Mary of Waldersee

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Marie von Waldersee, drawing from 1889
Signature, 1889

Mary Esther von Waldersee (born on October 3, 1837 in New York City as Mary Esther Lee ; died on July 4, 1914 near Hanover ) was an American-German philanthropist and wife of Alfred von Waldersee , Moltke's successor as Chief of the General Staff .

Life

Mary Esther Lee was the youngest daughter of the New York merchant David Lee and his wife Anne Duryce, née Phillips. After the death of her father, the rich widow moved to Europe with her five children in January 1853. The sister Blanche married a British naval officer, the sister Josephine married August von Wächter , the Württemberg ambassador to the French court , in 1855 . In the period from 1859 to 1862, Mary Esther Lee traveled through France, Scotland and Germany (such as Bad Ems and Stuttgart ). She was repeatedly invited by Josephine to her household in Paris , also frequented court and became Emperor Napoleon III. presented. There she met Friedrich Emil August from Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg . She got the exiled prince to give up his titles and rights in Denmark. Thereupon he received the title of "Prince of Noer" from the Austrian emperor and married her in November 1864. However, he died in July 1865 during a trip to Palestine , and Mary von Noer returned to Paris, where she stayed with her sister until 1870 lived. She won several lawsuits for her husband's inheritance. After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War , she accompanied her sister to Württemberg.

There the widow met Lieutenant Colonel Alfred von Waldersee , whom she married on April 14, 1874 and accompanied to his changing places of residence in Hanover and Berlin . Through her first marriage she was good friends with the later German Empress Auguste Viktoria and thus also got to know the Crown Prince Wilhelm II . The friend of the imperial couple was controversial at court because of her conservative-Christian, but also socio-political sense of mission. She was a generous supporter of the Berlin City Mission and the Christian Association of Young Men (YMCA), which Friedrich von Schlümbach founded in Berlin in 1882/83. In particular, she sponsored the construction of the Immanuel Chapel . Through their mediation, the well - known anti-Semite and founder of the Berlin City Mission, Adolf Stoecker , was appointed Berlin court preacher for several years. In 1891, however, she and her husband lost all influence at court when he became commander in Altona . Once again she was committed to the YMCA and the Hamburg City Mission .

Back in Hanover, she was in close contact with the German Women's Mission Prayer Association and was also a co-founder and financial sponsor of the Bible House in the Malche near Bad Freienwalde . Her mother, who last accompanied her on her life wards, died in her household in 1899. She took part in the Blankenburg alliance conferences and in 1903 traveled one last time to America, where her brother David had died. After her husband's death in 1904, she had a mausoleum built on the cemetery of Gut Waterneverstorfs , which is still owned by the family today.

After the death of her husband, the widow continued to live at 40 Hohenzollernstrasse , according to the 1912 yearbook of wealth and income of millionaires in Prussia as "Countess Esther von Waldersee , Excellency " . For the Markuskirche , built between 1902 and 1906, she donated the altar created by Otto Lüer and equipped with a painting of the risen Christ by Oscar Wichtendahl . Assumptions that the altar was destroyed later in World War II are not correct. The altarpiece stood in St. Mark's Church until 1967 and was only then removed from the chancel and stored.

She herself died in the summer of 1914 shortly before a planned trip to Strasbourg and Switzerland .

reception

While some of Mary von Waldersee's biographers ascribed her to a large to formative influence on the early socio-political decisions of the young Emperor Wilhelm II, and described her as an unscrupulous schemer who is said to have planned her husband's career up to Chancellor, others saw her as one Deeply religious promoter of Christian and social issues, who is only supposed to have always had the (spiritual) well-being of her fellow human beings in view. Unlike her Presbyterian father, she is said to have found true religiosity only late and with the adoption of the Lutheran denomination in 1862.

literature

  • Elisabeth Waldersee: Countess Marie Esther von Waldersee, widowed Princess von Noer b. Lee, b. October 3, 1837, died July 4, 1914. A picture of life drawn by her niece Countess Elisabeth Waldersee , 4th, revised edition of the first edition published in 1915 in Stuttgart, German Philadelphia Association, Berlin: Acker-Verlag, 1931
  • Reprint by Louis Krompotic (Ed.): The EU and their ancestors in the mirror of historical sources , Vol. 10, Hannover: HZ, 2009, ISBN 978-3-940899-42-2
  • Thomas Hahn-Bruckart :  Waldersee, Mary Esther von. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 34, Bautz, Nordhausen 2013, ISBN 978-3-88309-766-4 , Sp. 1486-1491.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Der Spiegel , July 11, 1962: Countess Waldersee: Bismarck in a petticoat
  2. ↑ a b c Anna Katterfeld : Our Lord's Treasurer. A picture of the life of Countess Marie Esther von Waldersee . Berlin 1938.
  3. ^ Rudolf Martin : Yearbook of the wealth and income of millionaires in Prussia , Berlin: Verlag von Rudolf Martin, 1912, p. 733; limited preview in Google Book search
  4. ↑ Ernst Bohlius, Wolfgang Leonhardt (Ed.): "The List." 700 years of reviewing the village and town history , 1st edition, Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2003, ISBN 3-8334-0276-8 ; Preview over google books
  5. ^ Richard Jay Hutto: The Kaiser's Confidante: Mary Lee, the First American-Born Princess , McFarland & Co., 2017.
  6. ^ Alson J. Smith: A View of the Spree . New York, 1962
  7. ↑ Elisbeth Waldersee: From clarity to clarity. 1915
  8. ^ Arno Pagel: Countess Waldersee. Aunt Hanna. Mother Fischbach. Three women in the service of Jesus. In: Witnesses of the Present God , Volume 31/32, pp. 5–41. Brunnen-Verlag 1954.
personal data
SURNAME Waldersee, Mary of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Waldersee, Marie Esther Countess von; Noer, Mary Esther Princess of; Lee, Mary Esther (maiden name); Waldersee, Esther von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American-German philanthropist
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1914
Place of death near Hanover