Maria Beccadelli di Bologna

Anna Marie Rosalie Zoë Princess von Bülow, divorced Countess of Dönhoff, born Beccadelli di Bologna, Marchesa di Altavilla, Principessa di Camporeale ( born February 6, 1848 in Naples, † January 20, 1929 in Rome) was a Berlin salonière and wife of the Chancellor and Prussian Prime Minister Prince Bernhard von Bülow ( 1849-1929 ).

Life

Origin

Maria Becadelli di Bologna was the daughter of Domenico Beccadelli di Bologna (1826-1863), Principe di Camporeale and Laura, born in Acton ( 1829-1915 ). Her mother remarried after the death of Domenico's second husband, the Italian Prime Minister Marco Minghetti (1818-1886) and played a major role in the Italian and German aristocracy.

Social role

Mary, with a Prussian diplomat called after her marriage Marie also became, early in the highest circles of the Prussian court society and profiled by their intellectual and artistic skills; they played excellent piano gushed - as her friend Marie from Schleinitz - for the music of Richard Wagner and was a confidant of the Prussian Crown Princess Victoria, who even painted a portrait of Mary. Their son, Prince William, later Kaiser Wilhelm II, revered the Countess in his youth very much.

Even as a diplomat 's wife in Vienna, she led in the 1870s a salon. Early 1880s in love the young diplomat Bernhard von Bülow and they violently into each other. However, your marriage was offset by several obstacles: Since Maria had been married by both a Protestant and a Catholic right, she had to leave not only divorced, but also reach the papal annulment of her first marriage, which finally succeeded in 1884; Bulow, then Counsellor in St. Petersburg, one day received the following telegram from her, " cancellation pronounced blessed Marie". In addition there were social complications, because the marriage was not then welcome with a divorced woman in the Prussian court circles; only with some persistence Bülow finally obtaining the necessary marital consent by his boss, Prince Bismarck, who had a few years previously prohibited his own son, Count Herbert von Bismarck, the marriage with the divorced Princess Elizabeth to Carolath - Bytom.

As Bulow 1893 Ambassador in Rome, he Marias social contacts were a valuable support in their old home. After his appointment as Foreign Secretary in 1897 finally opened in Berlin in a salon frequented by mainly politicians, diplomats and high-ranking military; some guests, as the diplomat Hans von Wangenheim mocked, over the ceremonial, official character of the local meetings, which had little in common with the literary salons of the time. A celebrated beauty and of fine intellectual education, it was said by her, her husband, who she greatly admired, to be spiritually superior. Together with her mother Laura, she played a formative role in the Berlin Society up to the beginning of World War II.

Marriages

Maria Beccadelli married on 15 May 1867 in Lugano the Prussian diplomat Karl August Graf von Dönhoff ( 1833-1906 ). The marriage was divorced in 1882 and 1884 the Prussian law annulled by the Vatican. This marriage produced a daughter, Eugenie (1868-1946), the (1852-1941) was married to the diplomat Nicholas of Wallwitz.

On January 9, 1886, she married the Prussian diplomats in Vienna Bernhard von Bülow.

Swell

• Bernhard Prince von Bülow: Memoirs. 4 volumes. Ullsteinhaus, Berlin 1930-1931.
• Philipp zu Eulenburg - Hertefeld: From 50 years. Memoirs, diaries and letters from the estate of princes. Paetel, Berlin, 1923.
• The Diary of Baroness Spitzemberg, born Baroness von Varnbuler. Records from the court society of the Hohenzollern Empire ( = German historical sources of the 19th and 20th centuries. Vol 43, ISSN 0344-1687 ). Selected and edited by Rudolf Vierhaus. Cambridge University Press, Göttingen 1960
• Fedor von Zobeltitz: Chronicle of the Company under the last empire. Volume 2: 1902-1914 2nd edition. . Alster Verlag, Hamburg 1922.