Siri von Essen

Sigrid "Siri" Sofia Matilda Elisabet von Essen (17 August 1850 – 21 April 1912) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish noblewoman and actress. Her acting career spanned about 15 years, during which time she appeared in a number of plays that the Swedish dramatist and writer August Strindberg wrote specifically for her. Biography Family and personal life She was born in Porvoo, the daughter of the noble Finnish-Swedish captain, landowner and nobleman Carl Reinhold von Essen and Elisabeth Charlotta In de Betou. She married Major Baron Carl Gustaf Wrangel af Sauss (1842–1913) in 1872, with whom she had a daughter, Sigrid. They divorced in 1876. In 1877, she married the Swedish dramatist and writer August Strindberg. At the time, her marriage to Strindberg was considered a scandal because although von Essen's first husband had committed adultery, Strindberg was blamed for the dissolution of their marriage. A contributing factor to the scandal was the fact that Strindberg was considered socially unsuitable as a husband for a member of the nobility. Together they had four children: three daughters, Kerstin (born 1878), died shortly after birth, Karin Smirnov (born 1880) and Greta (born 1881), and a son, Hans (born 1884 in Lausanne, Switzerland). They divorced in 1891, after Strindberg had suspected von Essen of having a long-term affair with her close friend, the Danish woman Marie David; Strindberg's jealousy and dislike of David caused severe discord in the marriage during its last years. The troubled marriage between von Essen and Strindberg was a source of material for a number of Strindberg's plays, which often feature unhappy relationships, as well as for Strindberg's novel Defence of a Fool, which he began in 1887. In 1919, a selection of their correspondence from 1875 to 1876 was published under the title He and Her; Strindberg had aimed to have this selection printed already in the mid-1880s as a sequel to his autobiographical novel The Son of the Servant Woman, but his publishers had refused.