Adrienne Barbanson

Adrienne Barbanson van der Noot (1875–1944), Marquise of Assche and Wemmel, was an aristocratic patron of the arts in Belgium before and during the Second World War.[1]

Biography

Adrienne Barbanson was born in Paris on 29 June 1875, the daughter of the Belgian diplomat Alfred Barbanson and his wife Berthe Drion. In 1898 she married Edouard van der Noot, Marquess of Assche. Together they had four children, Elisabeth (born 1899), Marie-Thérèse (1900), Henri (1902) and Alfred (born 1908). Her husband died in 1928.

The marquise was the foundress of a charity, "Amis de Salzbourg", that provided bursaries for young Belgian musicians to visit the Salzburg Festival. This later became the "Association mozartienne de Belgique". After the German annexation of Austria in 1938 she turned her attention to organising benefit concerts in Brussels to support needy musicians, continuing to host concerts even during the German occupation.[1][2] In the later 1930s she was also a member of CABEM (Comité de Rapatriement et d'Assistance aux Asiles de l'Ambassade de Belgique à Madrid), an organisation assisting Spanish refugees.[3]

She died in Brussels on 27 May 1944.[1]

References
  1. Ch. van den Borren, "Assche et de Wemmel, comtesse van der Noot, Adrienne Barbanson, marquise d'", Biographie Nationale de Belgique, vol. 30 (Brussels, 1958), 104-5.
  2. On 25 April 1941, a concert of chamber music hosted by the marquise was reviewed by Paul de Man in Le Soir. Paul de Man, Wartime Journalism, 1939-1943, edited by Werner Hamacher, Neil Hertz and Thomas Keenan (University of Nebraska Press, 1988), p. 79.
  3. Francis Balace, "La droite belge et l'aide à Franco", Revue belge d'Histoire contemporaine (1987), p. 648 n. 308.
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