Éléonore Desmier d'Olbreuse

Éléonore Desmier d'Olbreuse was born at the Castle of Olbreuse in Deux-Sèvres near Niort, France into a Huguenot family of lower nobility. Her parents were Alexandre Desmier d'Olbreuse and Jacquette Poussard du Bas-Vandré et de Saint-Marc. She went to the royal court in Paris as a lady-in-waiting in the service of Marie de la Tour d'Auvergne, Duchess of Thouars, whose son had married Emily of Hesse-Kassel, daughter of William V, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, in 1648.

In the winter of 1664 Éléonore accompanied the Duchess of Thouars who visited her son in Kassel. There the beautiful Éléonore met the unmarried George William, Prince of Calenberg, who immediately fell in love with her.

Éléonore, after the Prince's abdication to the Principality of Calenberg (gave to his brother Prince John Frederick) and to his recently inherited Principality of Luneburg (gave to his brother Prince Ernest Augustus) in 1665, became his morganatic wife, receiving the title Lady of Harburg. Georg kept the Principality of Celle. In 1666 their only child, Sophie Dorothea, was born. In 1674 the child was legitimised and Éléonore was given the title of Duchess of Wilhelmsburg. Two years later, the marriage was declared legitimate, Éléonore becoming Princess of Celle.

Their daughter was married in 1682 to George Louis, the son of her father's brother, Ernest Augustus, Prince of Luneburg (who inherited Calenberg after their brother John Frederick's death, three years previously), for dynastic reasons. The marriage was a disaster. Finally Sophia Dorothea was imprisoned by her husband in the Castle of Ahlden for the rest of her life. During the last years of her life, Éléonore cared for her daughter and tried to obtain her release, without success.

In 1689, Éléonore's husband became ruler of Saxe-Lauenburg, being Duchess of Saxe-Lauenburg after that.

Éléonore Desmier d'Olbreuse died on 5 February 1722, nearly blind, in Celle Castle, Celle. She mentioned 342 persons in her will. She was buried in the Stadtkirche St. Marien (town church of St. Mary) in Celle.

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