Agnes von Bibra (1823-1866)
Artist of Bibra Properties and wife of August von Bibra from Irmelshausen who himself has a page on this website.
Ottilie Julie Agnes Frfr. von Bibra (Freiin von Stoltzenberg)
Birthdate: October 31, 1823
Death: July 28, 1866 (42)
Immediate Family:
Daughter of Friedrich Christian Paul Franz Carl (Freiherr von Stoltzenberg) and Therese Elisabeth Freifrau von Stoltzenberg
Wife of August Frhr. von Bibra
Sister of Friedrich Maximilian Freiherr von Stoltzenberg
Agnes’s background is very interesting. Her father was born an illegitimate son of a Prussian prince, Frederick Henry, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt and an actress, Marie Magdalene Charlotte Carl , née Kramann (1763–1838). Still at the age of 75, in 1784, the prince married his mistress, and his Morganatic wife was ennobled Baroness von Stoltzenberg. Their son Friedrich, who was born before marriage in 1782, received the status of baron as von Stoltzenberg from the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm II in 1786.
August was from the older line of the Irmelshausen branch of the von Bibra family. Born in Romrod, he was the child of Christian Ernst Heinrich von Bibra (1772–1844) and Luise Charlotte Amalia Riedesel zu Eisenbach (1781–1855). August was married to Agnes Freiin von Stoltzenberg (1823–1866). They had five children: Berthold, Marie, Maximilian, Luise Therese and Anna Carolina. At least some of the children were close friends of the future queen of Romania, Elisabeth of Wied. Writing under her pen name, Carmen Sylva, she wrote about powerful effect of their premature death on her, particularly Marie who she described as her best friend.
Art
Unter Schloss at Bibra
pencil sketch located at Brennhausen

“nach der Natur gez: von A. v. Bibra. 1860.” Nach der Natur gezeichnet von A. von Bibra – Drawn from nature by A. von Bibra
Inscription on back of picture.


Irmelshausen Courtyard – Der Stiefel ist uns nicht zu klein Wenn wir nur Stimmen überein.
Digitally cleaned up 1855 Lithograph. Print purchased in Eisenach 2023.


Der Stiefel ist uns nicht zu klein Wenn wir nur Stimmen überein.
The boot is not too small for us if only we agree.

„Frieden ernährt. Unfrieden verzehrt.“ (Peace Feeds. Discord Consumes.)
with Irmelshausen and Satellite Properties
photo of Lithograph, both sides of Irmelshausen have copies


Irmelshausen (center) with Aroldshausen (bottom left), Dörfleshof (bottom right), Breuberg (top left), Höchheim (bottom center), Walldorf (top right)
“N. d. Nat. gez. u. Lith. v. Agnes v. Bibra.” Nach der Natur gezeichnet und lithographiert von Agnes von Bibra –
Drawn from nature and lithographed by Agnes von Bibra
The lithograph is titled „Frieden ernährt. Unfrieden verzehrt.“
“Peace Feeds. Discord Consumes.”





“Peace nourishes. Strife consumes.” With these words ends a humorous and instructive story of the German writer, clergyman, teacher and member of parliament , who lived more than 200 years ago. It was about two innkeepers who harmed each other because of their discord.
Johann Peter Hebel
Das wohlfeile Mittagessen
The Cheap Lunch
Johann Peter Hebel: Das wohlfeile Mittagessen
Es ist ein altes Sprichwort: Wer andern eine Grube gräbt, fällt selber darein.- Aber der Löwenwirt in einem gewissen Städtlein war schon vorher darin. Zu diesem kam ein wohlgekleideter Gast. Kurz und trotzig verlangte er für sein Geld eine gute Fleischsuppe. Hierauf forderte er auch ein Stück Rindfleisch und ein Gemüse für sein Geld. Der Wirt fragte ganz höflich: Ob ihm nicht auch ein Glas Wein beliebe? “O freilich ja!”, erwiderte der Gast, “wenn ich etwas Gutes haben kann für mein Geld.” Nachdem er sich alles hatte wohl schmecken lassen, zog er einen abgeschliffenen Sechser aus der Tasche und sagte: “Hier, Herr Wirt, ist mein Geld.” Der Wirt sagte: “Was soll das heißen? Seid Ihr mir nicht einen Taler schuldig?” Der Gast erwiderte: “Ich habe für keinen Taler Speise von euch verlangt, sondern für mein Geld. Hier ist mein Geld. Mehr hab ich nicht. Habt ihr mir zu viel dafür gegeben, so ist’s eure Schuld.” – Dieser Einfall war eigentlich nicht weit her. Es gehörte nur Unverschämtheit dazu und ein unbekümmertes Gemüt, wie es am Ende ablaufen werde. Aber das Beste kommt noch. “Ihr seid ein durchtriebener Schalk”, erwiderte der Wirt, “und hättet wohl etwas anderes verdient. Aber ich schenke Euch das Mittagessen und hier noch ein Vierundzwanzig- kreuzerstück dazu. Nur seid stille zur Sache und geht zu meinem Nachbarn, dem Bärenwirt, und macht es ihm ebenso!” Das sagte er, weil er mit seinem Nachbarn, dem Bärenwirt, aus Brotneid in Unfrieden lebte und einer dem andern jeglichen Tort und Schimpf gerne antat und erwiderte. Aber der schlaue Gast griff lächelnd mit der einen Hand nach dem angebotenen Geld, mit der andern vorsichtig nach der Türe, wünschte dem Wirt einen guten Abend und sagte: “Bei eurem Nachbarn, dem Herrn Bärenwirt, bin ich schon gewesen. Und eben der hat mich zu euch geschickt und kein anderer.”
So waren im Grunde beide hintergangen – und der Dritte hatte den Nutzen davon. Aber der listige Kunde hätte sich noch obendrein einen schönen Dank von beiden verdient, wenn sie eine gute Lehre daraus gezogen und sich miteinander ausgesöhnt hätten. Denn Frieden ernährt, aber Unfrieden verzehrt.
Johann Peter Hebel: The Cheap Lunch
There is an old saying: whoever digs a pit for others, falls into it himself. – But the innkeeper of the Lion’s Inn in a certain little town was there before. To this came a well-dressed guest. Briefly and defiantly, he demanded a good beef soup for his money. He also asked for a piece of beef and a vegetable for his money. The innkeeper asked very politely: Wouldn’t he like a glass of wine too? “Oh, of course yes!”, replied the guest, “if I can have something good for my money.” After he had enjoyed everything, he pulled a polished six out of his pocket and said: “Here, Mr. Landlord, is my money. ‘ The innkeeper said, ‘What do you mean? Don’t you owe me a thaler?” The guest replied: “I didn’t ask you for food for a thaler, but for my money. Here’s my money. I have nothing more. If you gave me too much for it, it’s your fault.” – This idea was actually not far away. All that was needed was impudence and a carefree mind about how it would end up. But the best is yet to come. “You’re a sly rascal,” replied the innkeeper, “and you probably deserved something else. But I’ll give you lunch and here’s a twenty-four kreuzer piece as well. Just get down to business and go to my neighbor, the innkeeper of the Bear’s Inn, and makes it he said the same because he was at odds with his neighbor, the innkeeper of the Bear’s Inn, out of envy for his bread and everyone was happy to insult and insult the other. But the clever guest, smiling, grabbed the offered money with one hand, carefully towards the door with the other hand, wished the innkeeper a good evening and said: “I’ve already been to your neighbour’s, the innkeeper of the Bear Inn. And it was he who sent me to you and no one else.”
So basically both had failed – and the third benefited. But the cunning customer would have earned a nice thank you from both of them if they had learned a good lesson and been reconciled. For peace nourishes, but strife consumes.

Chapter by Queen of Romania on Agnes’ family, particularly her daughter’s death.
Queens younger brother, Otto of Wied, (22 November 1850 – 18 February 1862)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51674/51674-h/51674-h.htm
FROM
MEMORY’S SHRINE
THE REMINISCENCES OF
CARMEN SYLVA
(H. M. QUEEN ELISABETH OF ROUMANIA)
Translated from the German, by Her Majesty’s desire,
by her former Secretary
EDITH HOPKIRK
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1911
Copyright, 1911, by J. B. Lippincott Company
Published March, 1911
Chapter 16
MARIE
Whenever my lips pronounce the beloved name, I am choked with the tears that gather round my heart, and silently overflowing, suffuse my eyes. She was the sunshine of my youth, illuminating it with her own radiant brightness, with her affection, her irrepressible swiftness of perception and joyful play of fancy, with the unspeakable tenderness that was hers. As children we were always together, the three Bibras and we three. There was a perpetual interchange of letters and messages, little notes constantly making their way across the quadrangle that lay between the castle and their house, with some such whimsically worded invitation as the following: “The three little Widgeons request the pleasure of the three little Bearers’ company to tea.” Or, it might be, the other way round. We were all of about the same age, Marie being born in the same year as my brother Wilhelm, her brother Berthold and I the preceding year, whilst our poor Otto, had he lived, would be the same age as her sister, Louise, Countess Bernstorff, sole survivor of that trio. But death had already thinned the ranks of the Bibra family, two dear children having been laid quite early in the tomb. These were the baby Anna, who died in our house at Monrepos, and whose little waxen face and cold white hands I well remember, and the little Max, Marie’s darling, a fine manly little fellow, whose loss the elder sister never ceased to deplore. Her beautiful eyes, soft and limpid as those of a gazelle, ran over with tears at the mention of his name. Those tears seemed always ready to flow, as if her heart were overfull, and it needed but a word to stir the depths and bring them to the surface. How quietly they coursed down the fair young cheeks, never reddening them or distorting the delicate features, but giving her the appearance of a blossom refreshed by rain. And those lovely lustrous eyes looked only the more brilliant for the tears they had shed, lit up by a soft steady radiance that I have never seen elsewhere…. But how can I find words to tell of her sweetness, of all she was to me, my heart’s best friend, the dear companion of my youth!Thrown together as we were by circumstances, and with so much that was sympathetic in our natures, we were drawn yet closer by the hand of Fate, by a certain similarity in the fortunes—or rather in the ill-fortune that befell our families. There is perhaps no stronger tie than that which springs from an affliction borne in common, and the friendship that united Marie von Bibra and myself, founded on the sorrows we had shared, but little resembled that which ordinarily exists between girls of our age. Young as she was, and naturally light-hearted, she had known much sorrow. After the baby-sister, and the little brother whom she loved so well, she was fated to see the only remaining one, Berthold, called away one springtime in the bloom and pride of youth. It was on a cold dull May day—how unlike the May mornings of poetry and legend!—that I stood with her beside the coffin in which her brother had just been laid, and together we afterwards wove the garlands that went with him to the grave. And in all the anguish of the years of Otto’s martyrdom it was she who supported and comforted me, when the load of sorrow would otherwise have seemed too heavy to be borne. These were no weak, no ordinary ties, that bound our souls together, and the fellowship of sorrow rests on a firmer basis than any other fraternity. But our joys were in common too, and how much increased, by being shared!
Thus we grew up together, in joy and sorrow, until the day when, coming from poor Otto’s deathbed, Baron Bibra said, as he wrung my father’s hand, “Before the year is out, another of my dear children will lie under the earth!”—“Yes, yes,” he continued, in answer to his friend’s look of horror and amazement, “she coughs just like Berthold,—it is only the beginning, but I know the tone,—she too must go!”
It was only too true. Marie, who was just sixteen, was taken away to the sea by her parents; but scarcely six months later, a message was brought me by a dear and trusted friend, to prepare me for the shock of seeing her again. Far from deriving any benefit from the sea-air, she had come back with inflammation of the lungs, and already all hope was given up. My one wish was to fly to her bedside; but even then I had to wait some days to see her, till she had rallied a little and had strength to talk to me. Ah! how sad was that meeting! Death was in her face, in the hectic flush on her cheeks, in the unnatural brilliancy of her eyes, in the transparent whiteness of her hands, as she stretched them towards me, lying in bed, with the magnificent tresses of her fair silky hair, that usually crowned her head like an aureole, hanging in two heavy braids across the pillow. She could not raise her voice above a whisper as she told me: “I thought I should die, while we were away, at Scheveningen! Oh! Lisi,—I did not want to die!”
After that, she seemed to rally a little, and each day I paid her a visit, sitting beside her whilst with those skilful fingers of hers—fingers that always seemed with a touch to accomplish marvels—she executed a host of charming things, little cardboard objects that were as pretty in their way as the beautiful ivory carvings that had formerly been her delight, but for which her strength no longer sufficed. Feeble as they were, those slender diaphanous fingers had lost nothing of their dexterity, and her inventive faculty was still fertile as of yore. Never was there a daintier toy than the miniature fortress she cut out in cardboard,—a feudal castle, complete in every detail. But my heart grew heavier with each visit, for the apparent improvement in her health was but illusive,—the flicker of a dying candle ere it be extinguished.
When the last parting came, she was just seventeen, and so sweet and pure, she looked fit for Heaven indeed, as she waited patiently for the summons. Her eyes grew brighter every day, her nostrils, transparent as alabaster, dilated and quivered with every breath she drew, and the smile of unearthly sweetness on her lips was like a perpetual leave-taking. Earlier in that very year, my poor brother’s sufferings had at last ended, and now, with the knowledge that my father’s days were numbered also, I must lose my one, my best-beloved friend!
Could I but have been with her to the last! But it has so often been my lot to be condemned by circumstances to go from the side of those whom I loved best on earth, with the full consciousness that I should see them here no more. Then for the first time that bitter experience was mine. My father was ordered to a milder climate for his health, so in October we all set out for Baden-Baden, to pass the winter there. Once more, before we parted, Marie and I resolved to be photographed together. I held her fast by the hand, as if by so doing I could hold her back, for the whole time while the photograph was being taken, my eyes were fixed on her, and saw the ominous quivering of the nostrils, that betokened how great the effort. Quite exhausted by it, she lay down again, and I sat by her side for a while, until my mother fetched me. We said goodbye; and then—“You will turn round, will you not,” she said, “my Lisi, at the door, and look back at me once more!” And I did turn round, and look back at her smiling, though my heart was like to break, and once outside, I had to lean against the wall to steady myself, so shaken was I by choking sobs. And there stood her poor mother, and looked at me, with tearless eyes. Such silent misery I have never seen in any other countenance. This was the fourth of her children whom Frau von Bibra must see pass away, and since the death of Max she had been an invalid herself. She might have been another Niobe, white as marble, with all the life and light spent in her big dark eyes, of a velvety softness, like rich brown pansies. Both parents were heroic, but whilst the unhappy mother bore each fresh blow in perfect silence, the father’s resignation even took the form of outer cheerfulness, that did not fail him now, when Marie, his darling, was being torn from him. “Death,” Herr von Bibra was accustomed to say, “should be a dear friend to me; he has been such a frequent visitor in my house!”
All through that winter I wrote each day to my dear Marie. Then towards the end of February came worse news, that she was suffering from frightful headaches, ending in delirium. This lasted a whole fortnight, during which she was always fancying she saw me, and calling me by name. “Ah! she was there, my Lisi!” she would cry; “if we could but die, all of us, together, and fly up to heaven where the others are waiting for us!” And the gates of Paradise seemed to be already open to her, for she told of all the wonders she saw, its undimmed glories, and the flowers that never fade—and these raptures were reflected in her face. The last thing I sent her was a little night-lamp in biscuit-china, like a tiny chapel, so delicate and fragile. And one night Baron Bibra wrote me these words:—“The little lamp, whose soft light seems to plunge our souls in an atmosphere of prayer and holiness, sheds its gentle rays over my child’s pale still face, as if whispering to her the loving thoughts of her who sent it!” The tears rise once more to my eyes, as I write this. As if the five-and-forty years that have passed since that day counted for nothing! It was a heartbreaking meeting with the poor father, when shortly after this he came to see us in Baden; and terrible again was the return to Neuwied, to find their house desolate, and the poor bereaved mother, more Niobe-like than ever, and her big velvety eyes still strained and tearless! Meantime—hardest ordeal of all I went through—during that winter of anxiety and anguish I had been obliged to go to my first ball, in order that my father should for once see me dance. It was with endless care and precautions that the short journey to Karlsruhe was undertaken, and once there, everything that friendship could do for him was done, by those truest and best of friends, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden. Notwithstanding all their care, he of course coughed for the rest of the night—but—he had had his wish—he had seen his daughter at her first ball! And my feet felt like lead—were as heavy as my heart, which ached so that I knew not how to smile and look well pleased, and enter fittingly into the amiable small-talk of my partners. How unhappy I was, and how the old unhappiness comes over me once more, as I write this! For grief and joy are both eternal, but grief so much more violent in its nature, that did we but rightly consider it, our one aim should be, to bring some joy into each other’s lives, to sweeten the bitterness that must needs be the portion of all. It was the very violence of my grief that helped me through the next few months, for I plunged headlong into work—there was no other way for me—studying, practising—seven hours in the day sometimes—till I was tired out—anything so as not to have to think! But now I can look back with gratitude on the sympathy shown me by so many friends, and remember the kind and feeling words of Monsieur de Bacourt, Talleyrand’s former secretary, when he learnt the death of the friend and companion of my youth:—“C’est bien dur de ne plus pouvoir dire—te rappelles-tu?”
Next year, death was again busy in our midst. This time it was my father who was called away. And now at last Baron Bibra’s fortitude gave way. He who had seen with almost stoical endurance his children go before him to the tomb, broke down completely after taking his last farewell of the friend of a lifetime. To that long unbroken friendship, a striking testimony was furnished in recent years by the simple perusal of all the documents signed by both during Bibra’s tenure of office in my father’s lifetime. From studying the contents of these dry deeds, my brother’s steward, Baron von der Recke, had been able to gather an intimate knowledge of his predecessor’s character, as also of my father’s, and of their mutual affection and regard for one another. I marvelled indeed when he imparted to me the result of his researches, and some of the conclusions he had drawn, so correct were they in many minutest particulars. I learnt from this, the truth that even archives may contain, with their record of dull dry facts, and of the poetry that may sometimes lurk in a stiffly worded deed!