Amalie Hassenpflug

Karl Christian Andreae : Portrait of Amalie Hassenpflug , 1848

Amalie "Male" Marie Hassenpflug (born January 30, 1800 in Kassel , † July 1, 1871 in Meersburg ) was a German writer. Posterity will particularly remember her as a member of the Kassel Circle around the Brothers Grimm and a close friend of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff .

Life

Amalie Hassenpflug's tomb in the Meersburg cemetery

Next to the grave of Amalie Hassenpflug, that of her friend Annette von Droste-Hülshoff in the Meersburg cemetery

Amalie Hassenpflug was the youngest daughter of the Hesse-Kassel administrative officer Johannes Hassenpflug and Marie Magdalena Dresen, who came from a Huguenot , upper -class emigrant family based in Hanau . Her brother was the later Conservative Minister Ludwig Hassenpflug , who married Charlotte Grimm in 1822 and was thus a brother-in-law of the Brothers Grimm . The family Hassenpflug was for the brothers Grimm an abundant source of their fairy tales, including Amalie some tales contributed: The Three Little Men in the Wood (KHM 13) The godfather (KHM 42), perhaps the whimsical Gasterei ( KHM 43a). When Charlotte Grimm died in 1833, Amalie took over housekeeping and child-rearing for brother Ludwig for a while.

Through friendships with members of the Haxthausen family and the Bökendorfer Romantikerkreis, she got to know the poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (whose mother was born Haxthausen). The first meeting in Kassel in 1818 remained fleeting, but from 1837 onwards the two of them were deeply friends. Amalie had a great influence on the Droste, especially in the years 1838–1839, and several poems are dedicated to her. Around 1840, the friendship loosened somewhat, but lasted until Annette's death in 1848. In 1842 Amalie Hassenpflug moved to Berlin to live with her brother Ludwig. 1845–1850 she lived in Hanover, partly with her friend Anna von Arnswaldt (née Haxthausen). In 1848 she was portrayed in Hanover by the painter Karl Christian Andreae , who shared an apartment with her nephew, the sculptor Carl Hassenpflug , in Rome.

Through the Haxthausen family, Hassenpflug had also met Gretchen Verflassen , a friend of Clemens Brentano , a Catholic novice and director of an orphanage. She wrote the warm-hearted biography Margarethe Verflassen about her friend, who died young in 1845 and whom she venerated as a prime example of mercy, who - herself sick and in need of care - had cared for Amalie's mother until her death in 1840 . The book appeared in 1870 under the pseudonym "AH", saw a second edition in the following year and was also translated into English.

In 1866, Amalie Hassenpflug moved to Meersburg Castle to live with Hildegard and Hildegund Laßberg, the twin daughters of Annette's sister Jenny von Droste zu Hülshoff and Joseph von Laßberg . Hildegund Laßberg, 36 years younger than her, was Amalie Hassenpflug's last close friend. Amalie Hassenpflug died 23 years after Annette von Droste-Hülshoff in Meersburg and is buried in the Meersburg cemetery between the graves of the poet's friend and that of the Laßberg sisters.

Fonts

• Margaretha Verflassen. A picture from the Catholic Church , Hanover 1870.
• Childhood memories.
• Correspondence with Ludwig Hassenpflug, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Anna von Arnswandt and others.

literature

• Brothers Grimm: Correspondence with Ludwig Hassenpflug (including the correspondence between Ludwig Hassenpflug and Dorothea Grimm, née Wild, Charlotte Hassenpflug, née Grimm, their children and Amalie Hassenpflug) , edited and edited by Ewald Grothe, Brothers Grimm Society , Kassel 2000 (= Kassel edition, works and correspondence. In individual volumes with critical commentary, letters. Volume 2), ISBN 3-929633-64-7 , no. 222, 226, 228.
• Monika Ditz, Doris Maurer : Amalie Hassenpflug (1800–1871). "So much spirit, talent and spirit" . In this. (Ed.): Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and her friends , Turm-Verlag, Meersburg 2006, ISBN 3-929874-05-9 , pp. 27–43.
• Walter Gödden : A new chapter in Droste biography. Droste's friendship with Anna von Haxthausen and Amalie Hassenpflug in their biographical and psychological context based on new source material . In: Droste yearbook . NF 1 (1986/1987), pp. 157-172.
• Walter Gödden: Day after day in the life of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Data, texts, documents , 2nd edition. Schöningh, Paderborn 1996, ISBN 3-506-73197-1 .
• Jos. Grineau: Amalie Hassenpflug, the friend of Germany's greatest poet . In: Hessenland 3 (1889), pp. 5-7 and pp. 20-22 ( digitized version ).
• Agnes-Marie Grisebach : women in corsets. Two unmarried bourgeois daughters in the 19th century , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-421-05010-4 (on the fate of gifted women in the 19th century using the example of Louise Grisebach and Amalie Hassenpflug).
• Ewald Grothe , Klaus Hassenpflug: "exuberantly passionate, but not happy ...". Amalie Hassenpflug's childhood memories . In: Yearbook of the Brothers Grimm Society 9 (1999), ISBN 3-929633-82-5 , pp. 91–114.
• Ewald Grothe, Hellmut Seier (arrangement): Files and letters from the beginnings of the Hessian constitutional period 1830–1837 , ed. von Hellmut Seier, Marburg 1992, ISBN 3-7708-0993-9 , pp. 179-181, 218 f., 231-233 (Amalie's letters to Anna von Arnswaldt, 1832/33).
• Renate Heydebrand: Difference between the sexes or poetics? Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and Levin Schücking . In: Annegret Heitmann (Ed.): Bi-Textualität. Productions by the couple , Schmidt, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-503-04991-6 , pp. 156–178.
• Philipp Losch : Male Hassenpflug . In: Journal of the Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies 63 (1952), pp. 104–111.

Web links

Commons : Amalie Hassenpflug  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See the article about the Hassenpflug family on the Hassenpflug siblings as the source of the Brothers Grimm.
2. ↑ See Heydebrand 2010.
3. ↑ Inventory catalog of the Hessen Kassel Museum Landscape .
4. ↑ See digitized version of the English version in the Internet Archive .