Caroline Bauer (29 March 1807 – 18 October 1877^[1]) was a German actress of the Biedermeier era who used the name Lina Bauer.

Caroline Philippina Augusta Bauer (German: Karoline Philippine Auguste Bauer) was born in Heidelberg, Germany to Heinrich Bauer and Christiane Stockmar. Her siblings were Lottchen, Karl and Louis.

She was during a short time in 1828-1829 the mistress of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (later King of Belgium as Leopold I). It was said that she bore a close physical resemblance to Leopold's late wife, Princess Charlotte of Wales,^[2] which had been commented on by the Duke of Wellington.^[3]

In mid-1829 she and her mother returned to Berlin, and she resumed her career as an actress. She competed with Charlotte von Hagn; the theatre audiences were divided into "Bauerians" and "Hagnerians". Many years later, in her memoirs published posthumously, she declared that she had engaged into a morganatic marriage with Leopold and that he had created her Countess of Montgomery.^[4] There was no record of such a marriage or of the existence of such a title. There was, on the contrary, a strong denial by her cousin, the son of Leopold's secretary, baron Christian Friedrich Freiherr von Stockmar.

Her second husband was Wladyslaw Plater, whom she married in 1843.^[5] Her cousin, Marie Bauer, was married to Marian Langiewicz, leader of the Polish Insurrection of 1863; they were married in Switzerland. She died by suicide in Kilchberg, Switzerland.

• Karoline BAUER, Verschollene Herzensgeschichten: Nachgelassene Memoiren, 1884
• Posthumous memoirs of Karoline Bauer, from the German, 2 vol., 1884
• Susanne FÖRSTER, Am Tage Ruhm, am Abend Tränen: Lebenserinnerungen der Schauspielerin Karoline Bauer, Ed. Sporn, 1943
• Caroline Bauer and the Coburgs, 2009

• Caroline Bauer's story.