Kollonitz, Paula von b. 1830 (Exact date unknown);Vienna, Austria d. Unknown
Austrian countess who arrived in Veracruz, Mexico, in the company of the Austrian archduke Maximilian and his wife Charlotte on May 28, 1864. With French troops occupying Mexico and former president Benito Juarez’s troops beaten back to the U.S.
border, the Mexican Conservative Party had asked Maximilian to become emperor with the blessing of Napoleon III. The Conservatives hoped that Maximilian would establish an orderly state in which the rights of the Catholic Church were respected, while the French monarch dreamt of a new French empire in the New World centered on Mexico. Among the royal entourage was the thirty-four-year-old Austrian countess Paula von Kollonitz, one of Charlotte’s two ladies-in-waiting. The countess was spared the failure of Maximilian’s rule and his execution at the hands of Juarez’s forces in 1867. After only four months, Empress Charlotte replaced Kollonitz with a Mexican lady-in-waiting because she was tired of her insolent attitude, and because she realized that while in Mexico she would have to live by a different standard. Kollonitz returned to her homeland, and not much is known about her life except that she published her experiences in 1867. Eine Reise nach Mexiko im Jahr 1864 (1867) describes her travels and contains long and detailed observations about life in mid-nineteenth-century Mexico. Her travel account was translated in 1867 as The Court of Mexico in London as well as De eerste Tagen van het Mexikaansche Keizerrijk in Amsterdam. Finally, in 1976 it was published in Mexico as Un viaje a Mexico en 1864. Despite her relatively short stayand rather limited scope—she never left Mexico City and was not interested in looking further than her own aristocratic circles—Kollonitz’s observations offer an interesting glimpse of elite men and women in mid-nineteenth-century Mexico.
The interest her work received shows in the various translations and editions of her work. Kollonitz’s travel account is part of a large body of travel literature written by women in the nineteenth century. Her narrative is particularly interesting in that her comments on women are more favorable and insightful than those of comparable writers such as Fanny Calderon de la Barca or even Alexander von Humboldt, whose works Kollonitz read and cited in her own writing. Kol- lonitz’s account contains a striking awareness of the shortcomings of European influence in Mexico. She was aware of European arrogance in general and the superiority complex of the French occupation troops in particular. Kollonitz is constantly negotiating her vision. While she undoubtedly sees with what critic Marie Louise Pratt has called “imperial eyes,” she is often aware of her own prejudice as much as of the preconceived notions of her intended readership: members of her own cultural background.Anabel Aliaga-Buchenau
See also Humbolt, Alexander von; Mexico;
Travel Literature, German-U.S.
References and Further Reading
Harding, Bertita. Phantom Crown: The Story of Maximilian and Carlota of Mexico. Mexico City: Ediciones Tolteca, 1960.