Marie von Schleinitz

Marie von Schleinitz. Painting by Franz von Lenbach, 1873

Marie ("Mimi") Baroness (from 1879: Countess) von Schleinitz (from 1886: Schleinitz–Wolkenstein) (born 22 January 1842 in Rome; died 18 May 1912 in Berlin) was the most influent salonière of the early German Reich at Berlin and also one of the most important supporters of Richard Wagner.

Life

Count Alexander Schleinitz, Mimi's first husband, Portrait by Adolph Menzel, 1865

Cosima Wagner with Count and Countess Wolkenstein at the Bayreuth festival, 1880ies

Richard Wagner at Villa Wahnfried with his closest friends, about 1880. Painting by Georg Papperitz. On the right sitting Marie Schleinitz

Soiree at the Schleinitz salon. Drawing by Menzel, 1875

Youth

Marie – or Mimi, as she was called by everyone her life long – was born at Rome as daughter of the then Prussian ambassador at the Holy See, Baron Ludwig August von Buch. Her father dead in 1845, her mother Marie married in 1847 prince Anthony of Hatzfeldt–Trachenberg (1808–1874). By this marriage, the economic situation of both mother and daughter, which until then had not been comfortable at all, was guaranteed due to the immense wealth of Hatzfeldt. Beginning from her early youth, Mimi was trained as a pianist, and taught by such renowned virtuosos as Carl Tausig, she developed a remarkable musical talent. From this time also dated her acquaintance with Franz Liszt, who also shew interest in the advancement of her musical abilities.

Marriages

In 1865, Mimi married Baron Alexander von Schleinitz, then Prussian minister of the royal household. Her husband was thirty-five years elder than her. In 1879, he and his wife were made count and countess by emperor William I. They had no children.

Her first husband dead in 1885, Mimi married in 1886 count Anton von Wolkenstein-Trostburg (1832–1913), at this time Austrian ambassador at Berlin, afterwards at Saint Petersburg and finally (from 1894 on) at Paris. Henceforth, she called herself "countess Schleinitz–Wolkenstein". After her second husband's demission in 1904, they resettled at Berlin, where both died shortly before the breakout of World War I. In summertime, they retired to castel Ivano in the Trentino, country estate of the Wolkenstein family.

Engagement for Wagner

Beginning from the early 1860s, when the young baroness Buch made the acquaintance of Richard Wagner (1813–1883) at a concert at Breslau, she became a passionate fan of his music. Having become wife of the Prussian minister of the royal household at only twenty-two years, young Mimi put all the social influence that was connected with her new rank in supporting Wagner's career and making publicity for him, who then was not undisputed yet at all, among the leading circles of the Prussian society. Especially, she supported him at the Prussian court and even managed that the then emperor William I, who personally felt much sympathy for the young, cultured and beautiful lady, granted the opening of the Bayreuth Festival in 1876 with his presence, which maybe was one of the most important tributes to the reputation of Wagner in all over Germany. Mimi also took part in the foundation of the "Bayreuther Patronatsverein" (Bayreuth patronage club) in 1870, whose purpose was financing the diverse projects of Wagner, among them especially the building of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which in the end was realized in 1876.

Besides, from their first meeting on, Mimi and Wagner were close personal friends and changed many letters with each other. After Wagner's remarriage in 1870, Mimi became the most intimate friend of Cosima Wagner, whose daughter Daniela, later Mrs. Thode, she introduced into the Berlin society in the 1880s. Wagner's death in 1883 was also a hard emotional shock for her.

Literary salon

From her marriage on, Mimi played a role as host of a literary salon at Berlin which each year became more and more important. She put a peculiar interest in the cultural and intellectual orientation of her salon which contributed to her later fame as the only aristocratic woman in Berlin, who really was involved in modeling the cultural shape of the capital of the recently created German Reich. Even more revolutionary may be called her effort to mix both aristocratic and bourgeois elements in her salon, which was a novelty too in the then still quite feudal society of Prussia, where nobles, officers and civil officials on the one, intellectuals, scholars and businessmen on the other hand scarcely had come into intimate interchange with each other until then.

In consequence of her second marriage to the diplomat Wolkenstein, Mimi gave up her salon at Berlin, which so far had been located at the magnificent ministerial residence of her husband at No. 77 Wilhelmstrasse, and accompanied her new husband on his several diplomatic missions. Yet after his retirement from service in 1904, she reopened her house at Berlin, where she still should receive personal friends and personalities of the political and cultural life until her death in 1912.

Controversy with Bismarck

Besides her friendship to Wagner, Mimi Schleinitz also was known for her rivalry to Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898). The Prussian prime minister and later chancellor of the Reich was little sympathetic to Mimi due to her liberal mentality, himself maintaining a conservative, authoritarian rule over Prussia and Germany even after the German reunification, which nevertheless found the agreement of Mimi, who was as patriotic as well as cosmopolitan (she knew fluently French due to a longtime stay at Paris in the 1850s). In particular, Bismarck was a personal enemy to her husband, who had been one of the protagonists of the so called "new era" from 1858 to 1862, when the regent and later king William, under the influence of his wife Augusta, followed a moderate strategy of modernization and liberalization of the Prussian state, Schleinitz himself being a favorite of the liberal-opinionated queen Augusta. Nevertheless, Mimi made several attempts to reconcile the "iron chancellor" with her husband and herself, an effort which after all did not have the wished success in the end.

Historical role

In history, Mimi Schleinitz stands as a symbol figure for the until nowadays little known liberal-aristocratic opposition against Bismarck's strictly conservative, sometimes brutal and immoral way of making inner and foreign politics during the era of the foundation of the German Reich as well as for a short, but intensive blossom of culture and intellectuality in Germany which historically is located between the downfall of romanticism and beginning modernity.

Sources

Schleinitz familiy

• Otto Freiherr von Schleinitz (ed.): Aus den Papieren der Familie v. Schleinitz. Mit einer Vorbemerkung von Fedor von Zobeltitz. Berlin 1904.

Wagner familiy

• Cosima Wagner: Die Tagebücher. 2 vols., München 1976 f.
• Richard Wagner: Schriften und Dichtungen. 16 vols., Fritzsch, Leipzig 1911.
• Richard-Wagner-Stiftung Bayreuth (ed.): Richard Wagner: Sämtliche Briefe. 13 vols., Leipzig 2000–2003.

Furhter ones

• Otto von Bismarck: Gedanken und Erinnerungen, ed. Ernst Friedlaender, Stuttgart 1959.
• Bernhard von Bülow: Denkwürdigkeiten. 4 vols., Berlin 1930 f.
• Hans von Bülow: Briefe und Schriften. 8 vols., ed. Marie von Bülow, Leipzig 1895–1911.
• Marie von Bunsen: Zeitgenossen, die ich erlebte. Leipzig 1932.
• Philipp zu Eulenburg: Aus fünfzig Jahren. Paetel, Berlin 1923, p. 58 f.
• Anna von Helmholtz: Anna von Helmholtz. Ein Lebensbild in Briefen, ed. Ellen von Helmholtz-Siemens, 2 vols., Berlin 1929.
• Harry Graf Kessler: Gesichter und Zeiten (= Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1). Frankfurt/Main 1988.
• Lilli Lehmann: Mein Weg. vol. 1, Leipzig 1913.
• Maximiliane von Oriola: Maxe von Arnim, Tochter Bettinas, Gräfin Oriola, 1818–1894. Ein Lebens- und Zeitbild aus alten Quellen geschöpft, ed. Johannes Werner, Leipzig 1937.
• Hildegard von Spitzemberg: Tagebuch, ed. Rudolf Vierhaus, Göttingen 1960.
• Fedor von Zobeltitz: Chronik der Gesellschaft unter dem letzten Kaiserreich. 2 vols., Hamburg 1922.

Secondary literature

• Hans-Joachim Bauer: Schleinitz, Marie Gräfin von. In: Richard-Wagner-Lexikon. Bergisch Gladbach 1988, p. 437.
• Carl Friedrich Glasenapp: Das Leben Richard Wagners. 6 vols., Leipzig 1905–12.
• Martin Gregor-Dellin: Richard Wagner. Sein Leben – sein Werk – sein Jahrhundert. München 1980.
• La Mara (i.e. Marie Lipsius): Marie Gräfin Schleinitz, jetzt Gräfin Wolkenstein – Marie Gräfin Dönhoff, jetzt Fürstin Bülow. In: Liszt und die Frauen. Leipzig 1911, p. 259–272.
• David C. Large: The Political Background of the Foundation of the Bayreuth Festival, 1876: In: Central European History. Vol. 11. Nr. 2 (= Juni), 1978, p. 162–172.
• George R. Marek: Cosima Wagner. Ein Leben für ein Genie. Hestia, Bayreuth ³1983.
• Richard Du Moulin-Eckart: Cosima Wagner. Ein Lebens- und Charakterbild. Berlin 1929.
• Kurt von Reibnitz: Gräfin Schleinitz-Wolkenstein. In: Die große Dame. Von Rahel bis Kathinka. Dresden 1931, p. 138 f.
• Winfried Schüler: Der Bayreuther Kreis von seiner Entstehung bis zum Ausgang der wilhelminischen Ära. Wagnerkult und Kulturreform im Geiste völkischer Weltanschauung. Aschendorff, Münster 1971 (zugl. Diss., Münster 1969).
• Petra Wilhelmy: Der Berliner Salon im 19. Jahrhundert. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin u.a. 1989, pp. 274–81, 345–48, 531–533, 820–29.
• Hans Freiherr von Wolzogen: Nachruf auf Marie Gräfin von Wolkenstein-Trostburg. In: Bayreuther Blätter, 1912, p. 169–72.