Pauline Von Metternich - Life

Life

Princess Pauline von Metternich (also known as "de Metternich" and "von Metternich-Winneburg") was born into the Hungarian noble family of Sándor de Slawnitza. Her father, Moritz Sándor, described as "a furious rider", was known throughout the Habsburg empire as a passionate horseman. Her mother, Princess Leontine von Metternich, was a daughter of the Austrian chancellor Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich (architect of the Concert of Europe). It was at his home in Vienna that Pauline spent almost her whole childhood.

In 1856, she married her uncle, Prince Richard von Metternich, a son of chancellor Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich. They lived a happy conjugal life, despite his frequent love-affairs with actresses and opera prima donnas, and had three daughters.

Pauline accompanied her husband, an Austrian diplomat, on his missions to the royal court in Dresden and then the imperial court in Paris, where they lived for almost eleven years (1859 to 1870). She played an important role in the social and cultural life of Dresden and Paris, and, after 1870, Vienna. She was a close friend and confidante of French Empress Eugénie, and, with her husband, was a prominent personality at the court of Emperor Napoleon III. She introduced fashion designer Charles Frederick Worth to the Empress and thus started his rise to fame.

Pauline was an ardent patron of music, and became a leader of fashionable society. Whether in Paris or Vienna, she set the latest social trends. She taught French and Czech aristocrats to skate, and ladies to smoke cigars without fear of their reputations. She was acquainted with many composers and writers, including Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt, Charles Gounod, Camille Saint-Saëns, Prosper Mérimée and Alexandre Dumas), and corresponded with them. She was an advocate for the music of Wagner in Paris and Czech music composer Bedřich Smetana in Vienna. She organised salon performances of abridged versions of many famous operas, including Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, in which she took part both as a stage director and singer.

In her private life, Pauline suffered several crises and disasters. As a child, she was an eyewitness to the revolution of 1848 in Vienna. In 1870 she remained at the side of Empress Eugénie in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. Later she aided the Empress' escape from Paris to Great Britain by secretly sending Eugénie's jewels to London in a diplomatic bag.

Pauline's first child was Sophie (1857–1941); her second daughter, Pascaline (b.1862), married Count George of 'Waldstein', an insane and alcoholic Czech aristocrat who was said to have murdered her in delirium in Duchcov (today in the Czech Republic) in 1890. Her youngest daughter, Clementine (b.1870), was badly injured by her dog as a child and decided never to marry due to her scarred face.

Princess Pauline died in Vienna in 1921. She lived through the glory and fall of the Austrian and French empires and was believed to be a living symbol of these two lost worlds.

A portrait of her by French impressionist Edgar Degas, painted from a photograph, now hangs in the National Gallery, London.