Comtesse Rudiger

A countess who visits Marie at Wiesbaden on 25 August 1875, described as «cette vieille célébrité» (039.0248: «Le soir vient la comtesse Rudiger, cette vieille célébrité. Et bientôt après nous partons pour notre adorable Schlangenbad»). The Mon Journal t.5 index has «Rudiger (comtesse), 261» (this paragraph; the RSR note on it cites scan p.262).

A «Rudiger» also appears, without a title or first name, in the Nice crowd at the Cercle de la Méditerranée concert of 1874-02-15 (Mon Journal t.3 index «Rudiger, 69»), in the list «la Falkenstein, Rudiger, le Bec avec sa mère et le baron, le prince Gagarine...». That paragraph was tagged with the unrelated stub #Comtesse_Rudiger (a literary guess), which belongs here or nowhere.

Identity uncertain

We are not sure who this is. «Vieille célébrité» is Marie's irony for an elderly woman once well known in society; no first name, husband or country is given in either passage, and nothing was found that would pick out a particular countess. Whether the Nice «Rudiger» of 1874 and the Wiesbaden countess of 1875 are the same woman is not established. If you can identify this person, we would be glad to hear from you.

• The Nice paragraph 016.0269 (15 February 1874, «la Falkenstein, Rudiger, le Bec avec sa mère») was tagged with a literary stub RUDIGER (a guess at the Nibelungenlied margrave); it is now tagged here, with the uncertainty stated above.