Stéphanie de Beauharnais

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Stéphanie de Beauharnais (painting by François Gérard , Paris 1806/1807)
Imperial Princess Stéphanie de Beauharnais
Statue on the Stephanienufer in Mannheim, based on the painting by François Gérard (see above).

Imperial Princess Stéphanie Louise Adrienne de Beauharnais , also Stéphanie Napoléon , (born August 28, 1789 in Versailles , †  January 29, 1860 in Nice ), was the adoptive daughter of Napoléon Bonaparte and Grand Duchess of Baden .

Life

Stéphanie de Beauharnais was born in the midst of the turmoil of the French Revolution as the daughter of the captain of the royal bodyguard Claude de Beauharnais and his wife Claudine. The young mother fell ill with tuberculosis after giving birth and fled to the Riviera with little Stéphanie . Her husband did not care about either of them and, on the death of his wife in 1791, ceded all rights to the three-year-old daughter to the English lady Bath. Stéphanies mother, as her childhood friend, had left her to take care of the child. When she returned to England, however, she did not take the little girl with her and entrusted the three-year-old to two nuns who went into hiding with the child when they moved several times in southern France . In 1797 the residence was moved to Périgueux .

In the meantime, Napoléon Bonaparte, then the First Consul of France, had learned that there was a relative - albeit a distant one - of his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais in the south of France . He asked Claude de Beauharnais to bring his daughter back to Paris. So Stéphanie had to move to Paris in 1803. From 1803 Stéphanie was to receive a proper education and was sent by Napoleon to the renowned institute of Madame Campan .

In 1806, Stéphanie's school days came to an end. Napoleon had her brought back to Paris and adopted her. As a result, she received the title “ Son Altesse Impériale Mademoiselle Stéphanie Napoléon, fille adoptive de Sa Majesté l'Empereur des Français, Roi d'Italie ” and thus ranked ahead of the two sisters of Napoleon in the court ceremony.

In April 1806, Stéphanie's wedding to Hereditary Prince Karl von Baden was celebrated in the Tuileries. They stayed in Paris until they moved into their new residence, the Mannheim Palace , in June of the same year .

In 1811 Karl became Grand Duke of Baden and Stéphanie gave birth to their first daughter, Luise , in June of that year , who later became the wife of Prince Gustav von Wasa .

On September 29, 1812 the birth of an heir to the throne was announced with two hundred cannon shots and to the cheering of the Karlsruhe population. However, the child died just 17 days after birth. Later the rumor arose that this child had been exchanged for a sick infant and reappeared in Nuremberg in 1828 as Kaspar Hauser . This was widespread in popular belief, but has been disproved in historical literature at the latest since the relevant studies by Otto Mittelstädt and Antonius van der Linde .

On October 21, 1813, the daughter Josephine Friederike Louise was born, later the wife of Karl Anton von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen .

Another son was born in 1816 but was only one year old. Another daughter Marie Amalie (1817–1888) followed in 1817. On December 8, 1818, Grand Duke Karl died without a male heir.

In the following years, Stéphanie lived mainly in Mannheim in the former electoral palace and in her summer palace in Baden-Baden . In Mannheim, among other things, she had the palace garden laid out as an English garden on the former ramparts of the city fortifications. She founded a women's association there and got involved socially. Stéphanie died on January 28, 1860 at the age of 70. She is buried in the royal crypt in the castle and collegiate church of St. Michael in Pforzheim .

Relationship to Alexandre de Beauharnais

Stéphanies grandfather Claude de Beauharnais, Count of Roches-Baritaud (1717–1784) is the younger brother of François de Beauharnais, Marquis de la Ferté-Beauharnais (1714–1800). His son is Alexandre de Beauharnais (1760–1794), who is thus a second uncle of Stéphanie.

Alexandre de Beauharnais was the first husband of Marie Josephe Rose de Tascher de la Pagerie, better known as Joséphine , who later became the wife of Napoléon Bonaparte.

progeny

See also

literature

  • Friedrich Walter : Stephanie Napoleon. Life and companions, 1789–1860. Knapp, Baden-Baden 1949.
  • Rudolf Haas: Stephanie Napoleon. Grand Duchess of Baden. A life between France and Germany 1789–1860. 2nd revised edition. Suedwestdeutsche Verlagsanstalt, Mannheim 1978, ISBN 3-87804-063-6 .
  • Rosemarie Stratmann-Döhler : Stephanie Napoleon, Grand Duchess of Baden. 1789-1860. Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe 1989, ISBN 3-923132-16-6 (exhibition catalog on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of her birthday, Karlsruhe, Schloss, Badisches Landesmuseum, April 29 to July 30, 1989).
  • Friedrich von Weech :  Stephanie . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 36, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1893, pp. 95 f.

Web links

Commons : Stéphanie de Beauharnais  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Mittelstädt: Kaspar Hauser and his Baden Princehood , Heidelberg 1876
  2. ^ Antonius van der Linde: Kaspar Hauser. A modern legend , 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1887
  3. ↑ Fritz Trautz : On the problem of personality interpretation: On the occasion of the Kaspar Hauser book by Jean Mistler , in: Francia 2, 1974, p. 723
  4. ↑ Reinhard Heydenreuter: King Ludwig I and the case of Kaspar Hauser , in: State and administration in Bavaria. Festschrift for Wilhelm Volkert on his 75th birthday. Edited by Konrad Ackermann and Alois Schmid, Munich 2003, p. 465ff.
  5. ↑ For the spelling of the name cf. P Louis Lainé: Archives généalogiques et historiques de la noblesse de France, ou, Recueil de preuves, Paris 1836, volume 5, p. 5
personal data
SURNAME Beauharnais, Stéphanie de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beauharnais, Stéphanie Louise Adrienne de (full name); Napoléon, Stéphanie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Adopted daughter of Napoléon Bonaparte and Grand Duchess of Baden
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1789
PLACE OF BIRTH Versailles
DATE OF DEATH January 29, 1860
Place of death Nice