Konstanze Dahn, born ''Constanze Le Gaye'' (12 June 1814 in

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

, † 26 March 1894 in Munich) was a German actress of French-

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

origin.

Early life

Dahn was born as the youngest daughter of Kapellmeister A. (also: Charles) Le Gaye and his wife Antoinette, née Schäfer. Both parents served as musicians at the royal-Westphalian court of

Jérôme Bonaparte Jérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte (born Girolamo Buonaparte; 15 November 1784 – 24 June 1860) was the youngest brother of Napoleon I and reigned as Jerome Napoleon I (formally Hieronymus Napoleon in German), King of Westphalia, between 1807 and 1 ...

in Kassel, where the daughter also received her first artistic lessons. In 1821, at the age of seven, she completed her debut at the Theater in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...

in the role of the "Donauwibchen".

Wilhelm von Schadow Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow (7 September 1789 – 19 March 1862) was a German Romantic painter. Biography He was born in Berlin, the second son of the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow, who gave him his first lessons in drawing. He then turne ...

painted it there as ''Mignon''.

Career

On 29 June 1831 she was able to record her greatest success in the role of "

Gretchen Gretchen (, ; literal translation: "Little Grete" or "Little Greta") is a female given name of German origin that is mainly prevalent in the United States. Its popularity increased because a major character in Goethe's ''Faust'' (1808) has th ...

". Her congenial opponent was the actor Heinrich Marr. With this appearance, the 17-year-old under her birth name "Mlle. Le Gaye "in the German-speaking area. In June 1833, Constanze Dahn completed a first successful guest performance at the Royal Court Theater in Munich and was there from the spot. She remained a member of the ensemble until her life. She gave her official farewell performance on 1 October 1865 in the role of the "Duchess of Parma" in Goethe's Egmont.

Personal life

In 1831 she met the actor Friedrich Dahn and married him in Hamburg on 15 April 1833. With him she had two sons,

Felix Felix may refer to: * Felix (name), people and fictional characters with the name Places * Arabia Felix is the ancient Latin name of Yemen * Felix, Spain, a municipality of the province Almería, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, ...

(1834–1912) and Ludwig (1843–1898) and a daughter of the same name, Constanze (1846–1933), who under the pseudonym "C. Hirundo" was literarily active. The marriage of Friedrich and Constanze Dahn turned out very unhappy and was finally dissolved in 1850.

Death

Dahn retired to private life and died at the age of nearly 80 years on 26 March 1894 in Munich. In his funeral oration, Ernst von Possart called her "the Duse of Munich". The tomb of Constanze Dahn is located on the old southern cemetery in Munich (wall right place at SP 21 cemetery 18) location . In the tomb is also her son Ludwig (1843–1898).

References

* Gerhard A. Jahn: From Paris to Munich and to New York . In: Ralf Satori (Eds.): Nymph Mirror. From Gardens, Lyrical, Prose and History , vol. 5 (2009), , pp. 69–79. * Ludwig Eisenberg: Large biographical lexicon of the German stage of the 19th century . List, Leipzig, 1903, p. 172. * Rolf Grashey: The Dahn family and the Münchner Hofschauspiel (1833–1899) . Voss, Leipzig, 1932. * Peter Rummenhöller: Romanticism in Music. Analyzes, portraits, reflections . Dtv, Munich 1989, . {{DEFAULTSORT:Dahn, Konstanze 1814 births 1894 deaths 19th-century German actresses German stage actresses Actors from Kassel