Aurora Königsmarck
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Countess Maria Aurora (von) Königsmarck (8 May 1662–16 February 1728), was a Swedish noblewoman who became a mistress of Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony and king of Poland.
Having passed some years at Hamburg, where she attracted attention both by her beauty and her talents, Aurora went in 1694 to Dresden to make inquiries about her brother Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, who had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from Hanover. Here she was noticed by Augustus, who made her his mistress; and in October 1696 she gave birth to a son Maurice, afterwards the famous marshal de Saxe. The elector however quickly tired of Aurora, who then spent her time in efforts to secure the position of abbess of Quedlinburg, an office which carried with it the dignity of a princess of the Holy Roman Empire, and to recover the lost inheritance of her family in Sweden. She was made coadjutor abbess and lady-provost (Propstin) of Quedlinburg, but lived mainly in Berlin, Dresden and Hamburg. In 1702 she went on a diplomatic errand to Charles XII of Sweden on behalf of Augustus, but her adventurous journey ended in failure. The countess, who was described by Voltaire as "the most famous woman of two centuries", died at Quedlinburg in 1728. Her namesake and great-great-granddaughter, Aurore Dupin, became the French novelist George Sand.
See F. Cramer, Denkwürdigkeiten der Gräfin M. A. Königsmark (Leipzig, 1836); and Biographische Nachrichten van der Gräfin M. A. Königsmark (Quedlinburg, 1833); W. F. Palmblad, Aurora Königsmark und ihre Verwandte (Leipzig, 1848-1853); C. L. de Pollnitz, La Saxe galante (Amsterdam, 1734); and O. J. B. von Corvin-Wiersbitzki, Maria Aurora, Gräfin von Königsmark (Rudolstadt, 1902).
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
