Marie de Castellane


Princess Marie Radziwill was a French noblewoman, a member of the house of Castellane. The famous dandy Boni de Castellane was her nephew.

Life

The daughter of Henri de Castellane and Pauline de Talleyrand-Périgord, Marie de Castellane married prince Antoine Radziwill, a member of the House of Lords of Prussia and general à la suite of William I, German Emperor, at Sagan on 3 October 1857. They had four children: Jerzy , Élisabeth, Helena and Stanislas.
She spent a large part of her life in Berlin, where she was "the Apis bull in person and the queen of Berlin".
From 1881 to 1886, she took on the restoration of the Radziwill castle at Nieswiez, allowing her to save its archives and library, add a terrace flanked by Neo Gothic tourelles and redesign the park in the English style.
In 1906 she published the Souvenirs of her grandmother, the duchesse de Dino and, in 1909, a Chronique de 1831 à 1862, also based on the duchess's papers. Her own memoirs were published in 1931 as Souvenirs de la princesse Radziwill 1840–1873. Une française à la cour de prusse.