Eugénie de Beauharnais
Encyclopedia
Eugénie Hortense Auguste Napoléone, known as Eugénie de Beauharnais, princess of Leuchtenberg (22 December 1808, Milan
– 1 September 1847, Freudenstadt
) was a Franco-German princess. She was the second daughter of Eugène de Beauharnais
and Princess Augusta of Bavaria
, and a member of the house of Beauharnais
. In 1826 she married Constantine, Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen
.
(at what is now Salenstein
) by her father. The family's behaviour was princely in every aspect - the French envoy Coulomb wrote in 1822: "Prince Eugène de Beauharnais lives in greater luxury than [Napoleon's] court". Their Palais in Munich had been built by the famous Bavarian architect Leo von Klenze
for over 2 million guilder
s. Besides Munich and Schloss Eugensberg, the family had manors at Eichstätt and Ismaning. On her father's death in 1824, Eugénie inherited Schloss Eugensberg.
. Eugénie brought hofkavalier Gustav von Billing (born in Leuchtenberg
) to Hechingen as her financial advisor - he managed her large dowry on her mother's behalf and quickly won Konstantin trust as an advisor. From 1833 Eugénie and her husband lived at Schloss Lindich near Hechingen
, the chief city of the Hohenzollern-Hechingen
house, though they also spent much of the summer months at Schloss Eugensberg, thus keeping in contact with her aunt Hortense
and her cousin Louis Napoleon, who later became Napoleon III.
at Tegernsee
and in 1833 a Grand Tour
to Italy, which lasted nearly 18 months and went as far as Sicily
.
Eugénie then sold Schloss Eugensberg for 32,000 guilder
s to Heinrich von Kiesow of Augsburg. The proceeds of that sale financed her rebuilding of Villa Eugenia in Hechingen, where the couple took up residence in 1834. At the southern edge of the Villa's park, she acquired the Gasthaus Zur Silberburg and in 1844 rebuilt it as another villa, to house visiting noble relations. The surrounding gardens were also bought up and redesigned as an English landscape
, now known as the Fürstengarten.
Some of the couple's famous guests at Hechingen included her cousin Napoleon III, Hector Berlioz
and Franz Liszt
. The Hofkapelle had a good choir and from 1843 the Villa hosted Sunday concerts by members of the Museumsgesellschaft (museum society) and the Musikvereins (music society).
Liebevoll remained childless and sought comfort in increasing piety, setting up an old-people's home in Hechingen and (in 1839) a major Kinderbewahranstalt for the town (the building which housed the latter contains a bust of her and is now the Amtsgericht
). The latter was set up for those children whose parents "were often hindered by business or domestic difficulties, at home or in the fields, from bringing up their small children".
She attended her father-in-law Frederick for ten years, mortally ill from war injuries, who died in 1838 at Schloss Lindich. Every Maundy Thursday
, Eugénie and her husband washed the feet of twelve old and needy local people and then invited them to an Apostelmahl or Last Supper in the Billardhäuschen in the Fürstengarten, at which (after a grace) a stockfish
with sauerkraut
was passed round.
Eugénie became ill with tuberculosis
and in winter 1846 moved into the so-called Hofküche directly behind the Villa Eugenia, since the Hofküche could be better heated. Her doctors gave her odd treatments, including the inhalation of Kuhdungdämpfen and the burning of Moxastäbchen on her breast. Due to the risk of spreading the disease, she could only see her husband rarely, and even then only at a distance. In summer 1847 she set off to seek a cure at the Badenweiler
spa but on the return journey she died at the Hotel Post in Freudenstadt
on 1 September 1847. She was buried in the vault before the high altar of the Stiftskirche in Hechingen. Her heart was stored in a cup, in a niche by the main entrance of the Stiftskirche. In her will she left her fortune of 273,000 guilders to charity.
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
– 1 September 1847, Freudenstadt
Freudenstadt
Freudenstadt is a town in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. It is capital of the district Freudenstadt. The closest population centres are Offenburg to the west and Tübingen to the east ....
) was a Franco-German princess. She was the second daughter of Eugène de Beauharnais
Eugène de Beauharnais
Eugène Rose de Beauharnais, Prince Français, Prince of Venice, Viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy, Hereditary Grand Duke of Frankfurt, 1st Duke of Leuchtenberg and 1st Prince of Eichstätt ad personam was the first child and only son of Alexandre, Vicomte de Beauharnais and Joséphine Tascher de la...
and Princess Augusta of Bavaria
Princess Augusta of Bavaria
Princess Augusta of Bavaria, Duchess of Leuchtenberg was the second child and eldest daughter of Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria and Augusta Wilhelmine of Hesse-Darmstadt.- Marriage and issue :...
, and a member of the house of Beauharnais
House of Beauharnais
The House of Beauharnais or Beauharnois is a French noble house. It is now represented by the Duke of Leuchtenberg, descendant in male line of Eugène de Beauharnais.-History:...
. In 1826 she married Constantine, Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen
Constantine, Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen
Prince Friedrich Wilhelm Konstantin Hermann Thassilo of Hohenzollern-Hechingen was the last Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen...
.
Early years
Born and raised as a Catholic, Eugénie grew up in the Palais Leuchtenberg on Ludwigstraße in Munich and frequently spent the summer months with her parents at Schloss Eugensberg, a castle built on Lake ConstanceLake Constance
Lake Constance is a lake on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps, and consists of three bodies of water: the Obersee , the Untersee , and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein.The lake is situated in Germany, Switzerland and Austria near the Alps...
(at what is now Salenstein
Salenstein
Salenstein is a municipality in Kreuzlingen District in the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland.Salenstein was the home village of Napoleon III, who lived at Castle Arenenberg in his youth.-History:...
) by her father. The family's behaviour was princely in every aspect - the French envoy Coulomb wrote in 1822: "Prince Eugène de Beauharnais lives in greater luxury than [Napoleon's] court". Their Palais in Munich had been built by the famous Bavarian architect Leo von Klenze
Leo von Klenze
Leo von Klenze was a German neoclassicist architect, painter and writer...
for over 2 million guilder
Guilder
Guilder is the English translation of the Dutch gulden — from Old Dutch for 'golden'. The guilder originated as a gold coin but has been a common name for a silver or base metal coin for some centuries...
s. Besides Munich and Schloss Eugensberg, the family had manors at Eichstätt and Ismaning. On her father's death in 1824, Eugénie inherited Schloss Eugensberg.
Marriage
On 22 May 1826 Eugénie married the Catholic erbprinz Constantine in EichstättEichstätt
Eichstätt is a town in the federal state of Bavaria, Germany, and capital of the District of Eichstätt. It is located along the Altmühl River, at , and had a population of 13,078 in 2002. It is home to the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, the lone Catholic university in Germany. The...
. Eugénie brought hofkavalier Gustav von Billing (born in Leuchtenberg
Leuchtenberg
Leuchtenberg is a municipality in the district of Neustadt in Bavaria in Germany, essentially a suburb of nearby Weiden in der Oberpfalz, and a historical region in Old Germany governed by the Landgrave of Leuchtenberg....
) to Hechingen as her financial advisor - he managed her large dowry on her mother's behalf and quickly won Konstantin trust as an advisor. From 1833 Eugénie and her husband lived at Schloss Lindich near Hechingen
Hechingen
Hechingen is a town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated about south of the state capital of Stuttgart and north of Lake Constance and the Swiss border.- City districts :...
, the chief city of the Hohenzollern-Hechingen
Hohenzollern-Hechingen
Hohenzollern-Hechingen was a county and principality in southwestern Germany. Its rulers belonged to a branch of the senior Swabian branch of the Hohenzollern dynasty.-History:...
house, though they also spent much of the summer months at Schloss Eugensberg, thus keeping in contact with her aunt Hortense
Hortense de Beauharnais
Hortense Eugénie Cécile Bonaparte , Queen Consort of Holland, was the stepdaughter of Emperor Napoleon I, being the daughter of his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais. She later became the wife of the former's brother, Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, and the mother of Napoleon III, Emperor of...
and her cousin Louis Napoleon, who later became Napoleon III.
Life in Hechingen
Eugénie had a great lust for life and even hunted deer with her husband in 1831. The couple took many trips to Munich, to Schloss Eugensburg by lake Constance, to the summer residence of the kings of BavariaKing of Bavaria
King of Bavaria was a title held by the hereditary Wittelsbach rulers of Bavaria in the state known as the Kingdom of Bavaria from 1805 until 1918, when the kingdom was abolished...
at Tegernsee
Tegernsee
Tegernsee is a town in the Miesbach district of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the shore of Tegernsee lake, at an elevation of 747 m above sea level....
and in 1833 a Grand Tour
Grand Tour
The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...
to Italy, which lasted nearly 18 months and went as far as Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
.
Eugénie then sold Schloss Eugensberg for 32,000 guilder
Guilder
Guilder is the English translation of the Dutch gulden — from Old Dutch for 'golden'. The guilder originated as a gold coin but has been a common name for a silver or base metal coin for some centuries...
s to Heinrich von Kiesow of Augsburg. The proceeds of that sale financed her rebuilding of Villa Eugenia in Hechingen, where the couple took up residence in 1834. At the southern edge of the Villa's park, she acquired the Gasthaus Zur Silberburg and in 1844 rebuilt it as another villa, to house visiting noble relations. The surrounding gardens were also bought up and redesigned as an English landscape
English garden
The English garden, also called English landscape park , is a style of Landscape garden which emerged in England in the early 18th century, and spread across Europe, replacing the more formal, symmetrical Garden à la française of the 17th century as the principal gardening style of Europe. The...
, now known as the Fürstengarten.
Some of the couple's famous guests at Hechingen included her cousin Napoleon III, Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
and Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
. The Hofkapelle had a good choir and from 1843 the Villa hosted Sunday concerts by members of the Museumsgesellschaft (museum society) and the Musikvereins (music society).
Liebevoll remained childless and sought comfort in increasing piety, setting up an old-people's home in Hechingen and (in 1839) a major Kinderbewahranstalt for the town (the building which housed the latter contains a bust of her and is now the Amtsgericht
Amtsgericht
Amtsgericht is German for Local District Court, situated in Germany in almost every larger capital of a rural district.It mainly acts in Civil and Criminal law affairs. It forms the lowest level of the so-called ordinary jurisdiction of the German judiciary , which is responsible for most criminal...
). The latter was set up for those children whose parents "were often hindered by business or domestic difficulties, at home or in the fields, from bringing up their small children".
She attended her father-in-law Frederick for ten years, mortally ill from war injuries, who died in 1838 at Schloss Lindich. Every Maundy Thursday
Maundy Thursday
Maundy Thursday, also known as Holy Thursday, Covenant Thursday, Great & Holy Thursday, and Thursday of Mysteries, is the Christian feast or holy day falling on the Thursday before Easter that commemorates the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles as described in the Canonical gospels...
, Eugénie and her husband washed the feet of twelve old and needy local people and then invited them to an Apostelmahl or Last Supper in the Billardhäuschen in the Fürstengarten, at which (after a grace) a stockfish
Stockfish
Stockfish is unsalted fish, especially cod, dried by cold air and wind on wooden racks on the foreshore, called "hjell". The drying of food is the world's oldest known preservation method, and dried fish has a storage life of several years...
with sauerkraut
Sauerkraut
Sauerkraut , directly translated from German: "sour cabbage", is finely shredded cabbage that has been fermented by various lactic acid bacteria, including Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. It has a long shelf-life and a distinctive sour flavor, both of which result from the lactic acid...
was passed round.
Eugénie became ill with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
and in winter 1846 moved into the so-called Hofküche directly behind the Villa Eugenia, since the Hofküche could be better heated. Her doctors gave her odd treatments, including the inhalation of Kuhdungdämpfen and the burning of Moxastäbchen on her breast. Due to the risk of spreading the disease, she could only see her husband rarely, and even then only at a distance. In summer 1847 she set off to seek a cure at the Badenweiler
Badenweiler
Badenweiler, a health resort and spa of the Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald district of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, historically in the Markgräflerland. It is 28 kilometers by road and rail from Basel, 10 kilometers from the French border, and 20 kilometers away from Mulhouse...
spa but on the return journey she died at the Hotel Post in Freudenstadt
Freudenstadt
Freudenstadt is a town in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. It is capital of the district Freudenstadt. The closest population centres are Offenburg to the west and Tübingen to the east ....
on 1 September 1847. She was buried in the vault before the high altar of the Stiftskirche in Hechingen. Her heart was stored in a cup, in a niche by the main entrance of the Stiftskirche. In her will she left her fortune of 273,000 guilders to charity.