#munich residence

[illustratus]

Statuette of St George

[coffeeandstrawberries]

Münchner Residenz by Antoine Bonin

[madeleineengland]

Munich Residenz, Antiquarium Room, Germany.

This hall is the oldest room in the residence. Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria had it built from 1568 to 1571 for his collection of antique sculptures, hence the name "Antiquarium".

[josefavomjaaga]

So, on December 24, 1805, Duroc comes to Munich, charged with a personal letter from Napoleon to Bavarian elector Max Joseph. The letter reads:

Schönbrunn, December 21, 1805

I am sending my grand marshal of the palace, General Duroc, to ask Your Highness for His daughter, the Princess Auguste, to be married to my son, Prince Eugène. It is already several years since I desired the alliance with Your Highness, and, in the present circumstances, where several proposals have been made to me, I have remained faithful to the engagements I took at Linz with His minister Gravenreuth. I shall be very pleased to give Your Highness and His people this proof of friendship and esteem.

I charge General Duroc with taking on my part all the suitable engagements and arrangements for the abovementioned marriage, which I wish to see celebrated as soon as possible, at the very moment of general peace, which will undoubtedly be signed within a fortnight.

May Your Highness see in this desire, to have in my family a princess as accomplished as the Princess Auguste and to form such close ties with Your Highness, the most constant secret of my policy and the proof of the feelings of esteem and friendship which I have dedicated to him.

As is to be imagined, this epistle throws the small Bavarian court into serious turmoil. Particularly the elector’s family. As Michel Kérautret put it in his biography of Eugène: »Auguste weeps, the stepmother screams, the elector proclaims himself ill.« But this time, there’s no escape. It’s an official wish from an emperor. That’s as good as an order. So what now?

Max Joseph reacts as he always does: by getting a stomach ache and taking to his bed. And there, on the next day, he wonders how to let his daughter know that, unfortunately, she will have to take this horrible Frenchman whom her father had promised her she would never have to accept. As he really does not feel up to a personal discussion, and as both electress and electoral prince stubbornly refuse to break the news to the princess, Max decides to write her a letter:

If there was a ray of hope, my dearly beloved Auguste, that you could ever marry Charles [her cousin, the Prince of Baden], I would not beg you on my knees to renounce him; I should still less insist, my dear friend, that you should give your hand to the future King of Italy, if this crown was not to be guaranteed by all the Powers at the conclusion of peace, and if I were not sure of all the good qualities of Prince Eugène, and that he has everything it takes to make you happy.

Not sure when or how dear Max has acquired this certitude as he still has never seen or met the bridegroom. The true reason follows in the next paragraph:

Remember, my dear child, that you not only assure the happiness of your father, but that of your brothers and of Bavaria, who all so ardently desire this union. A proof that this marriage is a desirable one lies in the fact that Baron de Thugut [Prime Minister of Austria] who, unfortunately for our house, has retaken the governmental helm, has commenced by offering the Emperor's eldest daughter as wife to Prince Eugene. It grieves me to wound your heart; but I count on the love and devotion which you have always shown for your father, and the thought that you would not willingly embitter his last days.

Max was 49 at the time and convinced he would die soon (his brother had died at that same age). He would of course continue to live for almost another 20 years.

Remember, dear Auguste, that a refusal would make the Emperor as much our enemy as he is at present the friend of our house.

No pressure, petal, make up your mind, just remember that if you take the wrong decision we’ll all be driven out of town by that rogue Corsican with the many cannons.

Spare me the sorrow of an explanation which would be detrimental to my shattered health. Reply to me by writing or through your brother. Believe me, my dearest, that it causes me much pain to write to you in this manner; but circumstances which are more than imperious, and my duty to care for the interests of the country over which Providence has placed me as ruler, leave me no choice. God knows that I have only your welfare at heart, and that no one in the world loves you more than your faithful father and best friend.

The letter closed and probably sealed with many fatherly crocodile tears, there’s another problem: how to get that letter to her. Nobody wants to be the bearer of such dreadful news. In the end it’s prince Ludwig, Auguste’s brother, who performs the task of electoral postman. After all, he’s the only one in the family who has at least met the bridegroom.

Auguste, as for her, knows her duty – and her father. She answers him in writing:

My very dear and beloved father,

I consent to break the word which binds me to Prince Charles of Baden, notwithstanding the pain it costs me, if by so doing I can guarantee peace of mind to a cherished father, and happiness to a people depending upon him.

I put my fate in your hands; as cruel as it may be, it will be softened  for me by the knowledge that I will have sacrificed myself for the welfare of my father, my family, and my country. On her knees your child asks your blessing; it will help me to bear my sad fate with resignation.

Now, if this isn’t a cheerful young bride I don’t know what is!

The only person truely cheerful is the Imperial guest hosted in the Munich residence, empress Josephine. Duroc has not been allowed to talk to her before everything is arranged, but now that he has she is over the moon with joy. She immediately calls Ludwig to her rooms and presents him with a portrait of herself for having talked his sister into the marriage with Eugène. Ludwig can deny he did so all he wants, she will not even listen.

But these are not the last funny letters that will be exchanged concerning this wedding. Most of those quoted in this article are taken from A. Pulitzer, The Romance of Prince Eugène.

[virtuallyinsane]

Munich Residence, Germany / redcharlie

[josefavomjaaga]

Caroline Murat and her daughter Letizia, who accompanied her mother on the trip to Munich in 1805.

***

@joachimnapoleon, because she's cool like that, has dug up the letters that Caroline Murat sent to her (at the time) BFF Hortense de Beauharnais in Paris. As the letters were published in a French paper, and as I'm very unsure about French copyright, I do not want to translate them in full. But I hope it will be okay to quote one passage from it, as I think this might illustrate quite nicely all the misunderstandings and misconceptions existing between the »startup« Imperial court of the Bonaparte family and the small German "ancient" courts.

Caroline describes a visit to Electress Karoline, in presence of Caroline’s two ladies-in-waiting Madame La Grange and Madame Lambert. She had arrived in Munich on December 20th after a rather desastrous 3-days-journey that included a road accident. She wished to be lodged not in the electoral residence but in her own palace, and as she had not brought many servants (apparently, she and Murat had some financial problems at the time), she was waited upon by servants of the electoral family.

I have already written a little about Electress Karoline's first impressions of Empress Josephine here. So, now for Caroline’s impressions of the electress:

Munich, December 24, 1805 [if this isn’t a mistake in the publication, then apparently she already uses the old calendar that Napoleon will only officially reintroduce on January 1st]

[…] The Court is extremely boring. The Elector is a very good man, in the style of the Elector Archchancellor [Dalberg, who had been in Paris for the Sacre], except that he is not so witty.

I received yesterday from noon till six o'clock the foreign ministers, their wives, Prince Hohenzollern, one hundred and fifty ladies of the town, the whole household of the Elector and all the gentlemen of the town, and at the end the Electress, who saw Letitia, whom she found charming. I have done so many reverences that I am in bed with a dreadful ache.

The day before yesterday I went to the theatre, where it was colder than at the coronation; I was afraid it would hurt me.

When we go to the Elector's, a table is brought in, and Princess Augusta sits down and makes tea for everyone. Don't fancy the Court too high; they are all like good bourgeois. Nothing is funnier than to see the Elector making conversation with the Empress's maitre d`hotel. […]

Madame Beauharnois makes little of an effect. Madame Lambert makes no effect at all; as she only knows how to be silly and as I do not allow her to be silly, she is nothing. Madame La Grange makes an extraordinary effect; the elector always talks about her, because he knew her father and her whole family very well. Monsieur Daligre, though a fool, also makes an impression, because of his name and his fortune; the elector has often dined at his father's house and knows all his family well. If you come to this country, bring people who have a name, because they do not see the others, I will give you an example.

Yesterday, everyone was wondering what Mrs Lambert was, who her father was, who her husband was... So the electress approached her and said that she was very happy to return to her what her parents had done for the elector in Paris and that her name was not unknown to her, because she had heard a lot about the La Grange family; I then saw Mme Lambert blush, very embarrassed; I stepped forward and told her that she had been mistaken and that this woman was called Lambert. Then she wanted to know what she was; the questions embarrassed me, and I answered that she was the wife of one of our principal inspectors of reviews and that she had a very considerable fortune. Then her glances fell more slowly on her, and she told her that she was well pleased to make her acquaintance. While chatting with another lady, I observed Mme Lambert, who was in conversation with the electress, and I was annoyed to see that she always had an air of embarrassment and of a little girl. I am telling you all this nonsense to make you aware of what is liked here.

Except that I don’t think she really understood »what was liked« at the Bavarian court at all. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I think her own expectations really got in the way. What she writes seems to me like an amazing mixture of condescension - "Don't imagine too much, they live like good citizens here, the princess personally makes tea for everyone!", disappointment at not making enough of an impression (why would she even try to achieve that?), and the tacit assumption of not being taken seriously by her hosts. She immediately assumes that the electoral family occupies themselves with some of her companions more than with others because those have »a name«. Whereas Max Joseph - remember, this is the guy who walked around his capital on foot and who, in his palace, strangers liked to mistake for one of his servants - just immediately pounced on anyone whose name reminded him of his youth in Paris.

As for the scene with Madame Lambert, it's actually the Bavarian Karoline who makes a mistake and confuses the two ladies-in-waiting. Which Caroline Murat seems to think is some kind of ruse so she has an excuse to inquire about Madame Lambert's family background? I think Karoline really did address the wrong lady by mistake; she is twenty years younger than her husband, to my knowledge has never been to Paris, and probably only knows the names from Max Josef's nostalgic descriptions. She is presumably at least as embarrassed as poor Madame Lambert. Especially as she apparently continues to talk to the lady she has mistakenly addressed for quite a while, observed by Caroline Murat, despite the fact that Caroline knew nothing more to tell about her lady-in-waiting than that her husband has a pile of money.

So, plenty of misunderstandings. Caroline Murat has come to Munich to see a »real« court - and what she gets is tea served by the elector’s daughter. At the same time, she expected to meet with rejection and secret contempt, and now saw these in incidents that in themselves may have been quite harmless.

The author of the article, Paul Le Brethon, juxtaposes these letters from 1805 with a few lines from another letter written from Munich by Caroline, on her way to pick up Napoleon's new Empress Marie Louise, in March 1810 to her husband Joachim Murat:

My friend, I always feel very comfortable with the King and Queen of Bavaria; they enjoy a calm and perfect happiness in their home; their young family is very interesting [they had five daughters at the time, among them twice twins]; these children remind me of my own, and my eyes are filled with tears every time they look at them.

I think by then, Caroline had understood the difference.

[megmassa]

Munchin’ in München

Weekend Trip 10, 01-03.04.16

Because I couldn’t have been an American living in Germany for near two years and not have visited Munich, my roommate and I decided to take a quick spin.

**please see my notes on reblogging if you wish to reblog the pics without the text below!**

After arriving midday on Friday, we unloaded in our AirBnB before heading out to meet one of my roommate’s old high school friends for lunch. He treated us to a wonderful Bavarian favorite: kaiserschmarrn, which in my opinion was more of a dessert than a lunch! With suboptimal weather, we took the opportunity to visit the Lenbachhaus museum, filled with every type of exhibit one could ask for, from modern art to a Der Blaue Reiter exhibit to a temporary audio installment playing every genre of music at studio quality. After a quick tour of the Ludwig Maximilian University, we went to a local pub to experience some Bavarian fare - käsespätzle, schweinebraten, sauerkraut, and brezelknödel!

Saturday was our only full day in Munich, a fact we very much exploited. After perusing at the largest flea market I’d ever seen, we caught the noon Glockenspiel (which, similar to London’s changing of the guard, is quite anticlimactic) and were jostled walking about the Viktualienmarkt. We then explored the massive city castle known as the Münchner Residenz, paying for not only the display rooms but the theater and treasury add-ons, which, in my opinion, made the ticket price worth it.

Completing our day of tourism and touristy things, my roommate and I decided that a Segway tour was in order (don’t you dare judge, you know you want to try it, too)! Let me just say, if you are a person with a disability who can balance standing and wants to see a great stretch of city without walking, Segway tours are a wonderful solution (an honestly less stressful than a hop-on-hop-off bus tour where you have to pay attention to where you are). My temperamental, arthritis-prone knees were thanking me. Our guide was, while very knowledgeable, quite off-color, embodying every negative American stereotype you can imagine and making inappropriate jokes at every turn. But we did get to see the city and learn a great deal of history, so an overall positive experience!

My roommate and I then got lucky, scoring a last-minute reservation at a top Munich restaurant. After a delicious dinner complete with aperitif, wine, and dessert, we headed to Zephyr bar at the recommendation of a lab mate (as well as the NYT). There, we hit it off with two women with whom we spent the rest of the night, posted up at the bar and then dancing until 5am. We also met an American man living near LA, which was wonderful for me to have a taste of home (and to practice my German gossiping so we ladies could talk privately in front of the non-German-speaking dude).

Sunday, nursing a massive hangover, we had a lazy brunch at a cute little cafe selling both food and trinkets before heading to see the imposing Asamkirche and bask in the sun while watching the river surfers and eating ice cream. My hangover was finally cured on the long train home, thanks to a disgustingly greasy slice of pizza.

[daughterofchaos]

Munich Residenz in Munich, Germany

Photo by Rain Rabbit on Flickr