Rosa Dorothea Ritter

Rosa Dorothea Ritter (29 July 1759 – 13 January 1833), also called Rosette Ritter and Baroness of Lindenthal after 1783, was a German woman who was the second mistress of William I, Elector of Hesse from 1779 until 1788. She was an ancestor of the Barons of Haynau. Rosa was the daughter of the apothecary Johann Georg Ritter and his wife Maria Magdalena Witz. She replaced Charlotte Christine Buissine. William bought Rosa a property in Hanau and a country estate in the Rheingau and had her ennobled by the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna. On 17 March 1783, the Emperor elevated them to the nobility of the Empire with the Privilegium Denominandi. William gave Rosa, his de facto wife, the Lindenthal estate near Wiesbaden, after which she called herself Freifrau von Lindenthal. Issue: