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Pauline Elisabeth Ottilie Luise zu Wied (29 December 1843 – 2 March 1916) was the Queen consort of Romania as the wife of King Carol I of Romania, widely known by her literary name of Carmen Sylva. Elisabeth was the aunt of William of Albania (sister to William, 5th Prince of Wied, father of William of Albania). As "Carmen Sylva", she wrote with facility in German, Romanian, French and English. A few of her voluminous writings, which include poems, plays, novels, short stories, essays, collections of aphorisms, etc., may be singled out for special mention: Her earliest publications were "Sappho" and "Hammerstein", two poems which appeared at Leipzig in 1880. In 1888 she received the Prix Botta, a prize awarded triennially by the Académie française, for her volume of prose aphorisms Les Pensees d'une reine (Paris, 1882), a German version of which is entitled Vom Amboss (Bonn, 1890). Cuvinte Sufletesci, religious meditations in Romanian (Bucharest, 1888), was also translated into German (Bonn, 1890), under the name of Seelen-Gespräche.