Marianne Ruaux

Marianne Ruaux, 1827

Johanna Maria Carolina Ruaux , later married Schindler (* July 2, 1802 in Altona , † July 4, 1882 in Eimsbüttel ) was a Hamburg innkeeper who became known as "the beautiful Marianne".

origin

Maria Ruaux was born on July 2nd, 1802 in Altona, then Danish, and was baptized on July 8th of that year in the Catholic St. Joseph Church on the Große Freiheit. Her parents - Jean Francois Ruaux and Louise Henriette, geb. Le Vavasseur - came from Normandy and probably fled from there before the French Revolution .

Mariannenruh

Maria Ruaux has been running the “Mariannenruh” restaurant in the Holstein-Danish town of Langenfelde, founded by her father, since 1824 or 1823 . The restaurant became so popular that it was even possible to charge an entrance fee to visit it. Many guests "from better circles" made the good-looking, amiable young landlady court, including (in the summer of 1826) allegedly the young Duke Karl von Braunschweig . Heinrich Heine , who is often called an admirer of the “beautiful Marianne”, however - as his written remarks show - probably had an ambivalent relationship with Maria Ruaux. In his memoirs by Herr von Schnabelewopski , published in 1834, he mentioned them as the third of ten "curiosities of the city" of Hamburg after the town hall and the stock exchange:

The beautiful Marianne, an extraordinarily beautiful woman, who the ravages of time have been chewing on for twenty years - incidentally, "the ravages of time" is a bad metaphor, because she is so old that she certainly no longer has any teeth, namely those Time - the beautiful Marianne still has all her teeth and still hair on them, namely on her teeth.

On October 21, 1831 or March 21, 1831, Maria Ruaux gave birth to their first daughter, Emilie Ludovica Caroline. The child initially remained unbaptized (and probably also unregistered); it grew up with Marianne's mother for the first few years.

Shortly before Emilie's birth, Maria had given up the "Mariannenruh" and opened a new restaurant on today's Doormannsweg in Eimsbüttel.

Marriage and offspring

On April 3, 1836, she married the Leipzig businessman Robert Schindler, who was seven years her junior. The entry in the church book of St. Johannis in Eppendorf shows that the bride apparently tried to make the age difference of the couple appear slightly smaller: Her age specification "29 years" was later crossed out and changed to 34. In fact, if the information about her date of birth is correct, she was only 33. The newspaper for the elegant world reported the wedding on August 25, 1836 as follows:

Our second loss is Dem. Marianne Ruaux, world-famous under the name of the beautiful Marianne. Since Heine introduced her as a public character in his travel pictures , she has innocently acquired an increasingly widespread quasi-literary reputation. All authors who wrote about Hamburg later considered it their duty to commemorate the beautiful nymph von Eimsbüttel, as happened recently in Beurmann's sketches, and so a wide range of legends had finally woven around her, which she in a certain mystical way Made chiaroscuro appear. It was a good time when the bottom lining of all Hamburg men's hats was adorned with portraits of Mamsell Sontag and the beautiful Marianne, and the young Elegants hesitated and hesitated to make their choice. “Nice time, ah! you will never come back. ”One of the lovely rivals exchanged her fame for a count's ambassador and our Marianne hers - with a simple man. She is now married. Sic transit gloria mundi .

On the day of the wedding, the four and a half year old daughter Emilie was baptized, also in Eppendorf. Ten years later, John Jochmus from a well-known Hamburg merchant family confessed to fatherhood. This then took the child in and ensured a “befitting” education. In 1855 Emilie married Count Felix Carl Otto Johann von Bothmer ; the couple lived in Bothmer Castle, which is still preserved today, in Klütz in Mecklenburg . After the early death of her husband (1870), Emilie became lady-in-waiting in the Grand Duchy of Weimar, where she was promoted to chief stewardess.

Maria Alwine Schindler was born on September 4, 1836. She later married the 32 years older businessman August Simon, whose mother Emilie Simon was the daughter of Peter Godeffroy .

Gabriel Henry Robert, the first son of the Schindlers, was born on December 20, 1837. He was supposed to become a businessman, but preferred a career as an actor and singer at the Varieté-Theater in St. Pauli (today: St. Pauli Theater ). He died unmarried in 1872.

In 1839 the Schindlers moved away from Eimsbüttel and opened a café-restaurant with an attached wine shop on Dammtorstraße 10/11, in the immediate vicinity of the city theater (today's State Opera ), which they had to give up in 1843 due to economic difficulties.

Heinrich Wilhelm Schindler was born on February 15, 1841. He emigrated to Argentina in 1861, barely twenty and presumably practically penniless. There he initially served in the army, then after a serious injury in the first battle of the Paraguay War ( Triple Alliance War ) he went into the insurance business and made a fortune. His descendants living in Spain, South America and the USA are the only known descendants of the "beautiful Marianne" that can still be identified today. Among them is the legend handed down from generation to generation that Heinrich Wilhelm's real father was "blue- blooded " - possibly Duke Karl von Braunschweig or a Hohenzollern prince.

Maria Schindler's youngest child, Adolphine Henriette Mathilde, was born on February 21, 1843. She later married the broker Johann Friedrich Grüttel, with whom she had two daughters and a son.

The Schindlers' financial problems had increased since the early 1940s. The savings made by the "beautiful Marianne" from the Eimsbüttel era were largely used up. In 1848 Robert Schindler had to declare himself insolvent. Shortly before, Marianne had divorced him from bed and table, but continued to care for the man diagnosed as insane, who died soon after, on July 31, 1849. Marianne, wrote the morning paper for educated readers on June 24, 1850 , left by the "son of a Hamburg merchant" , "because his parents were opposed to a marital relationship" , had after years

“So married that she now lives in the most unhappy circumstances. She became an old woman before her time, although if you look closely you will still discover the traits of former beauty. "

Maria Schindler became the single mother of four children, the oldest of whom were 12 years old. With the support of wealthy friends from Hamburg's "best families", but little business luck, the widow opened a number of other restaurants. Her last, which she ran until 1872, now at the age of seventy, was at Eimsbüttler Fruchtallee 32. She then lived at Bartelsstrasse 105 (1872–1874) and at Kleine Schäferkamp 14, where she died on July 4, 1882. Three days later she was buried in the St. Johannis cemetery in Eppendorf, which was on the corner of Eppendorfer Landstrasse and Kümmellstrasse on the site of what is now Marie-Jonas-Platz.

TV series, memorial stone

In 1974 Maria Schindler-Ruaux became known throughout Germany through the ARD television series Die Schöne Marianne (with Hannelore Elsner in the title role), which was continued in 1978 under the title Das Hotel zur Schöne Marianne (with Nadja Tiller in the title role). The total of 27 episodes have been repeated many times since then.

At the Eimsbütteler Marktplatz, corner of Kieler Strasse near the presumed location of the "Mariannenruh", a memorial stone for the "beautiful Marianne" with the following inscription was erected on December 11, 2002 on the initiative of the Patriotic Society of 1765 :

At a young age she served the guests in her father's inn "Mariannenruh", which she later took over.

The restaurant, located here in the former Emahusbleiche, became famous for the beauty of the landlady. She became known far beyond the borders of Hamburg. Heinrich Heine was also one of her numerous admirers.

"Mariannenwirtschaft" became a term for a restaurant with female service.

literature

• Armin Clasen: The beautiful Marianne. A chapter in the history of Hamburg's sociability. Christians, Hamburg 1972, ISBN 3-7672-0017-1 .

In addition to Clasen's book, this entry is based on information provided by a great-great-great-granddaughter of the beautiful Marianne who was born in Argentina and on her own research.

Web links

• The beautiful Marianne - information about the television series

Individual evidence

1. ↑ From the memoirs of Herr von Schnabelewopski. Chapter 3 (first printed in: Der Salon. Vol. 1, Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1834)
2. ↑ Bürgererverein Eimsbüttel eV (Ed.): The Eimsbütteler citizen. Bulletin of the Citizens' Association Eimsbüttel eV . tape 22 , no. 6 . Hamburg June 1969, p. Title page and p. 5 .
3. ↑ page 668 right column books.google
4. ^ Eduard Beurmann: Sketches from the Hanseatic cities . Hanau 1836, p. 230 ff. Books.google.de
5. ↑ The world-famous singer Henriette Sontag had already married the Sardinian ambassador Conte Carlo Rossi in 1827/28
6. ↑ p. 600 books.google.de
7. ↑ Memorial stone of the Patriotic Society