Magdalena Rahm was a noblewoman who hosted salons and who was politically active during Sweden’s ‘frihetstid’ (age of liberty).
Magdalena Rahm was born in 1687. She was the daughter of the Dutch Colonel François de Ram van Hagedoorn and his first wife Elisabeth Ruysch van Wayestein van Pijlsweert. Magdalena Rahm came to Sweden in 1706 when she married the Swedish Colonel Henrik Magnus von Buddenbrock.
Magdalena Rahm was a supporter of the ‘hattparti’ (hat party) and was actively engaged in contemporary political discussions. She, like her husband, was an enthusiastic supporter of the hattparti’s military plans with regard to Russia. Her husband, Henrik Magnus von Buddenbrock, came to play a leading role in this following his appointment as commander in chief in Finland during Sweden’s war against Russia from 1741–1743. He and Charles Emil Lewenhaupt were subsequently both held responsible for the catastrophic Swedish defeat which ensued. He was condemned to forfeit his life, his honour, and his land. Despite his wife’s and sons’ pleas for clemency he was executed in 1743.
This judgement entailed the confiscation of all of Henrik Magnus von Buddenbrock’s property, but Magdalena Rahm pressed her interests, her rights to jointly-held property, her morning gift, and compensation for the expenses her husband had incurred in 1716 during earlier negotiations in Prussia. Although her requests were rejected the Swedish crown later returned what remained of the Colonel’s accommodation to her after it had been renovated and a debt had been settled.
Magdalena Rahm and her four children then moved back to Utrecht. She was her brother François de Ram van Hagedoorn’s inheritor and the last surviving member of her family and thus she came to own several large properties. However, these later had to be sold in order to pay a large debt to the Count of Hogendorp.
Magdalena Rahm died in 1752 in Bergen-op-Zoom. She was buried in Steenbergen, the Netherlands.
