Mona von Bismarck
Mona von Bismarck , Mona Travis Strader (born February 5, 1897 in Louisville , Kentucky , † July 10, 1983 in Paris ) was an American philanthropist .
Life
In 1917 she married Henry J. Schlesinger and had a son with him. In 1920 the couple divorced; the son stayed with the father. In her second marriage, she married the banker James Irving Bush, with whom they spent four years of marriage. The divorce took place in 1925. In 1926 she moved to New York City and opened a boutique there with Laura Merriam Curtis.
In July 1926 she married the entrepreneur Harrison Williams , one of the richest Americans at the time. They spent their honeymoon on the ship Warrior , on which they traveled around the world in 1926. Back from her honeymoon, her husband in New York bought the property on 94th Street & Fifth Avenue designed by Delano & Aldrich for Willard Straight in 1915 . They also had an estate in Bayville , Long Island . The couple also had a house on North Ocean Avenue in Palm Beach and a villa ( Il Fortino ) on the Italian island of Capri . In 1933 Mona von Bismarck was voted the best dressed woman in the world by Chanel , Molyneux , Vionnet , Lelong and Lanvin . In 1943 Salvador Dali painted a portrait of her.
Her husband Williams died in 1953 and Mona was her fourth marriage to Count Albrecht Edzard Heinrich Karl von Bismarck-Schönhausen , a grandson of Otto von Bismarck , in New Jersey in November 1954 . She lived with him mainly in Paris at the Hôtel Lambert and later in New York City at 34 Avenue and on Capri.
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In 1970 her fourth husband died and she married Umberto de Martini in 1971, who was killed in a car accident in 1979. When she died in 1983, she was buried in Bayville, Long Island. She bequeathed parts of her estate to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC , including the Bismarck sapphire necklace . With parts of her fortune, she set up the Mona Bismarck American Center for Art and Culture in Paris.
Literature (selection)
- James Birchfield : Kentucky Countess: Mona Bismarck in Art and Fashion . Lexington: University of Kentucky Art Museum, 1997
- Anette Tapert and Diana Edkins: The Power of Style - The Women Who Defined The Art of Living Well . Crown Publishers, New York 1994
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bismarck, Mona von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Strader, Mona Travis |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American philanthropist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 5, 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Louisville , Kentucky |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 10, 1983 |
| Place of death | Paris |