Carolyne Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein - Biography

Biography

Karolina Elżbieta Iwanowska was born at Woronińce (today Voronivtsi (Воронівці), Ukraine), in one of her parents' many estates in eastern Poland, then a province of the Russian Empire. On April 26, 1836, jiust two months after her seventeenth birthday (and with pressure from her father), Carolyne married Prince Nikolaus zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg-Ludwigsburg (1812–1864), an officer in the Russian service who was also a member of an ancient Baltic German noble house, being the son of Peter Wittgenstein. They had an only daughter, Marie Pauline Antoinette (1837–1920), who later married Prince Konstantin zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst (brother of Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Bavaria until its unification with the German Empire).

Princess Carolyne met Franz Liszt in 1847 during one of his musical tours in Russia. The princess, a strong Roman Catholic, had by then been estranged from her husband for some time. She and Liszt began living together at Weimar from 1848. Eventually she wished to regularise their situation and marry Liszt, but since her husband was still living, she had to convince the Roman Catholic authorities that her marriage to him had been invalid. After an intricate process which involved two direct Papal audiences, she was temporarily successful (September 1860), and it was planned that the couple would marry in Rome on October 22, 1861, Liszt's fiftieth birthday. Liszt arrived in Rome the previous day, only to find the princess unable to marry him. It appears that both her husband and the Tsar of Russia managed to quash permission for the marriage at the Vatican. The Russian government also impounded her several estates (she owned thousands of serfs), which made her later marriage to Liszt, or anyone, unfeasible. Furthermore, the scandal would have seriously harmed her daughter's marriageability—clearly the main reason why the prince put an end to his wife's scheduled remarriage.

Subsequently her relationship to Liszt became one of platonic companionship, especially after he received minor orders in the Catholic Church and became an abbé. For her part, Carolyne spent several decades in Rome writing privately (and very critically) on church issues. She was devastated by Liszt's death and survived him only a few months, dying on March 9, 1887 in Rome.