Caroline Bauer (29 March 1807 – 18 October 1877) was a German actress of the Biedermeier era who used the name Lina Bauer.
Biography
Caroline Philippina Augusta Bauer was born in Heidelberg, Germany to Heinrich Bauer and Christiane Stockmar. 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). It was said that she bore a close physical resemblance to Leopold's late wife, Princess Charlotte of Wales, which had been commented on by the Duke of Wellington.
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 published posthumously, she declared that she had engaged into a morganatic marriage with Leopold and that he had created her Countess of Montgomery. There was no record of such a marriage or of the existence of such a title. There was, on the contrary, a strong denial by her cousin, the son of Leopold's secretary, baron Christian Friedrich Freiherr von Stockmar.
