Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein
Also known as: Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein
Biography
Through Liszt's years as Weimar's Hofkapellmeister there were two people at the Villa Altenburg, and the city's own account of the house names them both. Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein was the other one.
She followed him, and stayed, 1848–1861
Liszt met her in Kiev in 1847, and she came after him to Weimar the following year — the year he took up the court post. From 1848 they shared the Villa Altenburg on Jenaer Straße, and the household they kept there is the reason musicians, writers and painters had a reason to come to a small Thuringian residence town at all. Liszt gave up the Hofkapellmeister post at the end of 1858, but the two of them stayed on at the Altenburg until 1861. The marriage they intended never took place.
Why she belongs to Weimar, 1848–1887
It would be easy to file her as a companion and leave it there. The reason not to is that the Altenburg years are the productive ones — the Wagner premieres, the students, the circle — and every account of that house is an account of two people running it. To list the music and leave out the household is to describe a concert hall, not a life. She outlived Liszt by a year, dying in 1887.
Questions visitors ask
- Who was Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein?
- A Polish princess and writer who shared the Villa Altenburg with Franz Liszt from 1848 to 1861. Liszt met her in Kiev in 1847, and she followed him to Weimar the following year; they stayed at the Altenburg together for three years after he gave up his court post at the end of 1858.
- Did Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein and Liszt marry?
- No. They intended to, but the marriage never took place.
- What happened to her after Liszt's death?
- She outlived him by a year, dying in 1887.
Notable Works & Achievements
The household at the Villa Altenburg, Weimar 1848–1861
Connected Places in Weimar
Jenaer Straße 3, 99425 Weimar
She shared the house with him from 1848; the household the two of them kept is what drew the circle here.
Historical Context
The Altenburg household is where the period's musical circle actually met, through Liszt's years as Hofkapellmeister.
Goethe died in 1832, and Weimar had to work out what a town does after its golden age. It decided to keep going, and the answer took eighty-six years — the era the Klassik Stiftung Weimar calls the Silver Age. Music replaced literature as the thing Weimar was for, two royal patrons paid for it, and the schools they founded outlived the monarchy that funded them.
Read more about this period →Quick Facts
1819
1887
Polish