Maria Salomé Schweppenhäuser
Maria Salomé Schweppenhäuser (Rechtenbach, 29 November 1755 – Warsaw, 5 September 1833), daughter of Heinrich Wilhelm Schweppenhäuser, a Protestant priest from Oberotterbach, and his wife, Charlotte Philippine, née Westermann, was a court chambermaid at Bad Bergzabern and Darmstadt. She was the wife of Friedrich Karl Emanuel Hauke (1737–1810), and, as such, an ancestor of the Battenberg/Mountbatten family, descendant of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine and her paternal granddaughter Julia, Princess of Battenberg.
After the death of her father, Maria Salomé was a chambermaid at the court of Bad Bergzabern, seat of the widowed Countess Palatine Caroline of Zweibrücken. She was later employed at the court of Darmstadt by Caroline's daughter, Princess Caroline, wife of Louis, Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt. In 1773 Maria Salomea married Friedrich Hauke, secretary of the Count of Brühl. The Count of Brühl was summoned to Warsaw in 1782, and Friedrich became a tax collector in Poland. Friedrich and Maria Salomé's son, Johann Moritz Hauke was a general of the Russian troops in Poland from 1816 and was elevated to Count von Hauke in 1829. Count Johann Moritz was murdered in 1830 during an uprising in Warsaw, and his children went to live with their grandmother at the court of the Tsar in Saint Petersburg. His daughter Julia married morganatically Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine in 1851. Prince Alexander's older brother the Grand Duke made Julia "Countess", later "Princess of Battenberg", and so all of their descendants.
Through her granddaughter, Maria Salomé is a direct ancestor of the British royal family. A plaque on the former rectory in Oberotterbach celebrates the town's connection to the House of Windsor. This rectory was built in 1732 by Maria Salomé's grandfather, Johann Schweppenhäuser.
Former Protestant rectory in Oberotterbach, built 1732
Memorial plaque to pastor Johann Schweppenhäuser at the former rectory in Oberotterbach
Bibliography
- Leo van de Pas: The Lineage and Ancestry of H.R.H. Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Edinburgh, 1977
- Bernt Engelmann: Die Aufsteiger - Wie Herrschaftshäuser und Finanzimperien entstanden. Göttingen, 1989 (German)