Hedvig Catharina Lilje

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Hedvig Catharina Lilje (or Lillje), as married Hedvig Catharina De la Gardie, (1695-1745), was a Swedish noblewoman and salonist considered to have played an important role in the political life during the age of liberty in Sweden during the 1720s and 1730s as an informall amateur-politician.

[edit] Biography

Hedvig Catharina Lilje was born chid of count Axel Johan Lillje and married to count Magnus Julius De la Gardie in 1709. Her husband was an important member of the Hats (party), which was even said to have ben founded in his home; he introduced the political salon in Sweden, for which his wife became the host. Hedvig Catharina was described as intelligent and beautiful until an high age, and soon became one of the leading, though informal, members of her husband's party. The salon was also the center of the noble amateur-theatre that flourished in Stockholm the decades before the Swedish national stage was founded in 1737; Hedvig's daughter Brita Sophia De la Gardie (1713-1797) was an amateur-actress and the female star and prima donna of the amateur-troupe called "count De la Gardies comedians". When the national stage was founded in 1737, two of Sweden's first professional native actresses of the new theatre was recruited among the maids of the De la Gardie family.

Especially during the 1730s, she participated in politics and in the conflicts and struggle for power between the cap's and the other ruling parties during the rule of the estates. Her political activism exposed her to the same criticism as other politicians, and libelous phamphlets circulated about how she let her love affairs inflict her political sympathys; Fryxell spread the rumour about her alleged affair with a young nobleman of the Sture family, while other claimed that her affair with the French ambassador Casteja was the reson for her pro-French politics. After the death of Höpken in 1741, she became the informal leader of the Gyllenborg fraction. The same year, however, her husband died, which ended her life as an amateur politician and debate leader.

After her husband's death, she mowed to Paris in France, were she converted to Catholicism and became heavily in debth. Hedvig Catharina Lilje has six children; she was the mother of the famous scientist Eva Ekeblad, and through her youngest daughter Hedvig Catharina the grandmother of Axel von Fersen the Younger. He eldest daughter, former amateur-actor Brita Sophia, followed her to Paris, were she converted to Catholicism and died in 1797.

During the Swedish age of liberty, many women, especially whithn the nobility, took part in politics as debate leaders, salon hostsesses, writers and play-writes; another example was Henrika Juliana von Lieven, also active as an opinion-leader within the cap-party as a salonist and the partcipant of a party-paper of 1755-1756.