Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein

Karolina Elżbieta Iwanowska was born at her maternal grandfather's home in Monasterzyska, now in western Ukraine but then part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, a crownland of the Austrian Empire.

She was the only child of wealthy parents, members of the untitled Polish nobility, Piotr Iwanowski (1791-1844) and his wife, Paulina Leonharda Podowska whose massive holdings of land in Podolia included more than 30,000 serfs.

[3] They briefly lived together in Kyiv (where Nicholas served as the governor), but she was unhappy in the city and moved to her country home at Woronińce (today Voronivtsi (Воронівці), in Khmilnyk Raion), one of her family's many estates.

), while on a business trip to Kyiv, she attended a piano recital by Franz Liszt during his third tour of the Russian Empire, at the peak of his international celebrity.

In September 1847, Liszt permanently retired from touring and began living with Carolyne at Woronińce, where he composed significant portions of the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses.

Eventually, Carolyne wished to regularise their situation and marry Liszt, but since her husband was still living, she had to convince the Roman Catholic authorities that her marriage to him had been invalid.

After the aborted wedding, Carolyne's relationship with Liszt became one of platonic companionship, especially after 1865 when he received minor orders in the Catholic Church and became an abbé.

This work was compared to the liberal heterodoxy of Lamennais, and Volumes III and V were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum,[10] the Catholic Church's list of banned books.