Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun, Duchess of Plaisance
Sophie de Marbois -Lebrun, duchesse de Plaisance ( Duchess of Piacenza, Greek Σοφία Λεμπρέν, Δούκισσα της Πλακεντίας Doukissa tis Plakentias; born April 2, 1785 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, † May 14 1854 in Athens ) was a French Philhellenin origin.
Biography
Sophie de Marbois -Lebrun was born as a daughter of the French Consul General François Barbé - Marbois and an American mother in the United States. 1802 she married in Paris the Colonel Anne Charles Lebrun ( 1775-1859 ), who later became Duke of Piacenza (French duc de Plaisance ), a son of Charles -François Lebrun, of the with Napoleon Bonaparte 1799-1804 one of the three consuls France was. She had with him a daughter Caroline - Eliza (* 1804). The couple lived soon separated and settled finally divorced in 1831. The Duke was from 1811 to 1813 governor of Holland; Sophie traveled several times with her daughter to Italy.
Support the Greek cause and first stay in Greece
In Rome she met in 1825 Ioannis Kapodistrias, the representatives of the Greek freedom fighters. This encounter they had a lasting effect, it supported from there to the Greek cause generous financially, but also coordinated the activities of the French philhellenes.
In particular, it supported the establishment of the state primary schools in Greece and took over the training of twelve daughters of freedom fighters.
End of 1829, she traveled with her daughter on Corfu and Patras to Nafplio, the former capital of Greece. She met Kapodistrias again, but soon got into disagreements with him and left Greece after 17 months to Italy. After Kapodistrias was murdered by members of Mavromichalis family, she spoke out against the way in which Kapodistrias had ruled the country.
Moving to Athens
The Duchess returned to her divorce in 1831 not go back to France. She remained for a time in Florence, returned back to Greece in 1834 and settled in the new capital Athens. She earned a large scale agricultural lands to Athens, especially in the vicinity of Mount Penteli. They commissioned the architect Stamatios Kleanthis to design a palace on the slopes of Penteli. Meanwhile, she traveled with her daughter in 1836 to Beirut, where Eliza died of lung disease. She let the body embalmed and returned to Athens, where he was buried in a crypt under their house in the Piräusstraße.
Kleanthis completed the building of the Duchesse de Plaisance finished at Penteli in 1841 and then worked at the Villa Illisia near the royal palace, which he completed in 1848. The villa Illisia now houses the Byzantine and Christian Museum.
As a center of social life in Athens King Otto I the Duchess organized symposia on various religious and political issues in her palace. They did not convert at about the Greek Orthodox Church, but to Judaism and supported the building of a Jewish temple in Chalkida Evia. They also funded the publication of the Chronicle of Messolonghi.
It was especially after the death of her daughter as an eccentric personality, about which there was whimsical stories. She was even brought in connection with the bandits who roamed the Penteli; one you wrote is affair with the robber chief Christos Davelis likely to be invented; but in fact they should have been held captive by the bandits Bimbili and released only after payment of a ransom.
Later she commissioned Kleanthis with the construction of the castle of Rododaphni at Penteli; next to the castle-like palace left it there three other buildings ( duplex, Plaisance and Tourelle ) and a bridge built as a final resting place for the remains of her daughter. Do not live to see the completion, however, because the construction in 1847 burned down. Then the Duchess withdrew from public life, he had no contact with her friend Fotini Mavromichali, a maid of Queen Amalia.
After her death in 1854, her nephew sold their lands to the Greek State. She was buried with her daughter in her tower at Penteli.
A station of the Athens Metro, which is located on one of their former land, was named Doukissis Plakentias ( Δουκίσσης Πλακεντίας ) after her.