Théroigne de Méricourt

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Théroigne de Méricourt

Anne-Josèphe Théroigne de Méricourt , with birth name Anne-Josèphe Terwagne , (born August 13, 1762 in Marcourt ( Prince Diocese of Liège ), † June 8, 1817 in Paris ) is also called "Amazon of the French Revolution " because she is responsible for armament the women entered.

Live and act

She moved to London with the Colbert family, with whom Anne-Josèphe had previously worked in France and whose daughter she had received music lessons with. There she met a rich Englishman who gave her a promise of marriage. Instead of marrying her, he secured her future with a large donation of £ 200,000. In 1785 she came to Paris, where she trained as a singer. She soon joined the Jacobins . Théroigne regularly attended the negotiations of the National Assembly . Together with other visitors, she founded a political society called the “Club of Human Rights”.

Woodcut by U. Neumann after a French copper engraving. The Gazebo (1879)

In 1790 an arrest warrant was issued against her, she fled to her homeland, but was arrested there by the imperial Austrian police and held captive at the Kufstein fortress in Tyrol for a year . She was then transferred to Vienna, all on charges of plotting a conspiracy against the French queen. The charge turned out to be baseless. After a hearing by Emperor Leopold II , she was dismissed, received pardon from the emperor and returned to revolutionary France .

In January 1792 she stayed in Paris again and took part in the Tuileries Tower on August 10, 1792. For this she was honored with the so-called citizen's crown for her special services. As a result, and thanks to her newly acquired laurels, she was able to regain her earlier influence due to her imprisonment in Austria. In the political clubs of France and also in the National Assembly , she raised her voice for civil rights and called, among other things, to erect a separate building for the National Assembly. Together with Sandrine Dejou , she called for all women to have the right to arm themselves and join the army.

On May 15, 1793, she was attacked by angry sans-culottes , badly mistreated and injured in the head. Théroigne, who had initially been on the side of the Jacobins, was considered to be a traitor who would have actively supported the Girondins with their leader Jacques Pierre Brissot . She survived the attack, but her injuries affected her mental health so much that her brother had her declared insane in the summer of 1794 and sent to a "madhouse" after six months, where she died after 23 years.

reception

Her life has been traced in dramas by

as in the opera

  • Théroigne de Méricourt by the Belgian (Flemish) composer August de Boeck (1901, book by Léonce du Castillon).

literature

Web links

Commons : Théroigne de Méricourt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Théroigne de Méricourt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Théroigne, Anne-Josèphe (maiden name); Terwagne; Amazon of the French Revolution
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French revolutionary
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1762
PLACE OF BIRTH Marcourt, Belgium
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1817
Place of death Paris