Marie de Castellane


Princess Marie Radziwill was a French noblewoman, a member of the house of Castellane. The famous dandy Boni de Castellane was her nephew.

Early life

Marie was born on 19 February 1840 at the Château de Rochecotte. She was the daughter of French aristocrats Henri de Castellane, marquis de Castellane, and Pauline de Talleyrand-Périgord. She had one brother, Antoine de Castellane, who married Madeleine Le Clerc de Juigné and had three children that survived to adulthood, Boniface de Castellane, Jean de Castellane, and Stanislas de Castellane.
Her paternal grandparents were Boniface de Castellane, Marshal of France, and Louise Cordélia Eucharis Greffulhe. Her maternal grandparents were Edmond de Talleyrand-Périgord, the 2nd Duke of Dino, and Princess Dorothea of Courland, the Duchess of Dino.

Memoir

In 1906 she published the Souvenirs of her grandmother, the duchesse de Dino and, in 1909, a Chronique de 1831 à 1862, also based on the duchess's papers. Her own memoirs were published in 1931 as Souvenirs de la princesse Radziwill 1840–1873. Une française à la cour de prusse.

Personal life

On 3 October 1857, Marie married Prince Antoni Wilhelm Radziwiłł, son of Prince Wilhelm Paweł Radziwiłł and Countess Mathilde of Clary und Aldringen, at Sagan. Prince Radziwiłł, a descendant of the powerful magnate family of Radziwiłł, who owned large estates in Silesia and Posen, as well as Russia, was a member of the Prussian House of Lords and general à la suite of William I, German Emperor. Together, Antoni and Marie had four children:
Prince Radziwiłł died in Berlin in 1904. Marie died at the Kleinitz Palace in Lower Silesia in July 1915.

Radziwill Castle

She spent a large part of her life in Berlin, where she was "the Apis bull in person and the queen of Berlin". From 1881 to 1886, she took on the restoration of the Radziwill castle at Nieswiez, allowing her to save its archives and library, add a terrace flanked by Neo Gothic tourelles and redesign the park in the English style.