Anna Maria von Schürmann

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Anne Marie de Schurman, painting by Jan Lievens from 1649, National Gallery, London.
Self-portrait at the age of 33

Anna Maria von Schürmann , also van Schu (u) rman (born November 5, 1607 in Cologne ; † May 4, 1678 in Wieuwerd , West Friesland ) was a Dutch polymath , widely known in her time as "the star of Utrecht" for her talents was admired. She was one of the first female students in Europe. In the last years of her life she turned to the teachings of Jean de Labadie and directed his followers.

Life

youth

Anna Maria von Schürmann was born in Cologne to Reformed parents. Her father Frederik van Schurmann († 1623) came from Antwerp in the southern Netherlands , her mother Eva von Harff zu Dreiborn from a Jülich-Eifel noble family. Both parents had fled their homeland before the Counter Reformation . But even in Catholic Cologne they could only practice their religion as counter-demonstrators underground. Anna Maria was three years old when the family had to flee from the city to Dreiborn to join the mother's family.

Anna Maria's parents attached great importance to the education of their children, including their only daughter. First, they imparted their Reformed piety to them. Anna Maria read the Bible at the age of three and learned the Heidelberg Catechism by heart. She later received the usual training of a young noblewoman in the Renaissance period . She was also taught by her father and private tutors together with her older brothers Hendrik († 1632) and Johan Godschalk. Her father, who was ennobled in 1613, had also received a humanistic education which he passed on to his children.

In 1615 the family moved to Utrecht . Here the family maintained the acquaintance of the painters Ambrosius Bosschaert and Balthasar van der Ast and the engraver Crispijn van der Passe . Anna Maria also practiced painting - as a relaxation to her other studies. Magdalena van der Passe taught her the art of copperplate engraving . Anna Maria von Schürmann is considered the first artist to create portraits in pastel. Already as a teenager she acquired a reputation for great learning.

In 1623 the family moved to Franeker , where father and sons enrolled for the university . The father died shortly after the move. On the death bed he made his daughter promise not to marry. Johan Gotschalk supported her studies and brought her into contact with his professors, because as a woman she was not allowed to attend the lectures there. After completing his studies in 1626, the family returned to Utrecht. There they joined the congregation whose presbyter was the famous humanist Arnoldus Buchelius . He corresponded with her about her studies, copied many of her letters and poems for himself and passed them on to posterity. Schürmann was now largely self-taught. She spoke and wrote at least ten languages: Dutch , French , German , English , Italian , Latin , Greek , Hebrew , Syriac / Aramaic, and Ethiopian . She was also experienced in embroidery , glass painting , woodcutting and the art of copperplate engraving , worked as a painter, especially as a portraitist, was a virtuoso in music , poet, geographer, astronomer, theologian, pedagogue, historian, linguist and philosopher. As a member of the Respublica Litteraria , she corresponded with many learned women and men across Europe, including a. Bathsua Makin , Gerardus Johannes Vossius , Daniel Heinsius , Hugo Grotius and Christiaan Huygens .

First female student

When the University of Utrecht was founded in 1636 , Schürmann was considered the most learned woman in Europe. Gisbert Voetius delivered the sermon for the opening of the university. Schürmann was invited to write award poems. In it she complained that no women were admitted to these “holy halls of learning”. In a Dutch poem accompanying Voetius' sermon, she expressly encouraged women to turn to education rather than caring for ephemeral beauty. These poems, which appeared in print along with the award poems of other scholars, were her first printed works.

As a result, she was one of the first women to be allowed to take part in lectures and disputations in all faculties without being enrolled as a student. However, she had to sit in a wooden crate concealed by a curtain, invisible to the male students, but also actively participated in the disputations. In the course of her preoccupation with Judaism and Islam , she copied the Koran in Arabic . She also wrote a grammar for the ancient Ethiopian language, which was little known in Europe at the time . This grammar has not survived, but we know that in 1648 Job Ludolf , who later founded Ethiopian Studies as a scientific discipline, came to it to learn from it. In addition to the Semitic languages , she was particularly interested in theology. To do this, she took private lessons from Voetius and participated in disputations and, from the 1640s, also in writing in theological debates.

At the same time, at the suggestion of her learned friends, she began to publish her first writings, letters, and poems, including Amica dissertatio inter Annam Mariam Schurmanniam et Andr in 1638 . Rivetum de capacitate ingenii muliebris ad scientias , the correspondence that began around 1630 with the Leiden theology professor André Rivet (1572–1652) on the question of whether women should and could study. Although she shared the view of her contemporaries that the female spirit was inferior to the male, she concluded that this meant that women needed an even better education - at least if they were rich and unmarried like her. Her works were widely distributed. Her Opuscula Hebraea, Graeca, Latina, Gallica, Prosaica et Metrica with letters, treatises and poems in four languages ​​appeared three times during her lifetime and again in 1749. Her other writings were also reprinted and translated.

Schürmann's fame drew scholars from all over Europe who wrote to her, visited her, and wrote award poems about her. Actively and as a role model, she motivated other women to also devote themselves to humanistic education. In 1654 she also visited Christina of Sweden , with whom she had previously corresponded. The queen had come to Utrecht disguised as a man. During her visit by Schürmann , she was portrayed as Pallas Athene , the embodiment of wisdom.

Anna Maria von Schürmann remained unmarried throughout her life. After her mother's death in 1637, she ran the household to her brother Johan Godschalk. He let her take part in his studies, because no other university allowed her to participate. Their wealth enabled both of them to lead a carefree life. In 1653/54 she accompanied him to Cologne to support two of her mother's sisters. There, as Calvinists , they had to live in secrecy, as any deviation from Catholicism was life-threatening.

Anna Maria von Schürmann also worked as an artist as a student. She portrayed u. a. several members of the university. 1643 it was in the Guild of St. Luke added. In her house she set up a cabinet of curiosities .

Labadist

During her studies, Schürmann was particularly concerned with theology. For them, theology not only meant science, but above all lived piety. In theological discussions she advocated the strict Calvinist doctrine of predestination . From her youth she strived for a pious life according to the Old Testament laws with regular prayer times and strict Sabbath holiness . Since the stay in Cologne at the latest, mystical tendencies and the longing to sacrifice one's whole life to faith have intensified . The Calvinist state church now seemed to her more and more corrupted by the world. With her brother, aunts and two servants, she moved back to Lexmond in 1660 , where the family owned land. They lived there in isolation for two years. She also restricted her correspondence. After the death of her aunts and her own life-threatening illness, she returned to Utrecht.

The acquaintance with Jean de Labadie was mediated by her brother, whom Labadie had met in Geneva during his study trip through Germany and Switzerland, where he had received his doctorate in Basel in 1662 . After Johan Gotschalk died in 1664, Anna Maria continued the correspondence. In 1666 Labadie came to Utrecht. Schürmann accompanied him on his preaching trips through the Netherlands. Through him she also came into contact with Antoinette Bourignon . She discussed the role of women in the church with church leaders.

At the age of 62, she sold her house in 1669 and left Utrecht for good. She joined the Labadist community and revoked her earlier writings, in which she allegedly argued and lived intellectually vainly and divinely. Instead of continuing to deal with the knowledge of God in a subtle philological way and accumulating useless knowledge, she now wants to devote herself to enlightenment and community work. The unusual step and the turning away from the bourgeoisie caused a sensation among her acquaintances. From now on she published religious writings, the first in 1669 being Mysterium Magnum, or Great Secret: A very glorious and in the Holy Word of God well-founded concern about the future of the Kingdom of Christ. By the highly learned / in the whole world called and by God highly illuminated virgin Juffr. Anna Maria von Schurmann .

She went with the Labadists from Middelburg to Amsterdam and in 1670 on to Herford in Westphalia, where the abbess Elisabeth of the Palatinate , the highly learned daughter of the “Winter Queen”, with whom Schürmann had corresponded for a long time, was able to give the community refuge for a while. In 1673 she published the first part of the autobiography Eukleria or the election of the better part ( Gr. Ευκληρία = the one who chooses well), in which she explained and defended her move towards the Labadist sect. In the tolerance city of Altona near Hamburg, ruled by the Danish king at the time, the next stop for the persecuted, Labadie died in 1674, and Anna Maria von Schürmann, who had already been noticed as a spiritual leader, became the head of the oppressed group. Schürmann led them to Wieuwerd in West Frisia, where they found refuge at Walta State Castle. From here she began an intensive correspondence with Eleonora von Merlau and Johann Jakob Schütz , the initiator of the Frankfurt Collegium pietatis (the meeting for common prayer) and one of the most important representatives of early Lutheran Pietism , which directly contributed to the development of German Pietism.

Anna Maria Schürmann died in 1678, a few days after completing the second part of her autobiography Eukleria , in which she described her religious group as the nucleus of a future world community. With this work, she countered widespread rumors and the notion among non-Labadists that the sect was about "ecstatic women" and enthusiasts.

Ten years after her death, Walta-State Castle became a place of refuge and resting place for the naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian , her mother and two daughters.

The Labadian community existed for about 70 years until around 1750.

Works

  • Amica dissertatio inter Annam Mariam Schurmanniam et Andr. Rivetum de capacitate ingenii muliebris ad scientias , Paris 1638, German under the title May a Christian woman study? by Adele Osterloh
  • Nobiliss. Virginis Annae Mariae a Schvrmann dissertatio, de ingenii muliebris ad doctrinam, meliores litteras aptitudine . Suffering 1642
  • Opuscula hebraica, graeca, latina, gallica, prosaica et metrica , Leiden 1648 ( text of the 3rd edition 1652 with detailed introduction )
  • Pensées sur la Réformation nécessaire à présent à l'Eglise de Christ , Amsterdam 1669
  • Ευκληρία seu melioris partis electio , Altona 1673

reception

The feminist artist Judy Chicago dedicated one of the 39 place settings at the table to her in her work The Dinner Party .

A path is named after her in Cologne's Altstadt / Süd district.

literature

Web links

Commons : Anna Maria von Schürmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pieta van Beer: The first female university student: AMvan Schurman , Utrecht 2010, p. 15f
  2. ^ Pieta van Beer: The first female university student: AMvan Schurman , Utrecht 2010, p. 20
  3. ^ Pieta van Beer: The first female university student: AMvan Schurman , Utrecht 2010, p. 24
  4. ^ Pieta van Beer: The first female university student: AMvan Schurman , Utrecht 2010, p. 30
  5. ^ Pieta van Beer: The first female university student: AMvan Schurman , Utrecht 2010, pp. 49–53
  6. ^ Pieta van Beer: The first female university student: AMvan Schurman , Utrecht 2010, pp. 79f
  7. ^ Pieta van Beer: The first female university student: AMvan Schurman , Utrecht 2010, pp. 83f
  8. ^ Anna Maria van Schurman: Opuscula Hebraea, Graeca, Latina, Gallica, Prosaica et Metrica . 3rd edition Utrecht 1652, p. 30ff
  9. ↑ The new edition from 1749 was done by Traugott Christiane Dorothea Löber, a sister of Gotthilf Friedemann Löber and herself Poeta laureata .
  10. ^ Pieta van Beer: The first female university student: AMvan Schurman , Utrecht 2010, pp. 158f
  11. ^ Pieta van Beer: The first female university student: AMvan Schurman , Utrecht 2010, pp. 158f
  12. ^ Pieta van Beer: The first female university student: AMvan Schurman , Utrecht 2010, p. 204
  13. ^ A b Ute Brandes: Study room, poet club, court society. Creativity and the cultural framework of female storytelling in the baroque era. In: Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Ed.), German Literature by Women , Volume 1, Darmstadt / Munich 1988. ISBN 3-406-33118-1 . Pp. 223-229
  14. ↑ Brooklyn Museum page on the artwork, accessed April 15, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Schürmann, Anna Maria von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schurman, Anna Maria van; Schuurman, Anna Maria van; Schurmann, Anna Maria van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch-German artist, theologian, polymath
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1607
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH May 4, 1678
Place of death Wieuwerd , Friesland Province