The Princess Who Thought She Swallowed A Glass Piano.
Born in 1826, Princess Alexandra was the fifth daughter of King Ludwig I of Bavaria. The lovely princess was a great beauty and could have had her pick of dashing princes. Sadly from an early age, she struggled with mental illness in one of the most well-known cases of the glass delusion ever recorded. By her early twenties, Princess Alexandra had developed a delusion that as a child she had swallowed a grand piano made of glass, and the piano remained inside her.
Strange Behavior
Fearful the piano would shatter, the princess crept through the halls of the palace and turned sideways to pass through doors. The delicate 23 year-old princess was terrified that if she bumped into something or was jostled, the glass piano inside her would shatter into thousands of pieces.
The glass delusion was believed to be linked to an obsession with purity and chastity, which individuals were fearful of breaking or losing due to their fragility. Princess Alexandra exhibited other mental illnesses that today would be diagnosed as obsessive compulsive disorders. For example, in addition to the glass piano syndrome, the princess suffered from a fixation with cleanliness and insistence on wearing only white clothes.
At the time, the glass delusion was thought to be brought on by melancholy. Princess Alexandra’s mental illness was diagnosed shortly after a scandal when her father, King Ludwig I, bestowed titles and fortunes on his mistress, the actress and dancer Lola Montez. During this incident, Princess Alexandra, the king’s only child, was still living alone at home and some believe she was traumatized by her father’s actions.
As a young girl, Princess Alexandra’s portrait, commissioned by King Ludwig I, was painted by Joseph Karl Stieler for the Gallery of Beauties (portrait below followed by the Gallery of Beauties).
The lovely portrait of the princess hangs inside the Schloss Nymphenburg, also known as the Palace of the Nymphs. The Baroque palace is located in Neuhausen-Nymphenburg, the western district of Munich in Bavaria or southern Germany. The Nymphenburg was the summer residence of former rulers of Bavaria from the House of Wittelsbach. Adjacent to the palace is the Nymphenburg Palace Park, making Nymphenburg (pictured below) one of the premier royal palaces in Europe.
Earlier Recorded Cases of The Glass Delusion
There are also documented cases of men who believed they were entirely or partially made of glass and had been turned into a glass lamp, vase, or jar. Sufferers were paralyzed by the fear of being broken or in direct sunlight. The glass delusion was common in the middle ages until the 19th Century. The fear of being too fragile for this world was believed to be common among nobility and educated men, who may have read about the medical condition before developing the symptoms.
The earliest known case was King Charles VI of France (1380-1422), who suffered bouts of madness and thought he was made of glass. Fearful of shattering, he wouldn’t let others touch him. It is rumored that he had an iron suit fitted around his ribs to protect his delicate body.
One of the most famous stories of the glass delusion is the character Tomás Rodaja, the fictional protagonist in Cervantes’ 1613 short story, El licenciado Vidriera, or The Lawyer of Glass, who becomes famous after being convinced his whole body has turned to glass upon taking a failed love potion. Another incident recorded by a royal physician was a Parisian glass maker who wore a cushion tied to his buttocks at all times to prevent his buttocks from shattering.
Successful Author Career
Despite suffering from mental illness, Princess Alexandra had a rewarding and successful career as an author. In 1852, she debuted her first collection of stories titled Weihnachtsrosen (Christmas roses). The following year she published Souvenirs, pensées et essais (her own memories, thoughts and essays). Then, the princess donated the proceeds from the sale of her next book, Feldblumen (Field flowers), to the Maximilian Orphanage. Later in 1858, she published Phantasie- und Lebensbilder (Daydreams and biographical sketches), a collection of translations from English and French to German. Then in 1862 and 1863, she translated a collection of the romances of Eugenie Foa into German and then published her own stories as Thautropfen (Dewdrops).
Her career continued to grow through 1870, when she produced Das Kindertheater (The children’s theatre), a German translation of French children’s plays from Arnaud Berquin’s L’ami des enfants and Der erste des Monats (The first of the month), a German translation of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly’s French book. By 1873, she produced Maiglöckchen (Lilies of the valley), a collection of stories. Princess Alexandra also had a number of contributions published in Isabella Braun’s periodical Jugendblätter.
Romantic Interest
Interestingly, Napoleon’s nephew, Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, asked King Ludwig for Princess Alexandra’s hand in marriage in the 1850s. However, her father declined the proposal when he discovered Prince Bonaparte had been married and divorced, citing the delicate state of Princess Alexandra’s health as the reason for his refusal.
Epilogue
Alexandra never married but was appointed abbot of the royal branches of the Lady of St. Anne in Munich and Wurzburg, a religious community especially for noble women.
Princess Alexandra died in 1875 at the young age of forty-nine at Schloss Nymphenburg. She is buried in the Wittelsbach crypt in the Theatinerkirche in Munich, Germany.
To learn more about Princess Alexandra, her life is memorialized in the BBC Radio 3 program, “The Glass Piano”, which aired on BBC Radio in 2010.
References:
Rall, Hans. (n/a). Wittelsbacher Lebensbilder von Kaiser Ludwig bis zur Gegenwart: Führer durch die Münchener Fürstengrüfte mit Verzeichnis aller Wittelsbacher Grablegen und Grabstätten. München: Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds.
Williams, Holly (2019). The Princess Who Thought She Was Made of Glass. BBC. Retrieved January 17, 2024 at: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190516-the-princess-who-thought-she-was-made-of-glass
Egon Caesar Corti, Ludwig I. von Bayern (München: Bruckmann, 1942), 508.
Dickinger, Christian. (2005). Die schwarzen Schafe der Wittelsbacher: zwischen Thronsaal und Irrenhaus (München: Piper, 2005), 101–102. ISBN 3-492-24345-2; Martha Schad, Bayerns Königgen (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1992), 113.
The Glass Piano (Audio). Third Coast International Audio Festival.
The Glass Piano on Between the Ears, BBC Radio 3, 24 April 2010.
