Marie of Radziwiłł

Princess Marie Radziwiłł

Marie Dorothea Princess of Radziwiłł , b. Comtesse de Castellane (born February 19, 1840 in Paris , † July 10, 1915 in Kleinitz / Silesia ) was a politically influential Berlin salonnière and Polish aristocrat of French origin.

Life

The daughter of the Marquis Henri de Castellane (1814–1847) and Princess Pauline von Talleyrand -Périgord (1820–1890) was born into a real Salonnièren - "dynasty". She spent her childhood in Paris, after her father's early death on her mother's Silesian property. After her marriage and moving to Berlin, she quickly became one of the most prominent personalities in the courtly and political society of the young German Empire . In close contact with the old imperial couple, she cultivated a French salon style and exercised indirect political influence through her origins and numerous acquaintances, especially during the Kulturkampf in the 1870s and 80s, when Catholicism in Germany and the French who lived there and the Polish minority faced severe reprisals from the government and authorities. This caused them to become hostile to Otto von Bismarck .

With the beginning of the war in 1914, the Berlin salon life died out, whose internationality, sophistication and ideological informality had hardly been expressed anywhere as in the Radziwiłł salon. The princess herself, widowed since 1904, was exposed to the - unjustified - accusation of espionage because of her French origins and withdrew to her Silesian property, where she died in 1915.

As a salonière, Princess Marie was in the tradition of her grandmother Dorothea von Kurland and her husband's grandmother, Princess Luise Radziwiłł, born Princess of Prussia (see famous relatives ). She also edited the Mémoiren Luises and the correspondence of Dorothea (see editorship ).

salon

Princess Marie von Radziwiłł in a photograph from 1890

From the mid-1860s until the beginning of the First World War in August 1914, Marie Radziwiłł ran a predominantly politically oriented salon in Berlin. Until 1878 the location was the Palais Radziwill at Wilhelmstrasse 77, afterwards, after the Reich Chancellery had moved there, her city palace at Pariser Platz  3. Special features of her salon were besides the political focus

• Foreign languages: French was usually spoken;
• the national and confessional diversity: here was an above-average number of French and Poles as well as Catholics;
• the social composition: The guests came mainly from the nobility and high nobility and from court circles as well as the highest political functional classes.

In addition, the Salon Radziwiłł was considered the most important social center of aristocratic Bismarck opponents next to the Salon of Marie von Schleinitz . In this regard, as well as in its fundamental orientation, its contemporary counterpart was the Berlin salon of Baroness Spitzemberg , Bismarck's friend, who of course was personally friends with Princess Marie.

Marie's nephew Boniface “Boni” de Castellane (1867–1922) found the following judgment about her, which became a bon mot of the Belle Époque :

"Ma tante Radziwill, c'est le bœuf Apis en personne et la rein de Berlin. Lorsque ma future belle-sœur était princesse de Furstenberg et régnait elle-même à Berlin, elle trouvait constamment sa cousine sur son chemin. Dans les cérémonies de la cour, tantôt c'était elle qui avait le pas, comme princesse médiatisée, sur sa cousine et future tante, tantôt c'était le contraire, parce que le prince Radziwill était grand écuyer de l'Empereur. "

family

Marriage and offspring

Marie de Castellane married Prince Anton von Radziwiłł (1833–1904) in Sagan on October 3, 1857 , eldest son of the Prussian general Wilhelm Prince von Radziwill (1797–1870) and himself a Prussian officer and adjutant, since 1885 adjutant general of Kaiser Wilhelm I. who was raised to the Prussian prince's status in 1873 . They had four children:

• Georg (Jerzy) (1860-1914)
• Mathilda (1861-1950)
• Helena (1874-1958)
• Stanislaw (1880-1920)

Famous relatives

Marie de Castellane came from a famous family and married into an equally famous one. Her maternal grandparents were Dorothea von Sagan (1793–1862), daughter of Dorothea von Kurland and Edmond de Talleyrand-Périgord (1787–1872), nephew of the famous French Foreign Minister Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand . Her husband's paternal grandparents, in turn, were the temporary Prussian governor in Poznan Prince Anton Radziwiłł (1775–1833) and Princess Luise of Prussia (1770–1836), daughter of Prince Ferdinand (1730–1813) and sister of Prince Louis Ferdinand (1772– 1806) from Prussia.

Another great salonier and socialite of the time, Princess Dorothée "Dolly" Fürstenberg (1862-1948), née Princess Talleyrand-Périgord, was her first cousin twice, as her parents were each brother and sister. When Dolly married Marie's nephew Jean de Castellane (her own second nephew) after the death of her first husband, Prince Karl Egon IV zu Fürstenberg (1852-1896), she also became their niece.

Famous habitués

Emil of Albedyll Franz von Arenberg Empress Augusta Empress Auguste Victoria Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg Otto von Bismarck Bernhard von Bülow Marie von Bunsen Jules Cambon George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston Rudolph von Delbrück August to Eulenburg Botho zu Eulenburg

Heinrich von Friedberg Agenor Gołuchowski the Younger Élie de Gontaut-Biron Edward Goschen, 1st Baronet Wilhelm von Hahnke Hermann von Hatzfeldt-Trachenberg Marie zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst Bogdan von Hutten-Czapski Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev Ernst von Ihne Heinrich Friedrich von Itzenplitz Alfred von Kiderlen-Wächter Botho von dem Knesebeck

Lilli Lehmann Hugo Graf von und zu Lerchenfeld-Köfering (1843–1925) Walter of Loë Edward Malet Adolf Marshal von Bieberstein Laura Minghetti Helmuth von Moltke Georg Herbert of Munster Hedwig von Olfers Luise of Oriola Maximiliane of Oriola Hugo of Radolin Friedrich Wilhelm von Redern

Odo Russell, 1st Baron Ampthill Max von Schwartzkoppen Götz von Seckendorff Hildegard von Spitzemberg Cecil Spring-Rice Ladislaus von Szögyény-Marich Max von Thielmann Karl von Varnbuler Wilhelm Adolph Maximilian V. zu Wied Kaiser Wilhelm I. Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Publications

Memoirs

• Souvenirs de la Princesse Antoine Radziwill (née Castellane), 1840-1873. Une Française à la cour de Prusse . Edited by Countess Elisabeth and Countess Helena Potocka. 4th edition. Plon, Paris 1931.

Correspondence

• Letters from the German imperial court . Ullstein, Berlin 1936.
• Lettres de la Princesse Radziwill au Général de Robilant, 1889–1914. Une grande dame d'avant guerre . 4 volumes. Zanichelli, Bologna 1933 f.

Editing

• [Duchesse de Dino, puis Duchesse de Talleyrand et de Sagan]: Chronique de 1831 à 1862. Publié avec des annotations et un index biographique . 4 volumes. Plon, Paris 1908 f.
• Quarante-cinq années de ma vie (1770 à 1815). Louise de Prusse, Princesse Antoine Radziwill. Publié avec des annotations et un index biographique . Plon, Paris 1911.

literature

• Günter Erbe : Elegant Berlin. Princess Marie Radziwill and the great ladies of society 1871–1918 . Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2015.
• Petra Wilhelmy: The Berlin Salon in the 19th Century . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1989.

Web links

Commons : Marie von Radziwiłł  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Marie von Radziwiłł in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Pierre Grenaud, Gatien Marcailhou: Boni de Castellane et le Palais rose . Auteurs associés, Paris, p. 39; German: “My aunt Radziwill is the Apis animal in person and the Queen of Berlin. When my future sister-in-law was still Princess Fürstenberg and set the tone in Berlin herself, she kept clashing with her cousin. At court festivities, for example, this mediatized princess once had priority over her cousin and future aunt; but then again that, because Prince Radziwill was the Emperor's Oberstjägermeister. "