Born: 25 February 1836, Austria
Died: 28 September 1921
Country most active: Austria, France
Also known as: Countess Pauline Sándor de Szlavnicza
Pauline Clémentine Marie Walburga, Princess of Metternich-Winneburg zu Beilstein was a famous Austrian socialite who played an central role in the social and cultural life of Dresden and Paris, and, after 1871, Vienna. Renowned for her great charm and elegance as well as for her social commitment, she was an significant promoter of composers Richard Wagner, Bedřich Smetana and Franz Liszt. She was also a key figure in the creation of the haute couture industry; she introduced fashion designer Charles Frederick Worth to the French Empress Eugenie in 1860, starting his rise to fame.
Pauline was an avid supporter of music and contemporary arts, as well as a leader of fashionable society known for setting social trends. She taught French and Czech aristocrats to skate, and encouraged ladies to smoke cigars without fear for their reputations. In addition to using her social clout to promote the work of Wagner, Smetana and Liszt, she organised salon performances of abridged versions of many famous operas, including Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, in which she both directed and sang in.
Though filled with art, fashion and music, Pauline’s life was not always glamorous – as a child, she witnessed Vienna’s bloody Revolution of 1848. In 1870 she remained with Empress Eugénie in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War and later aided the Empress’s escape to Great Britain by secretly sending Eugénie’s jewels to London in a diplomatic bag.
In August 1892 Pauline reportedly had a sword duel with Countess Anastasia von Kielmannsegg – supposedly due to a dispute over a floral arrangement at the Vienna Musical and Theatre Exposition, of which the nobles were honorary president and president of the exhibition, respectively. The supposed duel involved both women stripping to the waist to reduce the risk of a wound becoming infected and the idea of two topless noble ladies captured the imagination of artists and scandalized Victorians. However there are no primary sources for the story, only accounts from foreign newspapers and shortly after they were published, a French newspaper printed a denial by the Princess, in which she calls the story a “ridiculous invention by Italian journalists”.
Having lived through the glory and fall of the Austrian and French empires,Pauline was seen as a living symbol of these two lost worlds. She wrote two volumes of memoirs, both published posthumously in the 1920s. The first, Gesehenes, geschehenes, erlebtes, in German, honored her grandfather and father, and the second, Éclairs du passé, in French, recalled her life and times in the court of Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie.