Augusta Louise zu Stolberg-Stolberg

Augusta Louise zu Stolberg-Stolberg

Countess Augusta Louise zu Stolberg-Stolberg (born January 7, 1753 in Bad Bramstedt ; † May 30, 1835 in Kiel ) became known through her lively correspondence with the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and went down in literary history as Goethe's Gustchen .

Life

She was the younger sister of Goethe's friends Count Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg ("Fritz") and Count Christian zu Stolberg-Stolberg . At 17 she moved into a small apartment in the aristocratic Uetersen monastery , a monastery for unmarried major daughters , and lived there from 1770 to 1783 with Baroness Metta von Oberg, who was 15 years her senior . In 1775, after reading The Sorrows of Young Werther , she began an anonymous correspondence with the young Goethe, which continued until 1782. They never met personally. Goethe's letters, the first to the “dear unknown” and the later to “Gustgen”, were left behind by Franz Hermann Hegewisch , who had them published in 1839.

Otherwise, too, she was an active writer. "Augusta - the dispatches arrive at her from morning until evening, like with a minister of state, and are processed more carefully than in a Canzelley," remarked Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock .

On August 7, 1783, Augusta Louise moved to Copenhagen and married the Danish Minister of State Andreas Peter Bernstorff, who was widowed after the death of her sister Henriette († 1782) . Their only child together, Karl Andreas Christian (1788–1792), was only four years old.

After the death of her husband on June 21, 1797 in Copenhagen, Augusta Louise lived in various places, mainly with relatives. For several years she lived in Bordesholm , from 1823 in Kiel. She intensively cultivated old and new relationships with friends and relatives, especially at Emkendorf and Knoop . This is how she met Johann Caspar Lavater , with whom she had corresponded before. In 1794 he dedicated 24 short lectures to her on the history of Joseph, the son of Israel . Matthias Claudius wrote the spring song Today I want to be happy in her memory . Until the end of her life, Augusta Louise was connected in a religious sense with the Kiel pastor Claus Harms . After a 40-year break, she wrote another letter from Bordesholm to Goethe in Weimar in October 1822 ( my address is: in Bordesholm ).

Augusta Louise zu Stolberg died on May 30, 1835 at the Seeburg in Kiel. She found her final resting place at the side of her husband on the Bernstorffschen Gut Dreilützow in Wittendbod in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

The rose Augusta Luise was named after her.

literature

• Elsa Plath-Langheinrich : When Goethe wrote to Uetersen: The life of the Conventual Augusta Louise Countess zu Stolberg-Stolberg . ISBN 3529026956
• Goethe to Auguste Countess zu Stolberg, [Frankfurt, around January 18-30, 1775], cf. Fischer-Lamberg, Hanna (Ed.): The young Goethe . Revised edition in five volumes., Berlin 1963–1973, Vol. V (Registerbd.), P. 6f.
• Paul Steffen: … my address is Bordesholm , Paul Steffen KG, Bordesholm 1970

Web links

Commons : Augusta Louise zu Stolberg-Stolberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography and excerpts from Goethe's letter, also with Gustchen
• Biographical highlights: Auguste Louise, Countess zu Stolberg-Stolberg
• Stolberger Geschichts- und Traditionsverein e. V.
• Goethe's letters to Auguste zu Stolberg

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Goethe's letters to Countess Auguste von Stolberg, widowed Countess von Bernstorff , Leipzig near Brockdorf 1839 limited preview in the Google book search