Caroline Bauer (29 March 1807 – 18 October 1877[1]) was a German actress of the Biedermeier era who used the name Lina Bauer.

Karoline Bauer (in a white dress) with a group of artists, including Johann Gottfried Schadow, Carl Joseph Begas, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Karl Wilhelm Wach, and Christian Daniel Rauch. Parade auf dem Opernplatz (Berlin), by Franz Krüger, 1824–1830.

Biography

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Caroline Philippina Augusta Bauer (German: Karoline Philippine Auguste Bauer) was born in Heidelberg, Germany to Heinrich Bauer and Christiane Stockmar. Her siblings were Lottchen, Karl and Louis.

She was during a short time in 1828-1829 the mistress of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (later King of Belgium as Leopold I). It was said that she bore a close physical resemblance to Leopold's late wife, Princess Charlotte of Wales,[2] which had been commented on by the Duke of Wellington.[3]

In mid-1829 she and her mother returned to Berlin, and she resumed her career as an actress. She competed with Charlotte von Hagn; the theatre audiences were divided into "Bauerians" and "Hagnerians". Many years later, in her memoirs published posthumously, she declared that she had engaged into a morganatic marriage with Leopold and that he had created her Countess of Montgomery.[4] There was no record of such a marriage or of the existence of such a title. There was, on the contrary, a strong denial by her cousin, the son of Leopold's secretary, baron Christian Friedrich Freiherr von Stockmar.

Her second husband was Wladyslaw Plater, whom she married in 1843.[5] Her cousin, Marie Bauer, was married to Marian Langiewicz, leader of the Polish Insurrection of 1863; they were married in Switzerland. She died by suicide in Kilchberg, Switzerland.

Literature

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  • Karoline BAUER, Verschollene Herzensgeschichten: Nachgelassene Memoiren, 1884
  • Posthumous memoirs of Karoline Bauer, from the German, 2 vol., 1884
  • Susanne FÖRSTER, Am Tage Ruhm, am Abend Tränen: Lebenserinnerungen der Schauspielerin Karoline Bauer, Ed. Sporn, 1943
  • Caroline Bauer and the Coburgs, 2009

References

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  1. ^ Ponsonby, Doris A. A prisoner in Regent's park. Chapman and Hall; 1st Edition (1961). ASIN: B0000CL5YL. Page 206.
  2. ^ Cecil Woodham-Smith (1972). Queen Victoria: Her Life and Times. H. Hamilton. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-241-02200-9.
  3. ^ Public Opinion. G. Cole. 1885. p. 109.
  4. ^ The Nation. J.H. Richards. 1885. p. 257.
  5. ^ Karoline Bauer (1885). Memoirs of Karoline Bauer: From the German. Remington & Company. p. 199.
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