Hortense de Beauharnais. Ein Leben im Schatten Napoleons

• The first German-language biography of Hortense de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepdaughter.

• The eventful life story of a highly educated woman and political networker.

• Carefully researched and grippingly written on the basis of Hortense's memoirs and numerous contemporary witnesses.

• With vivid illustrations and an extensive appendix: glossary, chronological table, family tree, map.

As a child she experiences the reign of terror of the Jacobins in revolutionary Paris. Her father dies on the scaffold, her mother Josette marries the eccentric Napoleon Bonaparte and becomes Empress of France. Meanwhile, the young Hortense de Beauharnais (1783-1837) flees into art: she plays the harp and piano, dances, sings and draws &ndash, and creates imaginative counter-worlds for herself.

As the stepdaughter of Napoleon I, she experiences the whims of the ambitious ruler directly. Against her will, Hortense is married to Napoleon's younger brother Louis and rises to become Queen of Holland at his side. But the marriage is unhappy, the Bonapartes make life difficult for Hortense, and her first-born son dies when she is only four years old. To overcome her grief, Hortense discovers the world of the Pyrenees for herself and even becomes an enthusiastic mountaineer. Everywhere she goes she struggles for orientation and support.

After Napoleon's final banishment, Hortense is also forced to leave France. With her youngest son, the later Emperor Napoleon III, she flees into exile in Switzerland. At Arenenberg Castle, musicians, poets and thinkers seek the proximity of the cultivated ex-queen. But even here Hortense de Beauharnais cannot find peace. Above all, she is concerned about the future of her sons...