Marie von Schleinitz

Marie von Schleinitz. Painting by Franz von Lenbach , 1873.

Marie (" Mimi ") Countess von Schleinitz-Wolkenstein , b. von Buch (born January 22, 1842 in Rome , † May 18, 1912 in Berlin ) was one of the most important Berlin salonniers in the second half of the 19th century and Richard Wagner's most important patron .

Marie von Schleinitz played a leading role in court and cultural Berlin society in the half century between the Prussian constitutional conflict (1859–1866) and the outbreak of the First World War (1914). As the liberal-minded wife of the Prussian House Minister Alexander von Schleinitz , she exercised social influence, including on Kaiser Wilhelm I , and was the most important non-princely opponent of the Prussian Prime Minister and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck , who tried in vain to diminish her social position. As a salonnière, it gave German salon life its decisive influence in the second half of the 19th century. As a patroness and art lover, she passionately supported Richard Wagner , helped him achieve a social breakthrough in Germany and played a key role in the realization of the Bayreuth Festival . As a close friend of Wagner and especially of his wife Cosima , she was in contact with many great musicians of the time, including Franz Liszt .

The talented pianist was a student of Carl Tausig .

Biographical stations

Marie von Schleinitz was the daughter of the Prussian diplomat Ludwig August Freiherr von Buch (1801–1845) and his wife Marie, b. von Nimptsch (1820–1897), who in 1847 married Prince Hermann Anton von Hatzfeldt zu Trachenberg (1808–1874) for the second time . She was born in Rome, where her father was then the Prussian Minister- Resident. At the beginning of the 1860s she lived in Paris , where her mother and grandmother introduced her to high society before she married in 1865 and settled permanently in Berlin as the Prussian ministerial wife. In 1886 she went to Saint Petersburg with her second husband, an Austrian diplomat, and in 1894 to Paris. In 1903 she returned to the German capital. In old age, she and her husband spent the warm season at Ivano Castle in Trentino , the family estate of the Counts of Selva-Trostburg .

Marie von Schleinitz died in Berlin in 1912 at the age of seventy and was buried at the side of her first husband in the Trinity Cemetery I on Baruther Strasse. Her grave has not been preserved.

family

Alexander von Schleinitz , Mimi's first husband. Portrait study by Adolph Menzel , 1865

Marriages

Marie von Buch married the Prussian minister of the royal house Alexander Freiherr von Schleinitz (1807-1885) on January 1, 1865 . Her groom was 35 years older than her. On June 11, 1879, he and his wife were raised to the rank of count by Kaiser Wilhelm I on the occasion of the golden wedding of the imperial couple . Alexander died in Berlin on February 18, 1885.

On June 16, 1886, the widowed Countess Schleinitz entered into a second marriage with the Austrian diplomat Anton Graf von Wolkenstein-Trostburg (1832–1913), with whom she had been friends since 1879 - he was counselor in Berlin at the time. Since then she has called herself "Countess Schleinitz-Wolkenstein" and from then on followed her husband to the respective place of his official determination until they settled permanently in Berlin in 1903.

Both marriages remained childless.

Her friend Anna von Helmholtz remarked about Countess Schleinitz's second marriage:

“Count Wolkenstein loved and adored her like a true Toggenburg knight for nine years . He lived only for her [...], spoke and read with her for hours every day, shared her interests, renounced extreme Catholicism [...] and instead instilled healthy, natural, humane notions into her, awakened her human interests - and became a friend to her, as one dreams, but hardly finds it in life. "

- Anna von Helmholtz, 1886

Famous relatives

Marie's mother Marie Fürstin Hatzfeldt also worked as a salonnière. She also belonged to Wagner's circle of friends.

Her maternal grandmother - and possibly a role model as a salonnière - was Léocadie von Nimptsch , nee. von Gilgenheimb (1802–1867), who in the 1830s gathered a group of artists and scholars around her on her Silesian estate Jäschkowitz, including Heinrich Laube and August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben .

Marie's half-brother was the Prussian politician Hermann Fürst von Hatzfeldt-Trachenberg (1848–1933), her stepsister was Princess Elisabeth zu Carolath-Beuthen (1839–1914), and her step-aunt was the socialist Sophie von Hatzfeldt .

Wagner's patroness

Richard Wagner , whom Mimi Schleinitz devotedly supported. Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl , 1871

Cosima Wagner , childhood friend and role model of Mimis, to whom she also temporarily entrusted her daughter Daniela von Bülow . Painting by Lenbach , 1870

Richard Wagner with his friends in the Villa Wahnfried . Painting by Georg Papperitz , before 1883. On the left Cosima and Richard Wagner, on the piano Franz Liszt , fourth from the right Mimi Schleinitz

“Mimi” Schleinitz, as she was known from childhood and also as Salonnière, received a solid pianistic education as a child. At seventeen she became a student of the famous virtuoso Carl Tausig , who wrote about her to his teacher and friend Wagner:

"She has a lot of resources and talent and I am counting on making a distinguished artist, or rather a student so advanced that she can later understand your advice."

She was very educated, knew and admired Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Arthur Schopenhauer , later read Friedrich Nietzsche and was in more or less close contact with many great musicians of her time - for example with Franz Liszt , who had been with "Serenissima" since her time in Paris, as he called Mimi in a letter, was friends and dedicated two of his Wagner arrangements for piano to her: Isoldens Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde and Am stillen Herd in the winter time from the Meistersingers . She knew how to impress her contemporaries both through her appearance and through her intellectual and musical abilities. Marie Lipsius described her like this:

"Baroness, later Countess Schleinitz, wife of the Prussian house minister, blond, slim, tall, an amiable smile on her delicate lips, showed the type of the German aristocrat in her restrained manner."

Above all, Mimi was one of the first unconditional supporters and enthusiastic supporters of Richard Wagner . Her contemporary, the singer Lilli Lehmann , assessed her role as follows:

"In addition to the King of Bavaria and the artists, it was probably mainly the countess who did most of the work for Bayreuth ."

After getting to know Wagner better at a concert in Breslau in December 1863 - they had met each other briefly as early as 1860 - Mimi Schleinitz soon became his “dearest and dearest friend” alongside Malwida von Meysenbug . She was heavily involved in the Bayreuth Patronage Association , which was founded by Tausig and which was set up at the end of 1870 with the aim of making the Bayreuth Festival possible through donations of 300,000 thalers, "tirelessly campaigned for Wagner's music in court circles" and helped the composer's breakthrough with many royalty and the high society of their time in the 1860s and early 1870s, when his success was by no means certain. Soon she was, as Liszt wrote, “the patroness of new music in Berlin”:

“Unremittingly endeavored to strengthen the company through newly acquired patrons and material grants, the noble woman, through the irresistible influence of her beauty and kindness, had enabled a number of outstanding painters to do so when they could not directly serve the Bayreuth works financially to support it by donating paintings from her hand. "

Mimi herself not only raved about Wagner, but even organized some of the rehearsals for his operas. She soon went in and out of Wagner's newly created Bayreuth domicile, the Villa Wahnfried , became the closest friend of Cosima Wagner and enjoyed a privileged and non-influential position in the private Wagner family. In the 1880s, at Cosima's request, she took her daughter from her first marriage, Daniela von Bülow , later Mrs. Henry Thodes , into her care and introduced her to great Berlin society. A letter from Carl Friedrich Weitzmann to Hans von Bülow from 1869 shows that she was personally taken with the music of her idol :

"Woman]. v. Schl [einitz]. wants to travel to Dresden for the performance of the Mastersingers and then Liszt, who kindly invited us to visit him in Weimar, tried to persuade him to come to Berlin for a while. She still prefers to live with the Mastersingers, plays entire scenes of them by heart, and lets Betz , whom she accompanies on the piano, sing the entire soulful part to her. "

In 1876, Mimi's commitment to Wagner finally reached its social climax: she asked Kaiser Wilhelm I , who had already attended the German premiere of the Meistersinger at her encouragement in 1870 , to appear at the opening of the festival on August 13 in Bayreuth and with it provide additional advertising; and the old grand seigneur, although rather sober taste himself, actually did the "pretty, imaginative and artistically gifted" aristocrat who "was always considered younger than she was" a favor - although, as Cosima Wagner probably correctly suspected, more from courtesy towards her than from musical enthusiasm. Wagner himself was very fond of her: he dedicated his 1873 essay Das Bühnenfestspielhaus zu Bayreuth to her and returned the favor for her self-sacrificing commitment with this poem:

Cosima Wagner with Count and Countess Wolkenstein in front of the Bayreuth Festival Hall

“ To Marie Schleinitz.
(When the "Götterdämmerung" is sent.)

In twilight the world sinks to me,
but I don't see the gods;
I miss the god-begotten hero
whom I offer myself to judgment.
That I now dare to see the light, I
choose a noble woman who won
 the high sense of
 the world interest
the gods twilight.
 Here is the book:
 Marie Buch,
Freifrau von Schleinitz accept it! "

By campaigning for the financing of Wagner's usual extensive projects, such as art bazaars and auctions, Marie Schleinitz even operated a preliminary form of cultural management . As a witty mediator between culture and society, she was able to set a counterpoint against the phenomenon of the " extirpation of the German spirit in favor of the German Empire", which Nietzsche lamented early on . Wagner's biographer Carl Friedrich Glasenapp describes its effect on the Wagner community in Haus Wahnfried :

“For the entire House of Wahnfried, the visit of his gracious noble patroness Countess Schleinitz was always a celebration; so also in this spring [1878], when she delighted the master and his family with her friendly grace in the first week of March with a five-day presence. In such cases, most of the day belonged to her: she took part in the meals, even in the walks and on two consecutive evenings the first act of 'Parsifal' was performed for her. "

Admittedly, Marie's commitment to Wagner sometimes had sectarian traits, which also shaped her own disposition, her spiritual and emotional orientation. A few days after Wagner's death in 1883, the more sober Anna von Helmholtz wrote to her sister about her friend's “Wagner fanaticism”, which was complemented by her “Schopenhauer mania”:

“You can imagine that we are completely devastated by the death of the great man. Countess Schleinitz sees no one - for her I almost feel sorry for her among all his friends, because she received all her peculiarity, the deepening of her nature, through Richard Wagner. He gave her life a unified striving, which indeed became one-sided because she only cared about other things what Wagner wanted. "

Grande Dame of Prussia

Marie von Schleinitz. Portrait of Franz von Lenbach , 1872

Anna von Helmholtz , with whom Mimi had been friends since the 1870s. Painting by Wilhelm Füssli , 1869

Marie Countess Dönhoff , later Princess Bülow. She and Mimi belonged to the circle around Liszt and Wagner. Portrait of Lenbach, around 1873

In addition to her special relationship with Cosima Wagner, Mimi Schleinitz also had close friendships with other prominent salonniers of her time, especially with Anna von Helmholtz . Frau von Schleinitz was not only regarded as an extraordinarily well-educated woman, but also as a beautiful and elegant woman with perfect manners, who was courted by numerous famous men, including Prince Wilhelm of Prussia: the later Kaiser Wilhelm II is said to have sent her flowers, and In the spring of 1879 he wrote to his friend Marie von Dönhoff , who later became Princess Bülow, who like Mimi belonged to the circle around Liszt and Wagner, that he had found a “new intimate friend” whom he “adored. It's someone you love very much too: it's Fr. Schleinitz ". For the young prince, his pen pal Marie von Schleinitz, who was seventeen years older than him, was "almost the only lady in the whole of Berlin society [...] with whom one can talk about things other than clothes and flirting".

Particularly close were Mimi, the temporary Prussian ambassador in Paris, Prince Münster zu Derneburg, and her “chevalresque admirer” Botho von dem Knesebeck , a co-initiator of the Goethe Society . Nonetheless, she seems to have been enthusiastic about platonic relationships to a large extent, even though the diplomat Count Anton von Monts describes her in his memoirs as “by no means prudish”. Contemporaries sometimes emphasized the "aloof, esoteric" aspect of their appearance and attitude, and Anna Helmholtz remarked, albeit without reproach, that she was "completely focused on being, very little on doing".

In any case, Mimi von Schleinitz, even if Bernhard von Bülow recognized her as a “real Prussian”, was perceived by many contemporaries as an exception in the rough, male-military German-Prussian society. In 1871 Anna von Helmholtz wrote to her sister from Berlin:

"The only elegant woman I know here is Frau von Schleinitz, who looks like from another world."

Around the same time that the Schleinitz Salon only existed for a few years, the French ambassador Élie de Gontaut-Biron came to a comparable judgment, and this immediately after his country's defeat by Prussia-Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 :

“La baronne de Schleinitz, par la grâce de son esprit, son intelligence, ses talents de musicienne, est une des femmes les plus distinguées, sinon la plus distinguée, de la société allemande. »

"Due to the grace of her spirit, her understanding and her musical talents, the Baroness Schleinitz is one of the most outstanding, if not the most important, figures in German society."

As a salonnière of "natural grace" and "French style", who paid homage to the arts and liberal views, Mimi Schleinitz set an antipole to the political salon that her contemporary, the more conservative, intellectually conventional Bismarck admirer Baroness Spitzemberg , also used in Berlin Blossomed. Among the non-political salons, Mimi was more likely to attract artists, her friend Anna von Helmholtz more scientists. Petra Wilhelmy judges the mutual relationship between these two outwardly different but similarly minded women who ran the "most important Berlin salons of the empire":

“The friendship of the two ladies created the alliance between a noble and a bourgeois salon [...] The fact that both salons were in close contact with the Crown Prince couple and the liberals can be seen as a symptom of the attempt to 'found an inner empire' in the social field: It a connection between the cultivated natal aristocracy and the scientific intellectual aristocracy under liberal auspices was sought. The salons were a suitable medium for this program. "

As early as the 1870s, Marie von Schleinitz was one of the most famous women in Berlin, who, despite Bismarck's chancellorship, who feared any foreign influence on “his” emperor, had a steady position at court and in the imperial family. Georg Brandes , Danish writer and in the season 1880/81 at the Berlin court, reports the following ball scene:

“The imperial couple has entered the hall. First the emperor begins his tour, then the empress - each one for himself [...] The old gentleman first greets Countess Schleinitz [...] He is too rascal to pass a very beautiful lady without spending a few minutes to talk to her; he takes no notice of the less beautiful. "

The intellectual historical significance of her social and cultural appearance, which at the same time points to her tense relationship with Otto von Bismarck, reveals an admittedly pointed remark by Nicolaus Sombart , according to which “Mimi Schleinitz's salon […] and the barbaric, totally uncultivated meerkat cave which were hostile to the Bismarcks. Both on Wilhelmstrasse. Culture was lived there, power here. "

But even the less polemical Maximiliane von Oriola , who called Frau von Schleinitz “a graceful figure with beautiful eyes” and the “most elegant and influential woman in Berlin society”, “could not think of a greater contrast than the well-groomed, highly cultured and elegant Art filled conviviality in the beautiful rooms of the house ministry and the almost Spartan simplicity of Bismarck's domesticity. "

Bismarck's opponent

Otto von Bismarck fought in vain against Mimi's influence

The opposition that Marie von Schleinitz had with the Reich Chancellor and Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck and his wife Johanna is of historical significance . Even in the late period of the constitutional conflict , she and her husband Alexander, a liberal-minded protagonist of the New Era and favorite of the progressive Queen Augusta , were in opposition to the then unpopular Prime Minister von Bismarck, who was Schleinitz - House Ministry and " State Ministry " of equal rank two independent institutions - still sourly in his memoirs the "special politician" of Princess Augusta or simply "her" minister, but his authority called the "counter ministry of the queen":

"Although Mimi von Schleinitz was much more interested in literature and music than in politics, her salon was not only considered a cultural center, but also a 'meeting point for the numerous Bismarck fronde ' ( Siegfried von Kardorff )."

Countess, later Princess Bismarck, returned the favor with violent remarks against the “horrible, obnoxious, affected Mimi”, who is said to have been called “shark” in the Bismarck household because of her broad smile. Mimi tried to find a balance: in 1873, through the mediation of the ambassador Joseph Maria von Radowitz, she even managed to invite Bismarck - albeit without a lady - to a dinner at the house ministry, at which the “iron chancellor” got along brilliantly with “Excellency Mimi” should have:

“Mimi Schleinitz often tried to get into a friendly relationship with Bismarck and thereby initiate a reconciliation between him and her husband. [...] But where Bismarck once hated it was not easy to really reconcile. A few days later a paper close to Bismarck published an article against Alexander von Schleinitz, which was no less sharp than previous ones. "

In the long term, this intermezzo did not change anything about Bismarck's fundamental aversion to the Schleinitz couple. It is very likely that this reluctance also played a decisive role in his absolute refusal to agree to a marriage between his eldest son Herbert and his lover, Princess Elisabeth zu Carolath-Beuthen , in 1881: The Princess was a daughter of Prince Hatzfeldt's first marriage, Mimis Stepfather; at the same time her sister Franziska von Hatzfeldt was first married to Mimi's uncle Paul von Nimptsch. Throughout his life Bismarck pursued the house of Hatzfeldt - Schleinitz - Loë with fervent hatred and saw in this entangled genealogical "rat king" an "anti-imperial" clique that he could not get over with state violence. This attitude became even more acute during the Kulturkampf when the friendship of the (admittedly Protestant) married couple Schleinitz, against whose elevation to count in 1879 he unsuccessfully "bitterly" braced himself, with the Catholic-friendly Empress Augusta stimulated wild speculations. In 1877, at the height of the Kulturkampf, there is a diary entry in Cosima Wagner's diary, which proves the chancellor's antipathy, which borders on paranoia:

"Mrs. v. Schl [einitz]. shares all sorts of strange things about Berlin; Bismarck, who literally hates her and her husband, claims in the newspapers that she is giving the emperor the [Catholic newspaper] imperial bell, that Bayreuth is only the cloak for her ultramontane intrigues, etc. "

Salonnière

Evening party with Frau von Schleinitz . Drawing by Adolph Menzel , 1875. In front left Mimi, left (with chair) and right of her the Helmholtz couple, in the middle the Crown Prince couple, right next to them Mr. von Schleinitz

The pianist and Liszt student Carl Tausig : He was Mimi's piano teacher and the first president of the Bayreuth Patronage Association

Wrong with both Frau von Schleinitz and Bismarcks: Philipp zu Eulenburg , who in his memories paints an authentic picture of the Schleinitz couple

The young Harry Graf Kessler , who took his first steps into elegant society at Salon Schleinitz in Berlin and Paris

In his memoirs, do not save with tips against Mimi: Reich Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow

Social structure

Marie von Schleinitz ran a literary salon in Berlin from 1865 until her death in 1912 , with a longer break from 1886 to 1903. She also ran salons in Petersburg and Paris, where her second husband held the post of Austrian ambassador during this period , there in her husband's residence. Her Berlin salon - located in the palace that her first husband, as Royal Prussian House Minister, had moved into at Wilhelmstrasse 73, after 1903 in the fine Palast Hotel on Potsdamer Platz - was the most famous of its time in Germany and attracted public figures from all of them Directions to, but especially artists, writers and especially musicians. The historian Michael Freund writes:

“The greats of the country, emperors and kings, crown princes, generals, diplomats and statesmen met at Frau von Schleinitz's; But respect was also shown to leading representatives of intellectual life. Anyone who was admitted to Frau von Schleinitz's exclusive salon had passed the admission exam for the higher society of Prussia. "

The salon, whose exclusivity was primarily due to its cultural and intellectual quality, quickly became the center of the second Berlin Rococo and based its style and habitus on contemporary French models such as the Paris salon of Pauline von Metternich , but above all on the salons, the Dorothea von Kurland and Luise Radziwill in the Berlin of Friedrich Wilhelm III. had led. Lilli Lehmann describes the atmosphere in the Schleinitz house:

"Count and Countess Schleinitz gave just as cozy teas in their private apartment as they did in Berlin in the House Ministry, where one was always at ease in elegant comfort, surrounded by select people."

Although herself an aristocrat, Mimi consciously drew middle-class citizens into her circle early on and opened up for them the formerly exclusive court society, to which she herself, as the house minister's wife, naturally had access. Conversely, she made the world of artists interesting for the leading circles in the capital and was able to inspire many of her peers for her favorite Richard Wagner, for whom her salon naturally offered a first-class social forum. In trying to "break a breach in the exclusivity of the Berlin court society", she assumed an excellent pioneering role, as the thoroughly conservative Fedor von Zobeltitz also stated:

“In the sharply bureaucratic air of the capital, up to the French campaign, people were even stricter than today on segregation of castes and on a class-appropriate structure. The Schleinitz salon was actually the first with its social composition to break through the prejudices that a certain party of the court nobility […] cultivated with great tenacity. "

Cultural profile

Baroness Spitzemberg , Mimi's big competitor in the Berlin salon society. Painting by Wilhelm von Kaulbach , 1869

In an article for the Illustrirte Frauen-Zeitung from 1875, the painter and writer Ludwig Pietsch moved Salon Schleinitz “into the tradition of the aristocratic French salons of the 17th and 18th centuries” and described the “Wilhelmstrasse between the Linden trees and the Leipziger Street where the House Ministry was located, as a kind of 'Faubourg Saint-Germain' ”. The comparison with the city palaces in the Parisian luxury quarter also referred to the interior, because the hostess had also developed a "passion for the brilliant, harmonious interior design of rooms":

“Ms. von Schleinitz mastered the difficult or at least seldom practiced art of taking elegance, atmosphere and practical aspects equally into account when furnishing her salon. There were echoes of the home decor of the 18th century: raspberry-colored damask was predominant, an exquisite tea service and sumptuous floral aragmenets set elegant accents. The ambience and sociability were closely linked. "

In terms of content, “Music and art [...] were the main focuses of the Schleinitz Salon”, especially the music: “While famous musicians and singers or talented amateurs played in the Schleinitz Salon, scientists and writers formed the audience.” Many great musicians of their time performed here according to the conductor Hans von Bülow , the violinist Joseph Joachim and the pianists Anton Rubinstein and Carl Tausig . But also Count Eulenburg , amateur composer and intimate of the last German emperor, performed ballads he had composed for the Schleinitz house. With her enthusiastic admiration for Wagner, it was a matter of course that Mimi put her salon fully in the service of advertising for the “master”, indeed made him a “social center of Wagnerism” and “in countless matinees and soirees for ideal and material support from Bayreuth Werkes "advertised, which did not meet with approval from all of their guests. In 1873 the Baroness Spitzemberg noted in her diary:

“Friday evening we should go to Frau von Schleinitz, where Richard Wagner is to read the text to his ' Nibelungen '. Carl [von Spitzemberg] had little desire to do so, and on top of that we feared that the matter might end with a collection of money for Bayreuth, which we would not be inclined to do. "

At Countess Schleinitz's soirées , in addition to musical entertainment, philosophical and spiritualistic reflections, mostly from the context of contemporary pessimism , but never without an idealistic element, formed the basis of the conversation that the "impulsive" hostess, who "came from a single source" worked, not only inspired, but mostly also took it in hand with commitment and steered confidently. Again her friend Anna von Helmholtz:

“Count and Countess Wolkenstein [...] lead their lives in Paris just like here [in Berlin] or in Bayreuth or in Ivano with Goethe and Schopenhauer as constant companions, with red damask as a background and a number of preferred people they see every day; the conventional goes alongside, but takes up little time. "

According to the testimony of the American diplomat Andrew Dickson White , who visited Mimi's salon both in Berlin and in St. Petersburg, one heard there “the best talk by the most interesting men”. A curiosity was the exhibition of several pictures by Franz von Lenbach in 1880 , whereby the likeness of her intimate enemy Bismarck appeared several times in the Schleinitz house.

effect

Mimi von Schleinitz, one of the last “great women”, was unusually popular among her contemporaries and gathered a large number of admirers into old age. Hans von Bülow once remarked that he had only one criticism of Bismarck, "that he did not like Frau von Schleinitz," and the French writer Pierre de Lano sums up the mood in Berlin society after the Countess went to Sankt in 1886 for her new husband Petersburg:

«La comtesse de Schleinitz a été très regrettée, car elle est femme d'esprit et possède un grand talent musical; car elle aimait à réunir des gens intelligents autour d'elle, à faire échange de pensées avec les hommes en vue, à discuter même les événements et à tirer, de leur marche bonne ou mauvaise, quelque philosophie. »

“The Countess Schleinitz was missed a lot because she is a woman of spirit and has great musical talent. She loves to gather intelligent people around her, to exchange ideas with the great men, to discuss what has happened and to derive a kind of philosophy from their outcome, good or bad. "

Nonetheless, there is no lack of critical voices accusing the "elegant and clever Countess" of affectation, "exaltation" - the Baroness Spitzemberg, for example, called her "graceful" and "screaming" - and of being too forced to be aloof from the practical side of life. Bernhard von Bülow , who was reserved towards her as a Bismarck pupil and claimed in a letter to Herbert von Bismarck that Mimi hated him "in the bottom of her soul", describes her as follows:

“In addition to great qualities, Mimi Schleinitz also had great flaws. She was mannered in her posture, facial expressions, language, in the whole way of presenting herself, often also in her thoughts. Molière 's 'Précieuses ridicules' would have welcomed her as a sister. She was very vain, in a way that at times provoked ridicule. "

She never got involved in charitable or women's political issues, which were the main field of activity of many aristocrats at the time. Nevertheless, it remains to her that in the young Berlin of the Wilhelminian era and the Belle Époque with her salon, this "interface between the court and society under Wilhelm I" and "center of the Berlin Wagner community", a cultivated, subtle sociability developed and preserved for decades as it had last existed at the time of Rahel Varnhagen , with whom it, although socialized in a completely different way, shows some similarities and is therefore probably not unjustly compared occasionally.

Harry Graf Kessler , the great chronicler of the high society of old Europe before its downfall, said in Mimi's "witty, somewhat precious remarks and romantic ideas" he still felt "the scent of Bettina and Rachel", and later, after the great catastrophe of the First World War , it appeared to him, who in the 1890s as a young man of letters and "homme du monde" had frequented her Parisian salon, "like one last, somewhat artificially preserved flower from the magic garden of my childhood":

“Hardly beautiful, but wisely cultivating a sure continuity of girlish youthfulness, she appeared in the evening in a cloud of lace and tulle with subdued light in the state rooms of her embassy and began a conversation with those present almost without transition, which was like a chapter from the elective affinities [...] So she gave everyone to name a gemstone [...] and then someone present whose essence corresponds to that of this gemstone. Young attaches got embarrassed, girlfriends got sweet and sour or poisonous. But she sat before the court like a tournament queen. "

Kessler called it "a symbol of the Goethe era, which was ousted by" blood and iron ", by heavy industry and the military," [...]

The “peaceful, elegant house, where people philosophized, played music […] and laughed, where nobody had to be afraid of boredom”, was one of the last places of genuine, warm and humane culture in the “world of yesterday” before 1914, “a real one A work of art [...] of arrangement and color effect, at the same time so useful and comfortable ”, as Anna von Helmholtz found; his host Mimi Schleinitz, however, is "a life artist who tried to create a" work of art "from everyday life - in a certain analogy to Rahel."

Countess Schleinitz. Portrait of Lenbach, undated

Salon des Hôtel Matignon in Paris, where Count and Countess Wolkenstein resided from 1894 to 1903

During her lifetime, Count Paul Vasili ( i.e. Catherine Radziwill), "who" frequented her salon - it wasn't Auguste Gérard , the former French reader and confidante of Empress Augusta - characterized the Countess as follows:

«Elle n'a ni préventions ni préjugés étroits d'aucune variety. Avec cela, femme du monde accomplie, nullement bas- bleu, sachant dissimuler son savoir, jeter un voile discret sur ses qualités, bienveillante par nature, et aussi trop occupée pour avoir le temps de médire ou de soupçonner. »

“She has no reservations or special prejudices. A perfect woman of the world, not at all blue-stocked, she knows how to hide her knowledge and cast a veil over her abilities, is benevolent by nature and generally too busy for slander and suspicion. "

Anna von Helmholtz, a typical representative of bourgeois German intellectuality, vividly described the atmosphere that Countess Mimi Wolkenstein developed in the Austrian Embassy in Paris, in the building of the Hôtel Matignon , today's official residence of the French Prime Minister:

“I walk over a red marble staircase, in the winding of which there is a large, tall, say flowering palm tree, up to the dear hosts - and I feel as if I were guest of Frederick the Great . No archduke has ever been in these rooms, only the Knesebecks, Cosima, Princess Hatzfeld and myself. "

Well-known habitués

Kaiser Wilhelm I. Empress Augusta Kaiser Wilhelm II. Heinrich von Angeli Désirée Artot Prince Max of Baden Reinhold Begas Franz Betz Gustav Friedrich von Beyer Otto von Bismarck Arnold Böcklin Marianne Brandt Lothar Bucher Bernhard von Bülow Daniela von Bülow Hans von Bülow Marie von Bunsen Ernst Dohm Eleonora Duse Karl Anton Eckert Philipp zu Eulenburg

Arthur de Gobineau Ferdinand Count of Harrach Victor Hehn Anna von Helmholtz Hermann von Helmholtz Prince Hermann of Hohenlohe-Langenburg Bogdan Count von Hutten-Czapski Joseph Joachim Harry Graf Kessler Robert von Keudell Hermann Graf Keyserling Karl Klindworth Ludwig Knaus Botho von dem Knesebeck Lilli Lehmann Franz von Lenbach Karl Max Prince of Lichnowsky Franz Liszt

Walter of Loë Leopold of Loën Adolf von Menzel Ottmar von Mohl Robert von Mohl Helmuth Count von Moltke Kuno Graf von Moltke Theodor Mommsen Georg Prince Munster zu Derneburg Albert Niemann Helene von Nostitz Hedwig von Olfers Luise Countess of Oriola Maximiliane Countess of Oriola Ludwig Pietsch Joseph Maria von Radowitz Leopold von Ranke August Reichensperger Gustav Richter Raoul Richter

Anton Rubinstein Odo Russell Thassilo von Scheffer Wilhelm Scholz Hildegard von Spitzemberg Otto von Taube Carl Tausig Guido from Usedom Cosima Wagner Richard Wagner Johanna Wagner-Jachmann Carl Friedrich Weitzmann Anton von Werner Adolf von Wilbrandt Anton von Wolkenstein-Trostburg Hans von Wolzüge

literature

swell

Von Schleinitz family

• Otto Freiherr von Schleinitz (ed.): From the papers of the family v. Schleinitz. With a preliminary remark by Fedor von Zobeltitz . Berlin 1904.

Wagner family

• Cosima Wagner : The diaries . 2 volumes, Munich 1976 f.
• Richard Wagner : writings and poems . 16 volumes. Fritzsch, Leipzig 1911.
• Richard Wagner Foundation Bayreuth (Ed.): Richard Wagner: All letters . 13 volumes. Leipzig 2000-2003.

Others

• Otto von Bismarck : Thoughts and Memories . Edited by Ernst Friedlaender , Stuttgart 1959.
• Bernhard von Bülow : Memories . 4 volumes, Berlin 1930 f.
• Hans von Bülow : Letters and Writings . 8 volumes, ed. Marie von Bülow, Leipzig 1895–1911.
• Marie von Bunsen : contemporaries that I experienced . Leipzig 1932.
• Philipp zu Eulenburg : From fifty years . Paetel, Berlin 1923, p. 58 f.
• Anna von Helmholtz : Anna von Helmholtz. A picture of life in letters . Edited by Ellen von Helmholtz-Siemens , 2 volumes, Berlin 1929.
• Harry Graf Kessler : Faces and Times (= Collected Writings , Volume 1). Frankfurt / Main 1988.
• Lilli Lehmann : My way . Volume 1, Leipzig 1913.
• Maximiliane von Oriola : Maxe von Arnim, daughter of Bettina, Countess Oriola, 1818–1894. A picture of life and time drawn from old sources . Edited by Johannes Werner, Leipzig 1937.
• Hildegard von Spitzemberg : Diary . Edited by Rudolf Vierhaus , Göttingen 1960.
• Fedor von Zobeltitz : Chronicle of the society under the last empire . 2 vol., Hamburg 1922.

Secondary literature

• Hans-Joachim Bauer: Schleinitz, Marie Countess of . In: Richard Wagner Lexicon . Bergisch Gladbach 1988, p. 437.
• Carl Friedrich Glasenapp : The Life of Richard Wagner . 6 volumes, Leipzig 1905–1912.
• Martin Gregor-Dellin : Richard Wagner. His life - his work - his century . Munich 1980.
• La Mara (i.e. Marie Lipsius): Countess Marie Schleinitz, now Countess Wolkenstein - Countess Marie Dönhoff, now Princess Bülow . In: Liszt and the women . Leipzig 1911, pp. 259-272.
• David C. Large: The Political Background of the Foundation of the Bayreuth Festival, 1876 : In: Central European History . Volume 11. No. 2 (= June), 1978, pp. 162-172.
• George R. Marek: Cosima Wagner. A life for a genius . Hestia, Bayreuth ³ 1983.
• Richard Du Moulin-Eckart : Cosima Wagner. A picture of life and character . Berlin 1929.
• Kurt von Reibnitz: Countess Schleinitz-Wolkenstein . In: The great lady. From Rahel to Kathinka . Dresden 1931, p. 138 f.
• Winfried Schüler: The Bayreuth Circle from its inception to the end of the Wilhelmine era. Wagner cult and cultural reform in the spirit of folk worldview . Aschendorff, Münster 1971 (also dissertation, Münster 1969).
• Petra Wilhelmy: The Berlin Salon in the 19th Century . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1989, pp. 274-81, 345-48, 531-533, 820-29.
• Hans von Wolzüge : Obituary for Marie Countess von Wolkenstein-Trostburg . In: Bayreuth leaves. 1912, pp. 169-72.

Web links

Commons : Marie von Schleinitz  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• “The Grande Dame of Prussia”, on the 100th anniversary of Marie von Schleinitz's death. From the "ZeitZeichen" series, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, May 18, 2012 on: wdr.de (14:41 min.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Helmholtz, Volume 1, p. 289 (April 8, 1886).
2. ↑ See Wilhelmy, p. 563, ad En. 1184.
3. ↑ Cf. Bülow, Volume 4, p. 307, as well as Wilhelmy, p. 246: “It was the only Berlin salonnière besides ' Rahel ' and ' Bettina ', of which, at least during the time of their first salon, one very often only called the first name. The fact that 'Mimi' could not fully assert itself as a cipher for her was mainly due to her high rank, which required a certain distance, at least in the written statements of the guests who were further away from her and who were inferior to her. "
4. ↑ About a soirée with musical amateurs of high society in 1875 Anna von Helmholtz (Volume 1, p. 196 (March 9, 1875)) reports: “But it was all amateur pleasure, only Ms. von Schleinitz's performance was artistically, briefly and charmingly played . "
5. ↑ See Walter G. Armando, Franz Liszt , Hamburg 1961, p. 322.
6. ↑ See La Mara , p. 260.
7. ↑ Wilhelmy speaks of her "extraordinary reading and admiration for Goethe", p. 346; see. also Bunsen, p. 66: "Goethe was her heavenly star, she owed her spiritual nobility to him".
8. ↑ Helmholtz, Volume 1, p. 289 (April 8, 1886) reports that she had converted her second husband, Wolkenstein, from an “extreme Catholicism” to a “pleasurable Schopenhauerian pessimism”.
9. ↑ See La Mara, pp. 263, 269.
10. ↑ cf. La Mara, p. 259.
11. ↑ ^{a b} cf. Lehmann, p. 304.
12. ↑ Cf. Gregor-Dellin, p. 514.
13. ↑ See Glasenapp, Volume 6, p. 507.
14. ↑ ^{a b c d} See Wilhelmy, p. 278.
15. ↑ Cf. Gregor-Dellin, p. 642: "If Marie von Schleinitz, the wife of the Prussian house minister, hadn't promoted Wagner imaginatively and energetically and headed the Berlin patronage movement, Bayreuth would probably never have come about."
16. ↑ See La Mara, p. 261.
17. ↑ See Glasenapp, Volume 5, p. 150 f.
18. ↑ Cf. Cosima Wagner, Volume 1, p. 207 (March 9, 1870): "The Minister Schleinitz guards the rehearsals of the master singers with enthusiasm."
19. ↑ See Schüler, p. 235.
20. ↑ See Wilhelmy, p. 534, ad endnote 783.
21. ↑ See Bülow letters, Volume 4, p. 271.
22. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Cf. Wilhelmy, p. 288.
23. ↑ Cf. Cosima Wagner, Die Tagebücher , 2 volumes, Munich 1976 f., Volume 2, p. 347 (May 10, 1879).
24. ↑ See Wagner, Schriften und Dichtungen , Volume 9, pp. 322–345.
25. ↑ See Wagner, Schriften und Dichtungen , Volume 12, p. 383.
26. ↑ See Nietzsche, First Untimely Consideration , in: Works in four volumes , ed. v. Karl Schlechta , Volume 1, Munich 1954, p. 137.
27. ↑ See Glasenapp, Volume 6, p. 75.
28. ↑ See Helmholtz, Volume 1, p. 263 (February 17, 1883).
29. ^ So Marie von Bunsen , p. 67.
30. ↑ See John Röhl , Wilhelm II. , Volume 1, Munich 1993, p. 265.
31. ↑ See Wilhelmy, p. 348.
32. ↑ ^{a b} See Wilhelmy, p. 280.
33. ↑ Cf. Monts, Memories and Thoughts , Berlin 1932, p. 154.
34. ↑ ^{a b c} See Wilhelmy, p. 347.
35. ↑ See Helmholtz, Volume 2, p. 178 (February 13, 1899)
36. ↑ cf. Bülow, Volume 4, p. 307.
37. ↑ See Helmholtz, Volume 1, p. 165 (June 24, 1871).
38. ^ Gontaut-Biron: Mon ambassade en Allemagne (1872–1873) . Paris 1906, p. 34; German Wilhelmy, p. 275
39. ↑ ^{a b} See Wilhelmy, p. 275.
40. ↑ See Wilhelmy, p. 289.
41. ↑ See Ludwig Pietsch , cited above. n. Wilhelmy, p. 277: "More and more she [...] has become one of the most 'famous' women in Berlin [...] There is hardly a second lady in society in Berlin that we talk about as much and as often as about Mrs. von Schleinitz. "
42. ↑ See Brandes, Hofball (February 18, 1881), in: Berlin as the German capital. Memories from the years 1877–1883 (German by Peter Urban-Halle ), Berlin 1989, p. 407.
43. ↑ See Sombart, Wilhelm II. Scapegoat and Herr der Mitte , Berlin 1996, p. 165.
44. ↑ ^{a b} See Oriola, p. 258.
45. ↑ See Bismarck, p. 100.
46. ↑ Cf. Bismarck, p. 217.
47. ↑ Cf. Bismarck, p. 489.
48. ↑ See also Wilhelmy, p. 246 ff.
49. ↑ See Wilhelmy, p. 247 f.
50. ^ So Fürst Bülow , Volume 4, p. 555.
51. ↑ See Bunsen, p. 64.
52. ↑ See Joseph Maria von Radowitz , Aufzüge und Kollegen , Volume 1, Stuttgart 1925, p. 268.
53. ↑ Bülow, Volume 4, p. 308 f.
54. ↑ NB: General Walter von Loë , the only Catholic adjutant general of the emperor and critic of the Kulturkampf , was married to Franziska von Hatzfeldt in their second marriage.
55. ^ So Bülow, Volume 4, p. 307.
56. ↑ See Wilhelmy, p. 246.
57. ↑ Cf. Bismarck, p. 488 ff., V. a. 490.
58. ↑ See Diaries , Volume 1, p. 1062 (July 26, 1877).
59. ↑ The people facing the viewer from left to right: Hermann Helmholtz , Heinrich von Angeli , Mimi Schleinitz, Anna Helmholtz, Hofmarschall Götz Graf von Seckendorff, the court lady Hedwig Countess von Brühl, Crown Princess Victoria , Wilhelm Graf von Pourtalès, Crown Prince Friedrich , Alexander von Schleinitz, Anton von Werner , Prince Hermann zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg .
60. ↑ See Abendglanz Europäische , Stuttgart: DVA 1967, p. 201.
61. ↑ A more detailed, clear description of the Schleinitz salon is provided by Lilli Lehmann, p. 239 f.
62. ↑ Cf. Anton von Werner , Erlebnisse und Impresse 1870–1890 , Berlin 1913, p. 95: “Except at the crown prince's court and in the Schleinitz salon, at that time […] you only met artists or artists in a few other houses belonging to the court circles or the aristocracy Inclinations. "
63. ↑ See Helmholtz, Volume 1, p. 184 (January 26, 1873): “At Frau von Schleinitz's again there was a large soirée, where Richard Wagner gave a lecture to an audience of princes and ministers, ambassadors, beautiful women and all the top of art and science. "
64. ↑ ^{a b c} See Wilhelmy, p. 276.
65. ↑ Zobeltitz, Volume 2, p. 78.
66. ↑ See Wilhelmy, p. 277.
67. ↑ See Wilhelmy, p. 274.
68. ↑ See for example Helmholtz, Volume 1, p. 185 (May 16, 1873).
69. ↑ See Schüler, p. 127.
70. ↑ See Spitzemberg, p. 138 (January 17, 1873).
71. ↑ See Helmholtz, Volume 2. p. 171 (November 16, 1898).
72. ↑ See Andrew Dickson White , Autobiography , New York 1905, Volume 2, p. 46; German: "the best conversations of the most interesting people".
73. ↑ So Nicolaus Sombart, in: A great lady : Essay on Helene von Nostitz , in: Die Zeit No. 40, 1991.
74. ↑ See Wilhelmy, p. 274: "Most judgments about them are extraordinarily positive."
75. ↑ See Bülow letters, p. 394.
76. ^ Lano, La cour de Berlin , Paris 1894, p. 275.
77. ↑ See Wilhelmy, p. 533, ad En. 759.
78. ^ Quoted in Wilhelmy, p. 275.
79. ↑ See Spitzemberg, p. 140 (March 4, 1873).
80. ↑ Quoted after Walter Bussmann (ed.), State Secretary Count Herbert von Bismarck , Göttingen 1964, p. 435; dt .: "at the bottom of her soul".
81. ↑ Bülow, Volume 4, p. 308.
82. ^ So Hans Philippi, Der Hof Kaiser Wilhelms II. , In: Karl Möckl (Ed.), Hof und Hofgesellschaft in den deutschen Länder in the 19th and early 20th centuries , Boppard 1990, p. 363.
83. ↑ See Kessler, p. 16.
84. ↑ See Kessler, p. 15.
85. ↑ Kessler, p. 15 f.
86. ↑ Kessler, p. 16.
87. ↑ See Lehmann, p. 239.
88. ↑ See Helmholtz, Volume 1, p. 288.
89. ↑ See Wilhelmy, p. 281.
90. ↑ See Le Comte Paul Vasili, La société de Berlin. Augmenté de lettres inédites , Paris 1884, p. 163 f.
91. ↑ Helmholtz, Volume 2, p. 175 (February 8, 1899).
92. ^ See Wilhelmy, pp. 823-29.