Marie Tussaud

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Marie Tussaud (1761–1850), called "Madame Tussaud" (around 1840)
Madame Tussaud at the age of 42, study by John Theodore Tussaud (1858–1943) from 1921
Marie Tussaud as a wax figure at work
Posters for the Tussaud wax figure collection exhibition in London, 1835.
Memorial plaque to Marie Tussaud in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church (London)

Marie Tussaud (* December 1761 (according to various sources on December 1, 7 or 12) in Strasbourg as (Anna) Maria Grosholtz ; † April 16, 1850 in London ) was a French wax artist and the founder of the museum named after her Madame Tussauds in London.

Life

childhood

Her father (Johann) Joseph Grosholtz was a soldier and died in the Seven Years' War two months before Marie's birth. Her mother Anne-Marie Walder was a housemaid in Bern with Philippe Curtius (1741–1794) and took Marie with her to Bern. In Bern, the mother acquired Swiss citizenship . Curtius was a doctor and familiar with the art of ceroplasty . He modeled human organs out of wax for object classes and also created erotic miniatures that sold well. He later portrayed well-known contemporaries. Marie called Curtius uncle .

In 1765 Curtius made the acquaintance of Louis François de Bourbon-Conti , a cousin of Louis XV. The prince invited him to Paris and found him an apartment on the elegant Rue Saint-Honoré . There Curtius refined his technique and began building a wax museum . In 1767 he had Marie and her mother follow.

Paris

Curtius taught the talented Marie to model, and when she was 17 she created the first life-size model, a portrait of Voltaire . She later portrayed other famous scouts such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin .

With the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Marie Grosholtz's customers disappeared. The wax heads of celebrities she created were impaled on poles, carried through the streets and mocked. They were later forced to make the death masks of prominent guillotine victims . Among them were King Louis XVI. , his wife Marie Antoinette and the revolutionaries Georges Danton and Maximilien de Robespierre . The wax heads she made for the executed were intended for the Revolution Museum.

Curtius died in 1794 and Marie inherited his wax figure collection. In 1795 Marie Grosholtz married the engineer François Tussaud († 1848). They had two sons (Joseph, 1798, and François, 1800). In 1800 she separated from her alcoholic husband, and they divorced in 1809.

With the outbreak of the coalition wars , there were no customers for the wax museum and Marie and her two underage sons got into financial difficulties. That's why she accepted an invitation to present her wax figures in England.

Great Britain and Ireland

In 1802 Marie Tussaud traveled to London with her four-year-old son Joseph at the invitation of the cartoonist Paul Philidor . It soon became clear that a return to France would be impossible for a long time because of the continental blockade. They roamed Great Britain and Ireland for a total of 33 years . Her second son François followed in 1822. Joseph learned his mother's art. Marie Tussaud never saw France or the father of her sons again.

In 1835 she opened her own museum on Baker Street in London. She wrote her memoir three years later. At the age of 81, she created her image as the last self-made figure in the cabinet. Then she handed the museum over to her sons.

Marie Tussaud died on April 16, 1850 at the age of 88. Their final resting place is in the graveyard of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in London district of Chelsea .

In 1884 the museum was moved to Marylebone Road .

Autobiography

  • Marie Tussaud: Madame Tussaud's memoirs and reminiscences of France , Ed. F. Hervé, London 1838.

literature

  • Dorrit Willumsen : Marie. A novel about the life of Madame Tussaud. Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 1987, ISBN 3-356-00069-1 .
  • Alex Capus : Himmelsstürmer: Twelve portraits. Biographies of different people, u. a. Marie Grosholtz aka Madame Tussaud. Albrecht Knaus Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8135-0314-2 .
  • Sabine Weiß: The wax painter: The life of Madame Tussaud. List, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-548-60845-7 .
  • Sabine Weiß: The wax painter's cabinet: The Madame Tussaud novel. List, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-548-60977-5 .
  • Edward Carey: The Extraordinary Life of a Maid Called PETITE, better known as Madame Tussaud. Novel. CH Beck, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-4067-3948-4 .

Web links

Commons : Marie Tussaud  - Collection of Images

supporting documents

  1. ^ Birth certificate in the Archives of the City of Strasbourg
  2. ↑ a b c d Alex Capus : Himmelsstürmer: Twelve Portraits , p. 11ff
  3. ↑ Claudia Lanfranconi, Antonia Meiners: Smart business women. Elisabeth Sandmann Verlag, Munich 2010. ISBN 978-3-938045-22-0
  4. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Marie Tussaud
personal data
SURNAME Tussaud, Marie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grosholtz, Marie (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Founder of the wax museum "Madame Tussaud"
DATE OF BIRTH December 1761
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 1850
Place of death London