Early life Marie d'Agoult was born in
Frankfurt am Main, Germany, with the full name of
Marie Catherine Sophie de Flavigny, the daughter of Alexandre Victor François, Vicomte de Flavigny (1770–1819), an émigré French aristocrat, and his wife
Maria Elisabeth Bethmann (1772–1847), whose father was the German merchant and banker
Johann Philipp Bethmann (1715–1793). According to Siegfried Mandel, however, Maria Elisabeth's father was
Simon Moritz Bethmann, who was Johann Philipp's younger brother, and the Bethmanns were Jewish. The young Marie spent her early years in Germany and completed her education in a French convent after the
Bourbon Restoration. She entered into an early
marriage of convenience with Charles Louis Constant d'Agoult, Comte d'Agoult (1790–1875) on 16 May 1827, thereby becoming the Comtesse d'Agoult. They had two daughters, Louise (1828–1834) and Claire (1830–1912). Marie never divorced the count, even though she had left him for Franz Liszt.
Franz Liszt '' by
Josef Danhauser, 1840. From 1835 to 1839, she lived with composer and virtuoso pianist
Franz Liszt, who was six years younger, and was then a rising concert star. Liszt dedicated “Die Lorelei", one of his very first pieces to her. From 1837 to 1839 the two traveled to Italy and Switzerland, staying successively in
Bellagio,
Milan,
Venice,
Lugano,
Modena,
Florence,
Bologna and
Rome. During these travels, she became close to Liszt's circle of friends, including
Frédéric Chopin, who dedicated his 12 Études, Op. 25 to her, and
George Sand. D’Agoult's relationship with Sand began as friendship, with Sand acting as a mentor for the less experienced D’Agoult, but soured over the years amid rumors of jealousy and ended in mutual animosity. Sand's account of this period became the inspiration for
Honoré de Balzac’s novel,
Béatrix. Her children with Liszt were: • Blandine Rachel (1835–1862), who was the first wife of future French prime minister
Émile Ollivier and died at the age of 26 •
Francesca Gaetana Cosima (1837–1930), who first married pianist and conductor
Hans von Bülow and then composer
Richard Wagner • Daniel (1839–1859), who was already a promising pianist and gifted scholar when he died of
tuberculosis.
Later life Following her split with Liszt, D'Agoult resurrected her Paris salon first in Geneva with attendees such as
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi,
Germaine de Staël,
Adolphe Pictet, and then in Paris. This salon eventually became a meeting place for democratic opposition to
Napoleon III and his authoritarian rule following his
coup d'état in 1851. •
Nélida, a novel (1846) •
Lettres Républicaines in
Esquisses morales et politiques (1849, collected articles) •
Trois journées de la vie de Marie Stuart (1856) •
Florence et Turin (1862) •
Histoire des commencements de la république aux Pays-Bas (1872) •
A Catholic Mother Speaks to Her Children (1906, posthumously) •
Mes souvenirs (1877, posthumously). • Correspondence with Liszt • ''Mémoires, souvenirs et journaux de la Comtesse d'Agoult'', Mercure de France, Paris, 1990. ==References==