Maria Leopoldine von Anhalt-Dessau
Biography
Birth: 1746
Death: 1769
Princess of Anhalt-Dessau, daughter of Leopold II Maximillian of Anhalt-Dessau (1700-1751) and Giesela Agnes of Anhalt-Köthen (1721-1751). She married (1765) Simon August, Count of Lippe-Detmold (1727-1782), but died just a few years later. Her younger sister Kasimire married her widowed husband shortly after her death.
Life with James Boswell
Boswell was introduced to her at the court of Dessau on September 24, 1764. On September 27, he played the card game of Faro with the Princess and her brother, Johann Georg, as well as a Gentleman of Brandenburg (a canon of Halberstadt), afterwards noting that "I lost six écus. I am always unlucky at play, and always keen"1
He danced with her, and with her two sisters, at a ball on September 29, held by the Princess Wilhelmine in honour of the deposed Duke of Courland.
Notes
Note 1: The story of the card game and a following conversation with the Gentleman of Brandenburg is actually given in the entry of Sep 28, at the end of which he writes that "By the by, the faro and all this story happened last night" - the entry of Sep 27 reads that "At night we had grande cour. A lady asked me for the Marquis of Annandale, whom she had seen at The Hague. I told her with concern his melancholy fate."
Mentioned in
Maria Leopoldine von Anhalt-Dessau is mentioned in:
- Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland 1763-1764
