Wilhelmine of Baden

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Wilhelmine Luise von Baden around 1805
Wilhelmine von Baden, Grand Duchess of Hesse and the Rhine around 1830

Wilhelmine Luise von Baden, Grand Duchess of Hesse and the Rhine (born September 10, 1788 in Karlsruhe , † January 27, 1836 on the Rosenhöhe ) was the daughter of Hereditary Prince Karl Ludwig of Baden and his wife Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt .

Life

Wilhelmine married Ludwig von Hessen-Darmstadt in Karlsruhe in 1804 . She was the youngest sister of the Empress of Russia , the Queen of Sweden , Queen Karoline of Bavaria and the Grand Duke of Baden . Due to Ludwig's affairs, the couple soon diverged from each other after Wilhelmine had two children. After Ludwig had succeeded his father on the throne of the Grand Duke in 1830, she used the means now available to expand her estate on the Heiligenberg and thus to stay away from the Darmstadt court as often and as long as possible. In January 1836 she died of typhus in her Darmstadt winter quarters on the Rosenhöhe ; She found her final resting place there with her daughter Elisabeth, who died of scarlet fever in 1826, in the old mausoleum .

Tsarevich Alexander , who was looking for a bride in Germany in 1838, fell in love with his 14-year-old daughter Marie and married her in 1841, fully aware of the possible flaws of her birth.

His father is said to have replied "Were you there?"

The gardens

In 1810 she had vines and fruit trees cleared on the Busenberg near Darmstadt and a spacious garden laid out, which she called "Rosenhöhe" . In 1815 she commissioned the Schwetzingen horticultural director Zeyher to design a landscape garden based on the English model. In the period that followed, a tea house, a large swing, a round temple and, from 1817, a two-storey country house were built in the grounds, presumably based on a design by Hofbaudirektor Moller . The balcony above his entrance was adorned with a quote translated from Horace into Italian: “Quest 'angolo di terra mi ridepiu d'ognialtro d'intorno” (“This corner of the earth smiles to me before everyone else around”). This smile came to an abrupt end for Wilhelmine in 1826 when her daughter Elisabeth died of scarlet fever in Lausanne at the age of five. Contrary to conventions, she did not have her daughter buried in the Grand Ducal Crypt in Darmstadt's city church, but instead commissioned Moller in 1826 to build a mausoleum in the Rosenhöhe Park, which was completed in 1831 , which was no longer just a summer residence but also a cemetery.

In 1827 she acquired the Heiligenberg estate above Jugenheim an der Bergstrasse , which she designed and expanded based on the beloved Rosenhöhe, which took on a clear shape, especially from 1830 with the help of a grand duchess. According to Moller's plans, the country estate was turned into a small castle , and the surrounding Heiligenberg became a spacious English garden that merged seamlessly into the surrounding landscape of the Bergstrasse. Here, too, it soon had a rose slope, a large swing, a Turkish pavilion and a collection of exotic species that was later expanded by her son Alexander. The monastery ruins on the actual, west of the castle, Heiligenberg, had them added to the romantic taste of the time and decorated with medieval finds from the ruins and the village of Jugenheim . During this time, she brought her lover, the Grand Ducal Hessian head stable master August Freiherr von Senarclens de Grancy , near her, who later (1848) moved into the former rectory next to the Jugenheimer Bergkirche acquired by Wilhelmine in 1828.

The "Golden Cross"

In 1865/66, their four surviving children erected the Golden Cross, which reminds them of them, at their favorite place in today's Kreuzgarten on the Heiligenberg above Jugenheim, which soon became the symbol of the community and is still reminiscent of this warm-hearted and garden-loving grand lady.

Memorial cross for Grand Duchess Wilhelmine as well as the mausoleum and in front of it the final resting place of her son, Prince Alexander and his wife Countess Julia Hauke, Princess von Battenberg

ancestors

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Friedrich Hereditary Prince of Baden (1703–1732)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Karl Friedrich Grand Duke of Baden (1728–1811)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Anna of Nassau-Dietz-Oranien (1710–1777)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Karl Ludwig von Baden (1755–1801)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ludwig VIII Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (1691–1768)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Karoline Luise of Hessen-Darmstadt (1723–1783)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Charlotte von Hanau-Lichtenberg (1700–1726)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Wilhelmine of Baden
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ludwig VIII Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (1691–1768)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Louis IX Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (1719–1790)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Charlotte von Hanau-Lichtenberg (1700–1726)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Amalie of Hessen-Darmstadt (1754–1832)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Christian III of Pfalz-Zweibrücken (1674–1735)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Caroline of Pfalz-Zweibrücken (1721–1774)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Caroline of Nassau-Saarbrücken (1704–1774)
 
 
 
 
 
 

Note: Due to inter-family marriages, Landgrave Ludwig VIII of Hessen-Darmstadt and his wife Charlotte are two-time great-grandparents of Wilhelmine.

progeny

  • Ludwig III. (1806–1877), Grand Duke of Hesse and the Rhine
  • Daughter (1807–1807)
  • Karl (1809–1877)

with August von Senarclens de Grancy:

literature

  • Günter Baisch and Claudia Schäfer, " Jugenheim Der Heiligenberg and the Battenberger", Verkehrs- und Verschönerungsverein Jugenheim 1863 e. V., Seeh.-Jugenheim 2011, 128 pages without ISBN
  • Hans Buchmann: Jugenheim, Balkhausen and the Heiligenberg - From the chronicle of the communities Jugenheim and Balkhausen , Ed. Verkehrs- und Verschönerungsverein Jugenheim adB 1863 e. V., 1st edition, Handelsdruckerei Horn, Jugenheim 1978, 488 pages without ISBN
  • Egon Caesar Conte Corti : Among Tsars and Crowned Women. Fate and tragedy of European empires on the basis of letters, diaries and secret documents from Tsarina Marie of Russia and Prince Alexander of Hesse. Salzburg and Leipzig, Pustet 1936, 448 pages without ISBN.
  • Annelore Dahlinger, “The Darmstädter Rosenhöhe - Guided tour through history and botany” Darmstadt, Weststadt Verlag 2014, 112 pp. ISBN 978-3-940179-23-4
  • Rudolf Kunz, "Jugenheim and its Church - For the 700th anniversary of the Evangelical Church in Jugenheim an der Bergstrasse", ed. v. Church council, commercial printing house Horn, Jugenheim 1963, 128 pages without ISBN

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dahlinger: The Darmstädter Rosenhöhe pp. 21/22
  2. ↑ Dahlinger, Die Darmstädter Rosenhöhe pp. 13/14
  3. ↑ Dahlinger, The Darmstädter Rosenhöhe p. 20
  4. ↑ Dalinger, The Darmstädter Rosenhöhe p. 21
  5. ↑ Kunz, Jugenheim and his church, p. 60
  6. ↑ Buchmann: Jugenheim, Balkhausen and der Heiligenberg p. 316
personal data
SURNAME Wilhelmine of Baden
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wilhelmine Luise of Baden
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German aristocrats, as the wife of Ludwig II, Grand Duchess of Hesse and the Rhine
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1788
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1836
Place of death Rosenhöhe