- Etti Plesch
Etti Plesch, (
February 3 ,1914 -April 29 ,2003 ),Austria n countess, Hungariancountess , huntress,racehorse owner andsocialite . Plesch lost two of her six husbands to the same woman,Louise de Vilmorin , a French literary figure, and owned two winners of theEpsom Derby , in 1961 and 1980.Born Maria Anna Paula Ferdinandine von Wurmbrand-Stuppach in
Vienna , Austria, of Greco-Austrian heritage, "Etti," as she was known, was putatively the elder daughter of Count Ferdinand von Wurmbrand-Stuppach (1879-1933) and his wife May Baltazzi (1885-1981), but more likely was the countess's biological child byCount Josef Gizycki . Her mother, who was a cousin ofBaroness Mary Vetsera , a mistress ofCrown Prince Rudolf of Austria , said that Count Gizycki's main interest in life was "the pleasuring of women in a physical way .... He was amoral and cynical, but he was a marvellous lover." (Gizycki was famed in the early 1900s because of his stormy marriage to American newspaper heiressCissy Patterson .)Etti von Wurmbrand-Stuppach was raised in Vienna and in
Moravia , with travels to other sites throughout Europe. From the age of ten until she was twelve she was treated fortuberculosis at theWaltzaner Sanatorium inDavos which was the setting forThomas Mann 's novel "The Magic Mountain ".At the age of 17, she fell in love with Count
Vladschi Mittrovsky , but was forbidden to marry him because he had a blood disease. She journeyed toNew York and met American railway heirClendennin Ryan III (1905-1957), grandson of Thomas Fortune Ryan, marrying him on20 February 1935 , after he proposed on their third date, in Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York. MayorFiorello La Guardia was best man.The marriage lasted three months (they divorced in 1935 and the marriage was annulled in 1944), and she returned to Europe where she met Hungarian Count
Paul Pálffy ab Erdöd (1890-1968) and became his fourth of eight eventual wives in late 1935. They lived inSlovakia . Their life was taken up with tiger hunts inIndia : they both became good shots, killing stags, elephants, and antelopes. They attended the World Exposition of Shooting atBerlin , hosted byHermann Göring . Shortly afterwards, Pálffy became smitten with the siren-like writerLouise de Vilmorin (1902-1969) in Paris, divorced Etti in December 1937, and married Louise.On the rebound, Etti married a Hungarian count,
Tamás Esterházy de Galántha (1901-1964), descendant of the junior committal branch of a great princely family, on5 March 1938 , and went to live in the castle of Devescer, in Hungary. They hunted, travelled, and had one daughter, Marie-Anna Berta Felicie Johanna Ghislaine Theodora Huberta Georgina Helene Genoveva (b.12 December 1938 ), known as "Bunny". Her daughter married 1962 (and divorced 1972) the Hon. Dominic Elliot (b. 1931), younger son of the 5thEarl of Minto , and had issue 2 sons (the elder Alexander dying unmarried in 1985).In 1942, she journeyed abroad alone and her husband also fell under the spell of heartbreaker Vilmorin. He eloped with Vilmorin and divorced Etti in 1944. (Vilmorin and Esterházy never married)
Etti's next two husbands were the Austrian Count
Sigismund Berchtold (1900-1979), son of CountLeopold Berchtold , the Minister of Foreign Affairs who advised the Emperor to declare war on the Serbs, starting the First World War (they wed in 1944 and divorced in 1949). The fifth wasWilliam Deering Davis ofChicago , who had been briefly married to the silent film starLouise Brooks , in the 1930s; Plesch's marriage to Davis lasted from 1949 until their divorce in 1951.In 1954, Etti married her last husband, Dr (1889-1974), a Hungarian lawyer, international financier, and collector of rare botanical books and pornographic esoterica. This last marriage made Etti a wealthy woman and allowed her to pursue her interests in racing, like her maternal grandfather who had also won the Derby.
The Plesches lived on the
Avenue Foch inParis , and at the Villa Leonina atBeaulieu-sur-Mer in the South of France, where he had a famous botanical garden.After her husband's death in 1974, she took up partying and writing her memoirs, which were almost completed at the time of her death. They were edited by
Hugo Vickers and published posthumously in 2007 as "Horses and Husbands".She died
28 April 2003 inMonte Carlo .External links
*Etti's obituary was published in [http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/exlibris/2003/05/msg00003.html The Times]
1 May 2003
*Etti's family genealogy is available [http://pages.prodigy.net/ptheroff/gotha/wurmbrand.html here] and [http://www.worldroots.com/foundation/european/leowurmbranddesc4.htm here] while that of her third husband GF Tamas is [http://pages.prodigy.net/ptheroff/gotha/esterhazy.html available here]
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