Marie Grubbe

Coat of arms of the Grubbe family, Danish nobility yearbook 1895

Marie "Maren" Grubbe (born August 25, 1643 in Havreballegård ; † January 1717 in Allerslev ) was a representative of the Danish aristocracy , whose life was seen by her contemporaries as unconventional and scandalous and whose person found its way into European literature, or was filmed.

biography

Marie Grubbe was born on August 25, 1643 as the daughter of the Danish country nobleman Erik Lauridsen Grubbe zu Tjele and Gammelgaard and his wife Maren Iversdatter Juul in Havreballegård near Aarhus in the Kingdom of Denmark . She lost her mother in childhood.

At the age of 14 she was brought to Copenhagen to see her paternal aunt, Regitze Grubbe. Regitze was close to the Danish court because she was married to an illegitimate son of King Christian IV and Karen Andersdatter, Hans Ulrich Gyldenlöwe (1615–1645). At the time Marie Grubbe's arrival at her aunt, she was already widowed. Regitze Grubbe introduced her niece to the Danish court. It is largely attributed to her influence that Marie Grubbe on December 16, 1660 with the illegitimate son of King Friedrich III. of Denmark and Norway , Ulrich Friedrich Gyldenlöwe , Count of Laurvig (1638–1704), was married. Gyldenlöwe had to dissolve the illegitimate marriage he had entered into the previous year with the middle-class Sophie Urne, the mother of his two sons. Despite several attempts at reconciliation by Marie's father, the marriage was unhappy. In 1664 Marie accompanied her husband to Oslo when he became viceroy of Norway . In 1667 Gyldenlöwe sent Marie back to her father and pushed for a divorce. She had numerous affairs, u. a. with Joachim Lambert, her husband's secretary, and Stygge Høeg, her sister's husband. A letter has been received in which she thanked him for not punishing her adultery with death, as would have been his right. In 1670 they were divorced with the approval of the king. Gyldenlöwe paid Marie Grubbe 12,000 Reichstaler, which she had brought into the marriage from her maternal inheritance. After the divorce, Marie Grubbe took on her maiden name again and went on extensive trips, which took her to Paris and Nuremberg , among other places .

At the time of the divorce, Marie Grubbe had been granted the right to remarry. In 1673 she was married to the nobleman Palle Clausen Dyre († 1707) at the instigation of her father . In 1685 they moved to their father's farm. There, Marie began a relationship with Søren Sørensen Møller, a former coachman of her father and later governor of Tjele. In 1690, the 85-year-old Erik Grubbe turned to the king and asked to disinherit his daughter and lock him in a monastery for life. Marie Grubbe remained arrested at her father's farm in Tjele until her divorce from Palle Dyre in 1691. Because of her adultery, Dyre kept her dowry so that she was now destitute.

With the divorce from Dyre, Marie Grubbe lost her parental inheritance and was forbidden from marrying a third time in the Kingdom of Denmark. As a result, she married her lover Søren Sørensen Møller in 1691 in Holstein, Germany . The couple lived in great poverty until Møller managed to get a ferry job on the island of Falster , near Stubbekøbing . This position provided the couple with moderate livelihoods. In addition, Marie probably received support from the king's widow Charlotte Amalie von Hessen-Kassel . Widowed, Marie Grubbe died in Allerslev in January 1717. Ludwig Holberg visited her shortly before the end of her life and wrote down her life story.

Marie Grubbe's self-determined way of life brought her into conflict with her society and above all with her peers. But her connection with a simple farm laborer who was far below her class seemed absolutely unacceptable. The indiscreet and uncommonly sovereign way of dealing with her life and especially her love affairs led the former noblewoman Marie Grubbe to the margins of society. This biography, understood as a crash, was followed very closely by contemporaries and served as a basis for literary and cinematic processing.

Literary and cinematic reception

Ludvig Holberg was the first to describe the life story of Marie Grubbe, which he recorded in conversations with her at the beginning of the 18th century on Falster.

In 1869, Hans Christian Andersen took on the life story of Marie Grubbe in his story Hønse-Grethes Familie (Engl: Hühnergretes Familie) .

In 1876 Jens Peter Jacobsen presented his novel Frau Marie Grubbe , which is, however, imprecise and incorrect in some historical dates, for example Møller's age at the time she met Marie Grubbe.

In 1940 her life was portrayed in an opera by Ebbe Hamerik .

In 1983 Wilhelmine Corinth published the novel Die Fährfrau, Marie Grubbe's passionate life .

In 1990 the life story of Marie Grubbe was filmed in a co-production between the GDR, Poland, Hungary and Denmark.

swell

• Pernille Frederikke Hasselsteen: Marie Grubbe (ca.1643 - ca.1718) . In: Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon (Danish)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Marie Grubbe. In: Moviepilot. Retrieved May 5, 2019 .