal until 1785, points to the effective control of the media in Austria itself. A first literary use of the story can be found in the historical novel by Louise Mühlbach Kaiser Joseph, the Second and his Court from 1860. Countess Esterházy Starhemberg is wrongly given the first name Leonore in it. Alfons von Czibulka dealt with the extradition request of Baron von Bartenstein in a novella. Most recently, Hermann Mostar took up the case very privately in his world history .

literature

• Matthias Claudius: The German, otherwise, Wandsbecker Bote , Volume 5, January 1775, Olms, 1978.
• Karl von Zinzendorf: Diaries , born in 1785.
• Johann Schwerdling: History of the ancient and for centuries the sovereign and fatherland most deserved, partly princely, partly count dynasty Starhemberg . Josef Feichtinger's widow , Linz 1830, p. 374 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• Louise Mühlbach: Emperor Joseph, the second and his court. Third volume, Otto Franke, Berlin 1860.
• Alfred Ritter von Arneth: Abduction of Countess Esterhazy , in: Maria Theresia's last reign, Vienna 1879, p. 402ff.
• Alfred Michiels: Secret history of the Austrian government since Ferdinand II up to our time , Opez, Gotha 1886, p. 297.
• Josef Wardrobe: Prostitution in Vienna in a historical, administrative and hygienic relationship , self-published, Vienna 1886, Volume 1, p. 169.
• Rudolf Pestalozzi: Lavater's tourist books , Beer, Zurich 1950, p. 120.
• Alfons von Czibulka: The dance for life , Bertelsmann, 1958, p. 156.
• Hermann Mostar World history highly private: a book about love, gossip and other humanities , Goverts, Stuttgart 1962, p. 162.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Vienna from Maria Theresa to the French era: from the diaries of Count Karl von Zinzendorf, Hans Wagner, Wiener Bibliophilen Gesellschaft, 1972