Princess Alexandra Amalie of Bavaria (26 August 1826 – 21 September 1875) was a German princess and writer. Rare photo of Princess Alexandra Amélie of Bavaria 2

Rare photo of Princess Alexandra Amélie of Bavaria 2

Life

Alexandra was born in

Schloss Johannisburg Schloss Johannisburg is a schloss in the town of Aschaffenburg, in Franconia in the state of Bavaria, Germany. It was erected between 1605 and 1614 by the architect for Johann Schweikhard von Kronberg, Prince Bishop of Mainz. Until 1803, it ...

Aschaffenburg Aschaffenburg (; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Aschebersch'') is a town in northwest Bavaria, Germany. The town of Aschaffenburg is not part of the Aschaffenburg (district), district of Aschaffenburg, but is its administrative sea ...

, the eighth child and fifth daughter of King

Ludwig I of Bavaria en, Louis Charles Augustus , image = Joseph Karl Stieler - King Ludwig I in his Coronation Robes - WGA21796.jpg , caption = Portrait by Joseph Stieler, 1825 , succession=King of Bavaria , reign = , coronation ...

and of his wife, Princess

Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen Therese Charlotte Luise of Saxony-Hildburghausen (8 July 1792 – 26 October 1854) was queen of Bavaria as the wife of King Ludwig I. Biography Therese was a daughter of Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, and Duchess Charlotte Georgine of ...

. As a girl, her portrait was painted by

Joseph Karl Stieler Joseph Karl Stieler (1 November 1781 – 9 April 1858) was a German painter. From 1820 until 1855 he worked as royal court painter of the Bavarian kings. He is known for his Neoclassical portraits, especially for the Gallery of Beauties at Ny ...

for the

Gallery of Beauties The Gallery of Beauties (german: Schönheitengalerie) is a collection of 36 portraits of the most beautiful women from the nobility and middle classes of Munich, Germany, painted between 1827 and 1850 (mostly by Joseph Karl Stieler, appointed c ...

which her father commissioned at

Schloss Nymphenburg The Nymphenburg Palace (german: Schloss Nymphenburg, Palace of the Nymphs) is a Baroque palace situated in Munich's western district Neuhausen-Nymphenburg, in Bavaria, southern Germany. Combined with the adjacent Nymphenburg Palace Park it consti ...

. Alexandra never married, and instead was appointed abbess of the Royal Chapter for Ladies of

Saint Anne According to Christian apocryphal and Islamic tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the canonical gospels. In writing, Anne's name and that of her husband Joachim come o ...

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

and

Würzburg Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is a city in the region of Franconia in the north of the German state of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the ''Regierungsbezirk'' Lower Franconia. It spans the banks of the Main River. Würzburg ...

; this was a religious community specifically for noble ladies. In the 1850s, Prince

Louis Lucien Bonaparte Louis Lucien Bonaparte (4 January 1813 – 3 November 1891) was a French philologist. The third son of Napoleon's second surviving brother, Lucien Bonaparte, he spent much of his life outside France for political reasons. After a brief political ...

asked King Ludwig for Alexandra's hand in marriage, but he was divorced from his wife, and Ludwig refused, using as an excuse Alexandra's delicate health.

Writer

In 1852, Alexandra began a literary career. Her first book of stories was entitled ''Weihnachtsrosen'' (Christmas roses). The next year she published ''Souvenirs, pensées et essais'' (Memories, thoughts and essays). In 1856 appeared ''Feldblumen'' (Field flowers), the proceeds of which she donated to the Maximilian Orphanage. In 1858 appeared ''Phantasie- und Lebensbilder'' (Daydreams and biographical sketches), a collection of loose translations into German from English and French. In 1862, she produced a loose translation into German of some of the romances of Eugenie Foa. The following year appeared ''Thautropfen'' (Dewdrops), a collection of stories translated into German from French as well as others of her own. In 1870, Alexandra produced ''Das Kindertheater'' (The children's theatre), a German translation of some French children's plays from

Arnaud Berquin Arnaud Berquin (September 1747 in Bordeaux – 21 December 1791) was a French children's author. His most famous work was '' L'Ami des Enfants'' (1782-1783) which was first translated into English, albeit bowdlerised, by Mary Stockdale and pub ...

's ''L'ami des enfants''. That same year appeared ''Der erste des Monats'' (The first of the month), a German translation of

Jean-Nicolas Bouilly Jean-Nicolas Bouilly (24 January 1763 – 14 April 1842) was a French playwright, librettist, children's writer, and politician of the French Revolution. He is best known for writing a libretto, supposedly based on a true story, about a woman who ...

's French book. In 1873, she produced ''Maiglöckchen'' (Lilies of the valley), a collection of stories. Alexandra also had a number of contributions published in Isabella Braun's periodical ''Jugendblätter''. Alexandra died on 21 September 1875 (the same day as her brother Prince Adalbert) at the age of 49 at

. She is buried in the Wittelsbach crypt in the Theatinerkirche in Munich.

Psychological issues

Notwithstanding her literary accomplishments, Alexandra suffered from a number of psychological eccentricities, including a fixation with cleanliness as well as wearing only white clothes. In her early twenties, she notably developed a

delusion A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or som ...

that as a child she had swallowed a

grand piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

made of glass, which remained inside her. This delusion was the subject of a 2010

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The sta ...

programme called "The Glass Piano", written and narrated by poet

Deborah Levy Deborah Levy (born 6 August 1959) is a British novelist, playwright and poet. She initially concentrated on writing for the theatre – her plays were staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company – before focusing on prose fiction. Her early nov ...

, with musical sound effects interspersed between commentary by

psychoanalyst PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...

Susie Orbach Susie Orbach (born 6 November 1946) is a British psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer and social critic. Her first book, ''Fat is a Feminist Issue'', analysed the psychology of dieting and over-eating in women, and she has campaigned against m ...

and others. She is the subject of a play at the Coronet Cinema in 2019."The princess who thought she was made of glass"
Holly Williams,

bbc.com BBC Online, formerly known as BBCi, is the BBC's online service. It is a large network of websites including such high-profile sites as BBC News and Sport, the on-demand video and radio services branded BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, the childre ...

, 16 May 2019

Ancestry

Notes

Sources

*Rall, Hans. ''Wittelsbacher Lebensbilder von Kaiser Ludwig bis zur Gegenwart: Führer durch die Münchener Fürstengrüfte mit Verzeichnis aller Wittelsbacher Grablegen und Grabstätten''. München: Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds.

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alexandra of Bavaria, Princess 1826 births 1875 deaths House of Wittelsbach Bavarian princesses People from Aschaffenburg Burials at the Theatine Church, Munich 19th-century German writers Daughters of kings