Prof. Dr. Marita Krauss

ABOUT
The life of Lola Montez.


1848: The Bavarian King Ludwig I resigns – because of a dancer! A scandal! Just as the entire life of Lola Montez (1821 – 1861) was a complete scandal for the better society of her time. The path of this femme fatale, who was actually the daughter of a British officer and whose name was Eliza Gilbert, should have been entirely bourgeois. But she broke with all conventions from her youth on and soon celebrated triumphs as a “Spanish dancer” in the metropolises of Europe and, after 1851, in America and Australia. She was a striking personality, endowed with pride and courage, and expressed bluntly what she thought of her male contemporaries: "When God measures men, he does not put the tape measure around their heads." For the biography on the 200th birthday of this untimely woman, historian Marita Krauss had Ludwig I's diaries available for the first time, which open up a completely new look at the relationship between king and dancer.


Lola Montez had many faces and many names. The daughter of a British officer, whose real name was Eliza Gilbert, defied moral conventions from an early age. As far as men were concerned, she had her own bold and definitely out-of-date agenda: at 16 she ran away, married her lover and moved to India with him, at 22 she danced around the capitals of Europe as a “Spanish dancer”, and with her In 25, she began her affair with King Ludwig I. When she was expelled from Munich because of this, Lola Montez marketed her story on Broadway in New York and in the outbacks of Australia. The fate of the self-confident dancer, who was elevated to Countess Landsfeld as the king's mistress and who never allowed herself to be intimidated by the world of men, inspired filmmakers and theater directors. The historian Marita Krauss has now described the path of Lola Montez in all its ups and downs - based on numerous sources, including previously inaccessible diary entries by King Ludwig I. The result is a biography that is both serious and entertaining, and at the same time offers a multifaceted picture of gender relations in the 19th century.