Countess Palatine Eleonora Catherine of Zweibrücken

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Countess Palatine Eleonora Catherine of Zweibrücken
Catherine of Sweden

Eleonora Catherine of the Palatinate-Zweibrücken (17 May 1626 – 3 March 1692), was a cousin and foster sister of Queen

royal princesses and princes of Sweden.[1] As the wife of Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Eschwege (1617–1655), she was by marriage Landgravine of Hesse-Eschwege, and after her husband's death acted as regent and administrator of his lands (1655–1692).[2]

Biography

Eleonora was born at

Johannes Matthiæ
.

The negotiations concerning her marriage with Landgrave Frederick of Hesse-Eschwege, son of Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, started in 1643. The landgrave was a second cousin of both her parents and nine years her senior. The negotiation process was difficult, but finally completed in June 1646. She was granted a fortune of 20,000 gulden by her father. The marriage took place at Tre Kronor in Stockholm on 6 September 1646.

After the wedding, Eleonora confessed before her husband, "on her knees", that she had had an affair with a French lute-player and actor, named Beschon, from the French court theatre of Antoine de Beaulieu, and was pregnant with his child.[3][4] Frederick decided to act like nothing happened and hide the matter, but it became a known scandal. Beschon wrote a composition to Eleonora which he sent her along with a letter dated 28 February 1647, but she gave it to her brother; this document is now preserved in the Stegeborg collection.[3] In 1648, she referred to the queen's head lady-in-waiting Margareta Brahe as her "Dearest Protection", likely because Margareta Brahe had defended her when she gave birth to an illegitimate child.[5]

The marriage has been described as unhappy. Frederick took part in the war of his brother-in-law in Poland, where he was shot in 1655. Eleonora never remarried. It is said she was too embarrassed by the scandal with Beschon to return to the Swedish court, so she preferred to live in her fief Osterholz, where she founded a pharmacy and hired the first teacher and doctor of the town.[6] Eleonora was the administrator and regent of her husband's possessions in the Holy Roman Empire. Eleonora sent her daughter Juliana to be brought up at the Swedish royal court, where she was regarded as a prospective bride for Charles XI until she became pregnant in 1672. Eleonora did in fact visit Sweden a couple of times: in 1661, in 1674 and in 1681. During her 1674 visit, Lorenzo Magalotti described her as "a wicked, vain, strange, proud and melancholic woman" who spent most of her time in pious devotions.[3]

Eleonora died in

Bremen
(today's Germany) and is buried at the Altstädter Kirche ("Old City church") in Eschwege where now stands the Marktkirche ("Market Church").

Some of her notable descendants are

Carl XVI Gustaf and Charles III
.

Children

  • Margarete (b. Erfurt, 31 March 1647 – d. Erfurt, 19 October 1647).[a]
  • Ferdinand Albert I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg
    -Bevern.
  • Elizabeth (b. Eschwege, 7 April 1650 – d. Eschwege, 27 April 1651).
  • Juliana (b. Eschwege, 14 May 1652 – d. IJsselstein, 20 June 1693), prospective bride of Charles XI of Sweden; married in 1680 Johann Jakob Marchand, Baron of Lilienburg.
  • August
    ) and secondly in 1679 with John Adolph, Count of Bentheim-Tecklenburg (divorced 1693).
  • Frederick, Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Eschwege (b. Eschwege, 30 November 1654 – d. Eschwege, 27 July 1655).

Ancestry

Notes

  1. ^ Probably she was the child product of the affair with the lute-player. According to historiography, Eleonora Catherine confessed the affair to her husband at the beginning of 1647, when the pregnancy could no longer be concealed.

References

  1. ISBN 91-85057-48-7
    p. 281
  2. ^ Women in Power : 1640-1700
  3. ^ a b c Eleonora Catharina in Riksarkivet.se (in Swedish) [retrieved 11 June 2014].
  4. ^ Frederick of Hesse-Eschwege : News from the "great Fritz" in Weser Kurier.de (in German) [retrieved 11 June 2014].
  5. ISBN 91-628-3340-5
    p. 171
  6. ^ Eleonora Catharine in heimatverein-lilienthal.de Archived 2014-06-06 at the Wayback Machine (in German) [retrieved 5 January 2015].
  7. ^ a b Kromnow, Åke (1975). "Johan Kasimir". Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (in Swedish). Vol. 20. p. 204.
  8. ^ a b Kromnow, Åke (1977). "Katarina". Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (in Swedish). Vol. 21. p. 1.
  9. ^ a b Press, Volker (1974), "Johann I.", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 10, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 513–514; (full text online)
  10. ^
    Wurzbach, Constantin von, ed. (1861). "Habsburg, Maria (Herzogin zu Berg, Jülich und Cleve)" . Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich [Biographical Encyclopedia of the Austrian Empire] (in German). Vol. 7. p. 19 – via Wikisource
    .
  11. ^ a b Palme, Sven Ulric (1975). "Karl IX". Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (in Swedish). Vol. 20. p. 630.
  12. ^ a b Skoglund, Lars-Olof (1987). "Maria". Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (in Swedish). Vol. 25. p. 150.

External links

Countess Palatine Eleonora Catherine of Zweibrücken
Cadet branch of the House of Wittelsbach
Born: 17 May 1626 Died: 3 March 1692
German royalty
Vacant
Title last held by
Juliane of Nassau-Siegen
as Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel
Landgravine consort of Hesse-Eschwege

8 September 1646 – 24 September 1655 		Succeeded by
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