Caroline Bauer

Caroline Bauer (29 March 1807 – 18 October 1877) was a German actress of the Biedermeier era who used the name Lina Bauer.

Caroline Philippina Augusta Bauer (German: Karoline Philippine Auguste Bauer) was born in Heidelberg, Germany to Heinrich Bauer and Christiane Stockmar (1785, Coburg – 1842, Mannheim). Her siblings were Lottchen, Karl and Louis.

She was during a short time in 1828-1829 the mistress of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (later King of Belgium as Leopold I). In mid-1829 she and her mother returned to Berlin and she resumed her career as an actress. She competed with Charlotte von Hagn; the theatre audiences were divided into "Bauerians" and "Hagnerians". Many years later, in her memoirs, she declared that she had engaged into a morganatic marriage with him and that he had created her Countess of Montgomery. There was no proof of these affirmations which, if true, should have left traces in official English records. There was on the contrary a strong denial by her cousin, the son of Leopold's secretary, baron Christian Friedrich Freiherr von Stockmar.

Her second husband was Wladyslaw Plater, they were married in 1843. Her cousin, Marie Bauer was married to Marian Langiewicz, leader of the Polish Insurrection of 1863; they were married in Switzerland. She died by suicide in Kilchberg, Zurich, Switzerland.

• Karoline BAUER, Verschollene Herzensgeschichten: Nachgelassene Memoiren, 1884
• Posthumous memoirs of Karoline Bauer, from the German, 2 vol., 1884
• Susanne FÖRSTER, Am Tage Ruhm, am Abend Tränen: Lebenserinnerungen der Schauspielerin Karoline Bauer, Ed. Sporn, 1943
• Caroline Bauer and the Coburgs, 2009