Rodin's muse and the aristocrats of Old Europe

This morning I met Veronika, grand-daughter of Baroness Helene von Nostitz, the woman Rodin called ma grande et noble amie, and for a moment, as it was being passed round the room, I held a small study for this bust of Helene (sculpted 101 years ago) in my hands. Before emigrating to Canada at the age of twelve, Veronika, born in Berlin, had also lived in Warsaw, Paris and Pomerania.

When the Russians were advancing into Saxony at the beginning of 1945, her grandfather had the marble bust buried in their grounds for safe keeping. When he died in 1951 the work of art remained in Dresden, still covered in dirt. Not until the Iron Curtain fell at the end of the 1980s could the family recover it and have it cleaned in Munich where, since then, it has been on display at the Neue Pinakothek.

Helene was born in 1878; her uncle Paul von Hindenburg was the famous First War General who at the end of his life became Germany's president, the one who against his better judgement appointed Hitler as Chancellor in 1933. Her mother was the daughter of a Russian princess who had met her husband when he was serving as a diplomat in St Petersburg. They had fled to Germany with "sacks of jewels", most of which have since gone missing, though we did pass around a turquoise diamond brooch that had been fashioned from one of the buttons on an 18th century jacket. Helene von Nostitz wasn't particularly interested in her grandmother's jewels. We heard that when she learned that she had lost many of them in a burglary she sat down at her piano and launched into some Beethoven. As a child she'd been shunted between Russia and Italy under the surveillance of both an English and a French governess. She would write poetry in French but considered Italian to be her mother tongue. The aristocratic world was very cosmopolitan in those days (eine europäische Gemeinschaft, wie es nie wieder gegeben hat, as Veronika put it), but they had their heads in the clouds: vollkommen unpraktisch. Their only claim to domestic practicality was a habit of tossing the salad at the table while hosting their diplomatic dinner parties in Paris.

When Helena von Nostitz was 22 she met the 60 year old Rodin who promptly became enamoured of her. They read Lamartine's poetry or played the piano together and he worked on various models of her bust; one version was made of glass and one of silver. Rodin being very poor was invited by the von Nostitz family to spend several months with them in Italy. It was Helene who at the turn of the century introduced Rodin to the poet Rilke, who became his German secretary for a while. Helene herself kept up a constant correspondence with Rilke as she also did with von Hofmannsthal (even when she was no longer pretty, said Veronika). Her son, Oswalt, eventually wrote a book about all this entitled Muse und Weltkind (he is also remembered as a translator of Péguy and Bernanos).

Among the other famous people who attended her salon were Caruso, Cocteau and Isadora Duncan. Rudolf Kempe and Claudio Arrau were known to play the piano at her house. She was a trained singer, a pianist who could perform Bach's Goldberg Variations, could write and was "a decent painter" of watercolours, ein vollkommener Gefühlsmensch, no doubt rather sentimental. Her attraction lay in her optimistic readiness for new experiences. Despite the fact that two of her children died in tragic circumstances,

Sie war unbeeinflusst von pessimistischen Einflüsse... immer bereit, neues in sich aufzunehmen.

Paraphrasing herself, Veronika added in English:

She threw herself with angelic verve against all that was negative in life.

(Perhaps this is a quotation from her father's book.) Helene had no interest in politics whatsoever and all she had to say about some visiting suffragette from England was that she ate some flowers out of a vase.

Helene was engaged to Alfred von Nostitz for seven years before they married. He too was a diplomat, for whom the Belgian architect and designer Henry van der Velde created some unique furniture. Alfred himself often suffered from depression and the marriage was not a happy one. He divorced Helene and subsequently married Bismarck's great grand-daughter, Countess Gisela von Richthofen.

Having given a last lecture about Rodin in Paris in 1941, Helene von Nostitz died of cancer at the home of her only remaining daughter, Renate, in 1946.

By the way, some photos of Veronika and of us, her audience, can be found at Bruce McCrae's gallery here.