Marie Louise St. Simon-Montléart

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Marie Louise St. Simon-Montléart (born October 12, 1763 in Paris , † June 21, 1804 in Wildegg ) was a French aristocrat and lady-in-waiting who found asylum and a final resting place in Switzerland after emigrating as a result of the French Revolution .

Life

The Countess Marie Louise Saint-Simon came from the French noble family of Saint-Simon. She was born on October 12, 1763, the fourth child of Balthasar Henri de Rouvroy de Saint-Simon, Marquis de Sandricourt and his wife Blanche Isabelle de Rouvroy de Saint-Simon. The older brother, Henri de Saint-Simon , became an important French sociological and philosophical author at the time of the Restoration . As a small cousin she was more distantly related to the writer and politician Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon .

Marie Louise Saint-Simon married on May 28, 1786 in Versailles Louis Marie de Montléart, Comte de Montléart and Chevalier de Rumont, whose family traced back to the Counts of Sens . The marriage did not meet the young countess' expectations. Her son Julius Max Thibault Graf von Montléart, who was born in 1787 and an officer in the Sardinian Navy, enjoyed a steep career after emigrating to the Viennese court. He married into the imperial family and was raised to the rank of prince.

Marie Louise St. Simon-Montléart was on November 22, 1786 in Versailles with Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette as the lady of honor of Maria Josepha of Savoy, Countess of Provence. The position of Countess Montléart at court was fraught with difficulties due to the liberal attitude of her family. During the French Revolution, accompanied by the Duchesse Caylus, she fled via Koblenz to Switzerland and was accepted by the Bernese patrician family Effinger at Wildegg Castle for several years. Marie Louise St. Simon-Montléart had already made close friends in Paris with the Baroness Sophie von Effinger, who, for her part, was unhappily married. During a later visit to Wildegg in June 1804, Marie Louise St. Simon-Montléar died of pulmonary tuberculosis .

The forest grave of Countess Marie Louise St. Simon-Montléart

The forest grave of Countess Marie Louise St. Simon-Montléar near Wildegg Castle

Coordinates: 47 ° 25 '21.1 "  N , 8 ° 10' 33"  E ; CH1903:  six hundred and fifty-five thousand six hundred and twenty-seven  /  252675 After the early death at Schloss Wildegg on June 21, 1804 Marie Louise St. Simon Montléart received the grave still preserved in the nearby forest. The simple rectangular grave slab bears theinscription writtenby Count von Redern auf Bernsdorf : "After the storm of life, a noble woman rests here. Marie Louise St. Simon-Montléart, born in Paris on October 12, 1763, died in Wildegg, den June 21, 1804. She was born, a violet among thorns and thistles. Fought courageously with bitter misfortune from early childhood to the grave. Died quietly among friends, gladly anticipating higher destiny, for her actions were just and her words true. " The Count von Redern was her brother Henri Claude's business partner and had accompanied her from Montpellier to Wildegg Castle.

The unusual location of the forest grave inspired Walter Fähndrich (* 1944) to create his sound installation on site: "Music for a forest grave (2001)". The 15-minute piece begins at the time of the local sunset from loudspeakers in the vicinity of the grave.

A view of the grave of the Countess of Saint-Simon-Montléart was engraved by Johann Baptist Isenring (1796–1860) around 1840 .

Portraits of Countess Marie Louise St. Simon-Montléart

A portrait of Marie Louise St. Simon-Montléart, made around 1790 by the pastel painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard , was for sale in the Palais-Royal in 1991. Another portrait of Countess Montléart von Labille-Guiard or Alexandre Kucharski is in the Foundation Bemberg in Toulouse.

literature

  • Edward Attenhofer: A wreath on the grave of Countess Marie-Louise Montléart born. Saint-Simon at Wildegg Castle, Richard Müller printing house, 1939, 18 pages.
  • Hans Lehmann: The Wildegg Castle and its inhabitants, in: Argovia, volumes 37-39, Historical Society of the Canton of Aargau, Aarau, 1918, p. 272 ​​ff.
  • Small castle chronicle of the Wildegg Castle by Sophie von Erlach. Edited and commented by Andreas Furger, Zurich 1994.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nicolas Viton de Saint-Allais : Nobiliaire universel de France, ou recueil general des genealogies historiques des maisons nobles de ce royaume, Volume 1, Bureau du nobiliaire universel, 1814, pp. 508f.
  2. ↑ La Gazette de France, number 94 of November 24, 1786, p. 386.
  3. ↑ Works  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on Musinfo.ch@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.musinfo.ch  
  4. ↑ Roland Wäspe: Johann Baptist Isenring, 1796-1860: Print, State Archives of the Canton of St. Gallen, 1985, p. 156
  5. ↑ Une petite cousine de Saint-Simon sur le marché parisien - Portrait de la Princesse de Montléar par Adélaïde Labille-Guiard in: Cahiers Saint-Simon, Société Saint-Simon, edition 20-22,1992, p. 64 f.
  6. ↑ Portrait of Countess Montléart on Ladyreading.net
  7. ↑ Neil Jeffares: Dictionary of pastel ists before 1800, online version
  8. ↑ Labille-Guiard (PDF file; 3.02 MB) on Pastellists.com
personal data
SURNAME St. Simon-Montléart, Marie Louise
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French nobles
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1763
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1804
Place of death Wildegg