Caroline Auguste Fischer

Caroline Auguste Fischer , b. Venturini divorced Christiani, (born August 9, 1764 in Braunschweig , † May 26, 1842 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German writer and suffragette .

Life

Caroline Auguste Venturini's family was probably of Italian origin on her father's side. Father Karl Venturini (1735–1801) was a chamber musician at the ducal court in Braunschweig , her mother Charlotty nee. Köchy was the daughter of a tailor. Her brother Karl Heinrich Georg Venturini was a well-known theologian and writer of the early 19th century. Her other three siblings died young.

In her first marriage she was married to the pastor Christoph Johann Rudolph Christiani (1761–1841) from 1791 at the latest . Christiani was German pastor in Copenhagen from 1793 and ran a boys' school there, where her brother Karl taught for a few years. The lawyer and politician Rudolf Christiani (1797–1858) is their son. A daughter who was born in Kahleby in 1792 died at the age of three in 1795. During her time in Copenhagen, she moved among Danish and German artists. She was friends with the writer Jens Immanuel Baggesen, among others .

In 1801 she was divorced from Christiani guilty and therefore had to leave her son with his father. Caroline Auguste Christiani, also called Caroline Auguste Ferdinande Christiani, then went to Dresden . In the same year she began to write and was soon known for it. At that time she was already living with Christian August Fischer (1771–1829), businessman, writer and since 1804 professor in Würzburg, with whom she had a son Albert in 1803. They lived separately, but eventually married in 1808, probably so that the son was considered legitimate. The marriage was divorced again in 1809 after only seven months. He himself admitted that her old age repulsed him and that she was overwhelmed with her fame.

Although Fischer had to pay alimony as the guilty party in the divorce, Caroline Auguste Fischer got into financial difficulties. After she had published her first novels in 1801, she worked as a writer, in 1816 her divorced husband was fired from the university and thereupon stopped the maintenance payments, so that she could find less and less time for writing. She wrote short stories and newspaper articles until 1820, after which she earned her living as the director of a correctional home in Heidelberg and as a bookseller on loan in Frankfurt am Main. In later years she suffered from melancholy , which is why she was admitted to a hospital for a few weeks in 1832. She then moved to live with her son Albert in Frankfurt am Main. After Albert's death two years later, nothing is known about her. In 1842 she died completely impoverished in the 'Hospital of the Holy Spirit' in Frankfurt.

plant

Caroline Auguste Christiani started writing after her divorce from Christiani. In her work, which is probably also influenced by autobiography , she depicts the tension between the sexes, juxtaposing traditional female role models with new, alternative lifestyles that mostly run counter to the ideal of women in the early 19th century. Corresponding to the demand for equality, which only applied to men in the French Revolution , it also demanded the right to an independent life plan for women - but this can also be traditional marriage.

She published her first work Gustavs Vererrungen anonymously. It tells from the perspective of the main male character, the feelings of a man towards different women in his life. Again and again he idealized them and is repelled when instead of the ideal he discovers a real, independent person. Gustav, ashamed, realizes the social gap between the sexes. Purified - and sexually ill - he returns to his first great love, but then wants to divorce when the ideal of marriage is not fulfilled because of her childlessness and he believes that this will make his wife unhappy. Like the previous women, his wife does not appear in his imagination with her wishes. The book ends with Gustav's early death and the second marriage of his widow with many children.

Her epistolary novel The Honey Month , which was also written not long after the divorce, is an answer to Wilhelmine Karoline von Wobeser's writing Elisa, or Woman as it should be , a bestseller at the time, in which von Wobeser creates the ideal of a selfless woman. Caroline Auguste's partner Fischer had written an appendix to the 5th edition in 1800, in which he emphasized the man's rights of rule and demanded submission from the woman. Caroline Auguste Christianis The Honey Month appeared anonymously. The main female character, the virtuous, gentle Julie, is trapped in an unhappy marriage of convenience, as in Elisa , and likes to sacrifice herself for her unsympathetic, selfish husband instead of choosing to love someone else. Her friend Wilhelmine, on the other hand, protests against the contemporary image of women, refuses an arranged marriage and instead demands a temporary marriage and the right of a woman to keep her children after the divorce. She urges Julie to defend herself and admonishes her not to become an “Elise”. While in the end Julie remains as a widow, Wilhelmine finds her love.

In The Minion she dealt with the question of how women deal with power and men with powerful women. The main character, the ruler Ivanova, is reminiscent of Catherine the Great . Opposite her stands the young Maria, the embodiment of Rousseau 's ideal of women. Both women are connected to Prince Alexander, from whose perspective the story is told. The prince rejects the ruler's love, first because his career is more important to him, then because he has recognized Mary's selfless love. Ivanova allows them to marry, but murders the couple on their wedding night. Even so, the portrayal of Ivanova is positive. It is Alexander who cannot get along with the strong woman.

In Margarethe there are two women who decide against marriage: the dancer Rosamunde prefers to be free for art and Margarethe decides against the love of a prince and the associated social advancement and dedicates herself to social work.

In her story William the Negro from 1817, a black man becomes the main character: William, a freed slave and protégé of the rich Englishman Sir Robert, falls in love with Molly, the daughter of an impoverished merchant. The love story fails, however, not primarily because of the prejudices of Molly's relatives, but because Robert, who actually wants to serve as a messenger of love for his friend, falls in love with Molly himself. William leaves Molly and becomes a leader in the revolution that turns the French colony of Saint-Domingue into the first black-ruled state of Haiti . Fischer speaks out, although she does not completely ignore contemporary racism , clearly against slavery and for the human rights of all people.

Between 1816 and 1820 she published a few more stories in magazines, after which nothing. Carl Wilhelm Otto August von Schindel wrote about her in his book The German Writers of the Nineteenth Century from 1825: "For 18 years she has been collecting not strange but her own thoughts on a work: about women; if and whether it will appear, she can not to be determined in their circumstances. " This work has not appeared again.

Works

Title page by Margarethe , 1812

Gustav's aberrations . Novel 1801
A fortnight in Paris . Fairy tale 1801
Fairy tales. In: Journal of the Novels. St. 10. Berlin, 1802 ( digitized version and full text in the German text archive )
Krauskopf and Goldilocks . Fairy tale 1802
Selim and Zoraïde . Fairy tale 1802
Paridamia or the crab claws . Fairy tale 1802
The honey month . Two volumes. 1802 and 1804
The favorite . 1809
Margarethe . Novel 1812
Small stories and romantic sketches . 1819 (Contents: Riekchen , William the Negro , Mathilde , Saphir and Marioh and Justin ).

literature

Lexicon of German-speaking women writers 1800–1945. Munich: dtv, 1986. (p. 85 f.) - There with the indication: "† 1834 in Frankfurt am Main".
Manfred RW Garzmann, Wolf-Dieter Schuegraf, Norman-Mathias Pingel: Braunschweiger Stadtlexikon. Supplementary volume. Meyer, Braunschweig 1996, ISBN 3-926701-30-7 .
Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Günter Scheel (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon. 19th and 20th centuries. Hahn, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-7752-5838-8 .
Clementine Kügler: Caroline Auguste Fischer (1764–1842). A work biography. Dissertation FU Berlin 1989
Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. Diss., Kassel Univ. Press, 2002, pp. 123–163, full text (PDF; 882 kB)
Christine Touaillon : The German women's novel of the 18th century. Braumüller, Vienna and Leipzig 1919, pp. 578–629 - Internet Archive

Web links

Wikisource: Caroline Auguste Fischer - Sources and full texts

Literature by and about Caroline Auguste Fischer in the catalog of the German National Library
Works by Caroline Auguste Fischer at Zeno.org .
Works by Caroline Auguste Fischer in the Gutenberg-DE project
Fairy tales at LibriVox

Individual evidence

↑ Christine Touaillon: The German women's novel of the 18th century. Braumüller, Vienna and Leipzig 1919, p. 578.
↑ Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 125.
↑ Christine Touaillon: The German women's novel of the 18th century. Braumüller, Vienna and Leipzig 1919, p. 582.
↑ Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 128.
^ Carola Hilmes: nameless. About the author of "Gustavs Verirrungen" , pp. 8–12 (PDF file; 133 kB)
↑ Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 126.
^ Carola Hilmes: nameless. About the author of "Gustavs Verirrungen" , p. 5 (PDF file; 133 kB)
↑ ^a ^b Katharina Herrmann: Caroline Auguste Fischer (1764–1842) and the idea of a temporary marriage
↑ Quoted from Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 131.
↑ Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 145f.
↑ Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 152f.
↑ For the plot see: William the Negro Wiki (English)
↑ Quoted from Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 123.

personal data
SURNAME	Fischer, Caroline Auguste
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Venturini, Caroline Auguste (maiden name); Christiani, Caroline Auguste (during the first marriage); Christiani, Caroline Auguste Ferdinande (during the first marriage)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German writer and women's rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH	August 9, 1764
PLACE OF BIRTH	Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH	May 26, 1842
Place of death	Frankfurt am Main

[1] Christine Touaillon: The German women's novel of the 18th century. Braumüller, Vienna and Leipzig 1919, p. 578.

[2] Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 125.

[3] Christine Touaillon: The German women's novel of the 18th century. Braumüller, Vienna and Leipzig 1919, p. 582.

[4] Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 128.

[5] Carola Hilmes: nameless. About the author of "Gustavs Verirrungen" , pp. 8–12 (PDF file; 133 kB)

[6] Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 126.

[7] Carola Hilmes: nameless. About the author of "Gustavs Verirrungen" , p. 5 (PDF file; 133 kB)

[Hermann-8] Katharina Herrmann: Caroline Auguste Fischer (1764–1842) and the idea of a temporary marriage

[9] Quoted from Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 131.

[10] Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 145f.

[11] Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 152f.

[12] For the plot see: William the Negro Wiki (English)

[13] Quoted from Elke Spitzer: Claims to emancipation between the Querelle des Femmes and the modern women's movement: the change in the concept of equality at the end of the 18th century. P. 123.