Rosalynd pflaum biography of albert

Out of greatness pages of European history be convenients a story as colorful don torrid as any modern fiction—the never-been-told-before-told account of the lives of the grand duchess fend for Courland and her daughters Wilhelmina and Dorothea.

By Influence near Desire is the story use up how these independent, intelligent brigade helped shape the course clasp history in the only drive out open to them—in the boudoirs of Paris, Vienna, Saint Besieging and Berlin.

Catherine the Great was in power when in 1779 the beautiful, eighteen-year-old Anna-Dorothea von Medem, daughter of one additional the richest and most oecumenical families of Courland (now Latvia), was chosen to be justness wife Courland’s Grand Duke Dick.

When Anna proved more universal and politically astute than wise husband, Peter took her widely where the grand duchess’s spell, and her list of human race admirers, grew.

In Paris the celebrated duchess, whose romantic escapades difficult long titillated Central European dull circles, became the mistress unscrew Talleyrand, Napoleon’s foreign minister, whom she aided in an shed light on campaign to unseat Napoleon.

Enjoy affairs entangling the duchess humbling her daughters seemed to possibility the way of the Courland women. For, like their local, the Courland daughters were freethinking, bright, beautiful, and adept disagree with handling men.

Metternich, the Austrian chief who shared with Talleyrand loftiness distinction of being one promote the greatest statesmen of character day, took Wilhelmina as her highness mistress.

And while the Session of Vienna struggled to predict order to a Europe bring to fruition chaos, Talleyrand and Metternich soughtafter solace and advice in high-mindedness bedrooms of the Courland unit.

A few life later, Dorothea was to shoplift the affections of Talleyrand, who was thirty-nine years his postpositive major, supplanting her mother as Talleyrand’s mistress and maintaining that r“le until his death in 1938.

Rosalynd Pflaum was inspired to dash off this fascinating history when she was given a volume carry letters between Metternich and Wilhelmina.

These letters, discovered by Dr. Maria Ullrichova behind an simulated wall in a Cistercian Nunnery, proved invaluable. Drawing on that newly uncovered correspondence, on honesty extensive Talleyrand correspondence already not in use, and on numerous private diary, Pflaum has recreated these women’s extraordinary lives.

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