Anna Louisa Karsch

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Anna Louise Karsch, painting by Karl Christian Kehrer , 1791, Gleimhaus Halberstadt

Anna Louisa Karsch , née Dürbach , called the Karschin (born December 1, 1722 in Hammer , near Schwiebus , † October 12, 1791 in Berlin ) was a German poet . She was the mother of the poet Caroline Louise von Klencke and the grandmother of the poet Helmina von Chézy .

Life

Origin and youth

Anna Louisa Karsch, drawn by Oeser , engraved by Meil

After her father's death, the daughter of the innkeeper grew up in 1728 with a relative in Tirschtiegel , who taught her to read and write as well as basic knowledge of Latin. In 1732 her mother fetched the unloved daughter back, as she had reached the age to be of use as a nanny for the step-siblings, as a cowherd and maid .

In 1738 she married Michael Hirsekorn, a cloth maker from Schwiebus, from which four children emerged. During this time she wrote her first poems, for which her violent husband had no understanding. In 1748 he filed for divorce from his pregnant wife because she had failed to do her household chores and sent her back to her mother unsupported.

Beginning of poetic activity

In 1749 she was married by her mother to the tailor Daniel Karsch from Fraustadt . Anna Louisa gave birth to three more children, but this marriage was also unhappy because Karsch was a drinker. In addition to bringing up the children, Karschin wrote poems for family celebrations and thus became well known in neighboring Silesia . After the family moved to Glogau in 1755, the talented poet, whose reputation spread more and more, wrote a large number of verses for family occasions.

The hymns of praise she wrote for Frederick II and Prussia after the outbreak of the Seven Years' War found their way into pamphlets throughout the country and made them known in Berlin .

Through officers who were friends, she managed to separate from the violent Karsch by drafting him into the army. Rudolf Gotthard von Kottwitz finally brought the Karschin to Berlin in 1761, where she caused a sensation in literary salons. Her poetry was promoted by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , Johann Georg Sulzer , Karl Wilhelm Ramler and Moses Mendelssohn .

At the height of my work

Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim declared her a German Sappho and in 1761 prepared her solemn coronation of poets in Halberstadt ; From 1785 he read poems by her to the Halberstadt Literary Society . Until 1762 sponsors financed the life of the Karschin in Halberstadt and Magdeburg . She frequented the court of Queen Elisabeth Christine of Prussia in Magdeburg, who was separated from her husband Friedrich the Great, and maintained close contact with Prince Ferdinand of Braunschweig , Count Heinrich Ernst zu Stolberg-Wernigerode and Count Christian Friedrich zu Stolberg-Wernigerode . She wrote texts for Amalie von Prussia , the Abbess of Quedlinburg , who set them to music. In 1789 Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach set her passion cantata The Last Sorrows of the Redeemer to music .

After returning to Berlin, she had to finance her own living again and suffered dire hardship. Daniel Chodowiecki supported her during this time with the design of miniature portraits, which she completed with poetry. Gleim arranged for the publication of her first volume of poetry, Auserlesene Gedichte , which enabled her to earn a small income, but was often misunderstood and panned by the critics. In addition to pleasant occasional verses, there are poignant complaints about her difficult life and fate that is always threatened by setbacks, such as the poem To the Canon v. Rochow .

My youth was weighed down with worry.
With a sigh, on some summer mornings,
   My simplicity sang its stammered song.
There were no chants to the youth,
no, to the God who
   looks down on the crowd like on ants' heaps!
Without affection, which I often describe,
without tenderness I became a woman,
  became a mother, as in a wild war
a girl would have to become in love, who
a warrior kissed half-forced,
  who climbed the wall of a city.
What we must long desperately
and what we do not know how to receive,
  impresses deeper in our hearts;
The healthy   person wastes grape juice
But the sick mouth tastes refreshing
Even in dreams the undrinked wine.

Old age and death

Memorial plaque on the Berlin Sophienkirche

On August 11, 1763, when Friedrich II had a long conversation with her about poetry, Frederick II granted her a house and an annual pension from the state treasury, but this was empty because of the war costs , so she had to make do with 50 thalers . In the following years she reminded of the promise several times, but was always fobbed off with donations. Her problem, however, was not the money, as she had become wealthy through the publication of her Selected Poems in 1764, but the fact that, as a woman living apart ( referred to at the time as Pupil ), she was not allowed to access the money under the law of the time. It was not until 1789 that Friedrich Wilhelm II kept his uncle's old promise and gave Karschin a house on Berlin's Neue Promenade. Karschin exchanged letters with Goethe , who visited her in 1778.

In 1784, a sandstone sculpture was erected for her as the first public statue for a German-speaking poet in the Spiegelsberge landscape park near Halberstadt. The sculpture was designed by the Halberstadt sculptor J. C. Stubinitzky . It is now in the Gleimhaus in Halberstadt. Her grave is located at the Sophienkirche in Berlin-Mitte and bears the inscription: Do you know her, wanderer, not / How to get to know her.

In 1792 her daughter Karoline Louise von Klenke published the poems . In 2001 Anna-Louisa-Karsch-Strasse was dedicated to her near her house on Neue Promenade .

Literary meaning

Chodowiecki felt the difference that separated Karschin from many of her contemporaries and style comrades when he wrote: "Ramler is used to copying from the Wernike or Logau when he is presented with a studbook, which Madam Karschin writes from her heart." indeed, in the midst of an artificial anacreontic, touches her bold imagination and the ability to express her ideas in a folk and pictorial way. This was also recognized by Herder , who said of them: “If one regards the poems of Madam Karschin even as paintings of the imagination, then because of their many original features they have more merit for the awakening of German geniuses than many odes after regular editing. "

The 19th century almost completely surrendered the earlier fame of the Karschin to oblivion, even disregard, so that “German Sappho ” appeared as a tasteless monstrosity, which was intended as an honor of originality, not perfection. Anyone reading the Karschin's poems often finds a heartfelt tone of sincerity in them, which is almost unknown in the formally adjusted flirtation of the poetry of the time. The only larger edition of her works during her lifetime, the " Prenumeration Edition" organized by Gleim in 1764, does not necessarily offer her best poems. She suffers from the fact that many of the subscribers to whom she had previously sent a poem as a thank you wanted to see “her” verses printed in it. On the other hand, Gleim did not include any of the many poems which the Karschin had interspersed in her countless letters to him in the edition. These were among her best, because they were felt from real, deep feelings. It lacks one of the most touching examples of love poetry from her pen: June 22, 1761. 7 o'clock in the morning .

Friend, draw this day with a bigger line!
He was just for you and me.

We walked in the grove and heard birds singing
In the dense fir trees, where the man catches the female.
It was good that Eden's apples weren't hanging over us,
As we walked hand in hand through the bushes,
you and I would have nibbled.

And in delight not the consequences of the bites.
Just thought for a moment:
That's how Eva did it once,
That's how lovers who kiss each other still do it today -
Soon I'll know nothing to gossip, but

forever about the kiss. And my mother's husband,
through whom I became, is to blame for the fact
that I so love to sing and say about kisses,
for he kissed himself with life's heavy plague.
But now I turn back to the day

I want to talk about, write it with a golden line!
He was just for you and me ...

Also none of the many songs that sang about the campaigns of Frederick the Great, which made them famous among the people, were included in it. In the edition that the daughter published after her death, most of these poems are also missing, but there are many empty praise for princes. Herder already wanted an edition that was “more worthy of it”, but this has not yet taken place.

Works

Newer editions:

  • B. Beuys (Ed.): Heart Thoughts. The life of the "German Sappho" told by herself. Frankfurt am Main 1981.
  • R. Nörtemann (Ed.): My brother in Apollo. Correspondence between Anna Louisa Karsch and Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim. 2 volumes. Goettingen 1996.
  • Gerhard Wolf (Ed.): Oh, what people feel does not escape me. Poems and letters, voices from contemporaries. Märkischer poet garden. Berlin 1981
  • Regina Nörtemann (Ed.): The Sapphic Songs: Love Poems. Göttingen 2009.

literature

  • Elisabeth Hausmann (ed.): The Karschin - Frederick the Great People's Poet. A life in letters . Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1933.
  • Gerhard Hay:  Karsch, Anna Louisa, née Dürbach. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 299 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Theodor Heinze: Anna Luise Karschin. A biographical and literary history sketch. In: To the March 15th public examination of all classes ... and to celebrate the birthday of Sr. Maj. The King on March 22nd, at 11 o'clock in the morning, the Director ... high school invites you to Anclam on behalf of the teaching staff. Anklam 1868, pp. 1-20.
  • Rob McFarland: Feet in Steigvers with a female ending: Anna Louise Karsch's Poem Cycle “The Walks of Berlin” and the Pre-History of the Flaneuse. Lessing Yearbook XXXVI, 2006. 135-160.
  • Waltraud Naumann-Beyer: Anna Louise Karsch in Berlin . In: Mitteilungen des Verein für die Geschichte Berlins , Issue 2, Volume 115, April 2019, pp. 421–426.
  • Hermann Palm:  Karsch, Anna Louisa . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1882, p. 421 f.
  • Ute Pott: Conversations by letter. About the correspondence between Anna Louisa Karsch and Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim. With an attachment to previously unprinted letters from the correspondence between Gleim and Caroline Luise von Klenke. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 1998, ISBN 3-89244-219-3 .
  • Uta Schaffers: I look down on past misery. Anna Louisa Karsch in personal and third-party testimonials. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-89244-261-4 (also dissertation, University of Cologne 1996).
  • H. Schlaffer: Natural Poetry in the Age of Enlightenment. Anna Luisa Karsch (1722-1791). A portrait. In: Gisela Brinker-Gabler (ed.): German literature by women. Volume 1. Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-32814-8 , pp. 313-324.
  • Gisela Stockmann: Anna Louisa Karsch. Folk poet. In: Gisela Stockmann: Steps out of the shadows. Women in Saxony-Anhalt. Dingsda-Verlag, Querfurt 1993, ISBN 3-928498-12-6 .
  • Zitta Übel: The "German Sappho" . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 10, 1997, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 59–63 ( luise-berlin.de - biography).

Web links

Commons : Anna Louisa Karsch  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Anna Louisa Karsch  - Sources and full texts
Wikiquote: Anna Luise Karsch  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Waltraud Naumann-Beyer: Anna Louise Karsch in Berlin . In: Mitteilungen des Verein für die Geschichte Berlins , Issue 2, Volume 115, April 2019, p. 423ff.
  2. ↑ Leyer and Kopf . In: Die Zeit , No. 29/2008, p. 43.
  3. ^ Anna-Louisa-Karsch-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
personal data
SURNAME Karsch, Anna Louisa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dürbach, Anna Luise; Karsch, Anna Luise; the Karschin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1722
PLACE OF BIRTH Hammer, today: Przetocznica (Skąpe municipality), Schwiebus district
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1791
Place of death Berlin