page_title: Diana Rabe von Pappenheim
section_title: Mistress of the king
hierarchical_section_title: Diana Rabe von Pappenheim / Mistress of the king
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Jenny von Pappenheim
context_page_description: Diana Rabe von Pappenheim, was the royal mistress of Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia, from 1810 until 1813.
context_section_description: Pierre had raved of Diana's charms to the king, which awakened Jérôme's interest; his advances were initially resisted, as Reinhard pointedly noted in a letter dated 10 August 1809. However, in March 1810 Diana travelled with the royal couple to Paris for Napoleon's wedding to Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria. Her husband did not attend. On 7 September 1811, Diana gave birth to a daughter, Jeromée Catharina. Jérôme himself held her at her baptism, but because their marriage still stood, Wilhelm Rabe von Pappenheim acknowledged her as his own legitimate daughter. Known better as Jenny von Gustedt, she would later become the grandmother of the women's rights activist and writer Lily Braun (1865–1916).
  Barely three months later, on 30 November 1811, Wilhelm was raised to the rank of Count in the Westphalian court. This helped him become the First Chamberlain and Master of Ceremonies, but he could not cope with the public and scandalous breakup of his marriage following the revelation of Diana's affair with Jérôme. He withdrew more and more from the court, fell into a spiraling depression and finally collapsed. After an unsuccessful treatment at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, a Paris hospital for the mentally ill, he returned to his home at Schloss Stammen and died two years later, on 3 January 1815.
  It is not known where Diana was living during this period, but she was certainly still enjoying Jérôme's attentions. On 4 October 1813, in the last days of the Kingdom of Westphalia (Kassel having been taken on 1 October by the Russian general Tschernyschow), she gave birth to another daughter at Schloss Schönfeld in Kassel. The child, named Marie Pauline von Schönfeld after her birthplace, was secretly taken to the monastery of Notre Dame des Oiseaux in Paris; she was brought up there as well as with Diana's relatives in Alsace. In 1832, Marie Pauline became a nun at the same monastery, taking on the name Marie de la Croix, and had become superior of the convent when she died in 1873.
caption: Diana's first daughter Jenny von Gustedt
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