Baroness of the Ripetta: Letters of Augusta von Eichthal to Franz Xaver Kraus (review)

Franz Xaver Kraus (1840–1901), professor of Christian archaeology and church history at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, is well known as a prolific writer and as an "éminence grise" as a church politician. He does not fit into the mainstream of German Catholicism. While criticizing his fellow Catholics for their political stance in the Center Party, he pleaded himself for a "religious Catholicism" as he called it. It is not easy to assess precisely what this religious Catholicism meant. At any rate he conceived it as in strong opposition to ultramontanism and Jesuitism. So Kraus is labeled a liberal Catholic which he was indeed with a strong progovernmental bent in favor of the governments of Baden and Prussia. He neglected no effort toward keeping good relations with government circles. His personal charm and an innate compulsion to mix with high society drew him toward aristocratic ladies whose hearts he seems to have easily won.

One of these ladies was the baroness Augusta von Eichthal (1835–1932), the granddaughter of Aaron Elias Seligmann, the Jewish banker of the Bavarian kings. Her parents had converted to Catholicism. Unlike her cousin Charlotte Blennerhassett, née Countess Leyden (1840–1917), who through her mother descended from the same ancestor and became a distinguished literary writer, Augusta does not seem to have developed similar ambitions. As a fixed residence she stayed in Rome at 176 via della Ripetta. She was already an old spinster when Kraus met her in 1895 at the salon of Donna Ersilia Lovatelli and started with her a correspondence which lasted until Kraus's premature death. Their exchange of letters has been preserved. Augusta's letters are at the Stadtbibliothek Trier, Kraus's at the Hauptstaatsarchiv München.

Robert C. Ayers has translated Augusta's letters into English and published them integrally, whereas Kraus's letters appear from time to time in the footnotes. It does not seem that he attributed a great importance to this correspondent who traveled from Kurbad to Kurbad and from castle to castle. But her cosmopolitan relations were useful for him and kept him informed about developments in Rome. Beyond plaintive anticurial and antidemocratic prejudices the letters are not striking for particular information. Some of them might be interesting for American readers, especially when "Americanism" pops up in the figures of John Ireland, John Lancaster Spalding, Bishop of Peoria, John J. Keane, and Denis O'Connell. The author has invested much effort in identifying the personalities that are quoted in the letters. Yet an index is sorely missed. A photo of the impressive face of Kraus would have been welcome as well as a reproduction of the portrait of the young baroness by Emilie Linder (1797–1867), painter and well-known Maecenas of artists in the Munich Goevres circle. The painting is preserved at the Kunstmuseum Basel and has been reproduced by Nikolaus Meier: Emilie Linder, Jacob Burchkardt und das Kunstleben der Stadt Basel (Basel, 1997), p. 15.