Emilie Ortlöpp

Life

Emilie was the second daughter of the goldsmith Johann Christian Ortlöpp and his wife Agnes Louise Sophie, née Weißenberg from Berlin, and from 1812, the mistress of the Elector William II of Hesse, whom she had met during a stay in Berlin. He brought her to Kassel in 1813, leading to a de facto termination of his marriage with Princess Augusta of Prussia, but for political reasons, he was not allowed to divorce his wife. In 1815, William and Augusta were separated from bed and board.

Emilie was admitted at court, and later lived in the Reichenbach Palace at the corner of Königsstraße and Friedrichsplatz. In 1821, William raised her to Countess Reichenbach (named after Reichenbach Castle in Hessisch Lichtenau) and in 1824, she received the Austrian title of Countess of Lessonitz after William had purchased the Moravian estates of Lessonitz, Bzenec and Dolní Moštěnice for her. At the same time she and her children received the Austrian citizenship.

Their relationship caused a scandal; they even received death threats. The Countess was probably unpopular and was alleged to have had a negative impact on William's politics, or at least some of his political failures were attributed to her.

Their relationship was one of the reasons why the William did not return to his capital Kassel after the 1830 revolution. He initially moved to Hanau and later to Frankfurt, where he acquired a palace in the Neue Mainzer Straße and later a garden house in the Gallus district.

Augusta died on 19 February 1841. William and Emilie married morganatically on 8 July 1841 at Bzenec Castle in Moravia. Their witness was State Chancellor Prince Klemens von Metternich.

Emilie died on 12 February 1843 in Frankfurt am Main to a liver infection and was buried at the Main Cemetery in Frankfurt. The Elector commissioned the architect Friedrich Maximilian Hessemer, to create a mausoleum in the Byzantine style. The crucifix inside was created by the sculptor Johann Nepomuk Zwerger. The marble sarcophagus was commissioned by the Countess's children and created in 1863 by the sculptor Eduard Schmidt von der Launitz. Elector Frederick William, who had succeeded his father by then, tried every diplomatic means available to prevent his father's sculpture from being installed in the mausoleum, but achieved nothing in the Free City of Frankfurt. Today, the tomb with a capstone from 1847, contains six coffins.

After Emilie's death, William married a third time, with Caroline of Berlepsch (1820–1877). He died on 20 November 1847 and was buried in the countly crypt of the St. Mary's Church in Hanau.

Issue

Emilie and William had eight children: