Metternich ( German: Metternich ) - a German-Austrian noble family from Poreynia that died out in 1992. From it came Clement von Metternich , the Duke of Portall - the most powerful person in the Austrian Empire in the 1st half of the 19th century.
| Metternichi | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Title | Counts, princes |
| Homeland | Poreynia |
| Nationality |  Holy Roman Empire |
| Palaces | Castles Johannisberg and Konigswart |
Chancellor's Ancestors
Metternichi is the youngest branch of an old Lower Rhine family that owned Hemmerich near Bonn . In the Middle Ages, they secured an important position as the chamberlain of the Archbishop of Cologne . In the course of the 17th century, the Metternich clan gave the Holy Roman Empire three spiritual electors :
- Lothar Johann Reinhard von Metternich (1551-1623) - Archbishop of Trier from 1599
- Lothar Friedrich von Metternich- Borscheid (1617-75) - Archbishop of Mainz since 1673
- Karl Heinrich von Metternich-Winneburg (1622-79) - was elected Archbishop of Mainz a few days before his death.
In 1679, Philip Emmerich von Metternich was elevated to the counts. Franz Georg Karl von Metternich transferred from the Rhine spiritual electors to the Austrian diplomatic service. He was the chief imperial commissar at the Rastadt Congress in 1797-1799. In 1803, thanks to the efforts of his powerful son, he was elevated to the rank of imperial prince .
Having lost her ancestral possessions on the left bank of the Rhine of France, the surname Metternich received instead the Swabian abbey Oksenhausen , which had become dependent on Württemberg during the establishment of the Rhine Union (1806), and sold to the Württemberg dynasty in 1825. When the empire was abolished, the chancellor's family was mediated .
Descendants of the Chancellor
The son of the Austrian chancellor, Richard von Metternich (1829-1895), in 1859-70. represented Austria-Hungary at the court of Napoleon III . He was somewhat in the shadow of his active wife and niece, Polina von Metternich (1836–1921), who patronized Eastern European composers. Edgar Degas painted her famous portrait.
This famous couple had no male heirs, and of the three daughters, the eldest was for Prince Oettingen , the middle for Count Waldstein , and the youngest remained a girl, but shortly before her death in 1963 she adopted the Duke of Corvey and Ratibors from the genus of Hohenlohe . After the suppression of the Metternich family, his descendants adopted the fourth surname Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst-Metternich-Sandor .
After Richard, the princely title was inherited by his younger brother Paul Clement (1834-1906). From his marriage to Countess Zichy , he had his only son, Clement, whose wife, Isabelle, daughter of the Spanish Marquis de Santa Cruz, did not live up to her 100th birthday in 1980 for only a few months.
The last of the Metternichs was their son, Prince Paul Alfons (1917-1992). His wife was Princess Tatyana Illarionovna Vasilchikova (1915-2006). The marriage was childless. T. Vasilchikova organized the Rheingau Music Festival on the basis of the Johannisberg family castle.
Links
- Metternich, a noble family // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
- The pedigree of the Metternichs
- Metternich-Winneburg-Ochsenhausen, das Fürstengeschlecht // Biographical Dictionary of the Austrian Empire (German) .