Louise von Plessen

Louise von Plessen, born of Berkentin ( born April 26, 1725 in Vienna, † September 14, 1799 in Celle) was Mistress of the Robes at the Danish court of King Christian VII and Caroline Mathilde. She stood close to the opposition circles at the Danish court and left a correspondence with Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock.

Life and work

Louise von Plessen was the daughter of the Danish envoy Christian August of Berkentin and his wife Susanne Margretha of Boineburg to honing stone. As a young girl she was maid of honor of Queen Sophie of Denmark.

In 1744 she married the chamberlain Christian Siegfried von Plessen ( 1716-1755 ); The marriage remained childless. After the early death of her husband she lived first with her father again and headed during this period a reform school for young girls in Christianshavn. When her father died in 1758, she leased the family palace on Carl of mold man, it sold very soon after him, and moved to a farm near Kokkedal on Zealand.

Through friendly relations with the Minister Johann Hartwig Ernst, Count von Bernstorff and the theologian Johann Andreas Cramer in the 1750s they came in epistolary contact with Friedrich Klopstock and his wife Meta. Klopstock visited Louise von Plessen after death Metas 1758 in Kokkedal.

In 1766 Louise was awarded Plessen after application the place of a Mistress at Christian VII and his 15 - year-old woman Caroline Mathilde in Copenhagen. Regarding the extremely troubled marriage of the royal couple It shall certify a strict stance that earned her the rejection by the king. As a result, she became the coveted Person of dissatisfied members of the court and was considered too politically ambitious. End of February 1768 after the birth of the heir, the future Frederick VI. , It was summarily dismissed by King Christian VII. Then Louise went from Plessen to Celle, where she lived until her death in 1799. Caroline Mathilde followed her maid of honor after she had been exiled because of her affair with Count Johann Friedrich Struensee and following his execution in 1772 from Denmark. The two women made up to Caroline Mathilde's early death in 1775 a small entourage at Schloss Celle.

Louise von Plessen was buried in the family chapel Berkentinschen in Lübeck Cathedral. Since the destruction of the chapel by the air raid on Lübeck on 29 March 1942, is her sandstone sarcophagus along with those of their parents and grandparents in the south-eastern ambulatory chapel of the cathedral.