Caroline Schelling

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Caroline Schlegel (1798)

Caroline Schelling , née Dorothea Caroline Albertine Michaelis, widowed Böhmer, divorced Schlegel, married Schelling (born September 2, 1763 in Göttingen , †  September 7, 1809 in Maulbronn ), was a German writer and translator. She belonged to the group of Göttingen professors' daughters known as university girls and is considered the muse of various romantic poets and thinkers .

Life

Goettingen

Göttingen memorial plaque at the Michaelishaus in Prinzenstrasse 21.

Caroline Schelling was born as Dorothea Caroline Albertine Michaelis in Göttingen. As the daughter of Professor Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791) with a focus on theology and oriental studies, she was early friends with the scholarly families there and was friends with Therese Heyne and her later husband Georg Forster .

Clausthal

Auguste Böhmer

On June 15, 1784 she married her childhood friend, the Clausthal official and mountain doctor Johann Franz Wilhelm Böhmer (1754–1788), a son of the lawyer Georg Ludwig Böhmer . On April 28, 1785, she gave birth to her first child Auguste ("Gustel") Böhmer . Therese ("Röschen"), the second child with Böhmer, was born on April 23, 1787. On February 4, 1788, her husband died of a wound infection. Caroline Böhmer, pregnant again, moved back to their parents' house in Göttingen with Therese and Auguste. The third child Wilhelm was born there in August 1788 and lived only a few weeks.

In Göttingen she met Georg Ernst Tatter , who was staying there as the companion of three English princes, and fell in love with him. In spring 1789 she moved with her daughters to her stepbrother Christian Friedrich "Fritz" Michaelis in Marburg, who was professor of medicine there. Therese also died on December 17, 1789. Caroline and Auguste Böhmer moved back to Göttingen in autumn 1789.

Mainz

Georg Forster (around 1785)

In 1791 the father died, the mother moved to Braunschweig and the family house was sold. As a “flirtatious young widow”, as she called herself, Caroline Böhmer moved with Auguste to Mainz in March 1792 , where she took in Meta Forkel, who had fled from Göttingen , and had frequent contact with Georg Forster and Therese Heyne, who had been married since 1785.

In October 1792 Mainz was captured by French revolutionary troops under Custine . Caroline Böhmer had previously made no secret of her democratic-revolutionary outlook - although she could not actually become a clubist , as no women were accepted into the " Society of Friends of Freedom and Equality ". Although her brother-in-law Georg Wilhelm Böhmer had come to Mainz as secretary to the French general Custine, she kept her distance from him and was very critical of him:

“One tool is my brother-in-law, George Böhmer, who has given up his professorship in Worms and is something from Secretair at Custine. My heart sank when I saw the person - alas - want and do you need him? Those who push themselves on such occasions are never the best. "

There were intimate relationships between Therese Forster and her family friend Ludwig Ferdinand Huber , which Georg Forster accepted. Finally, Therese Forster, in agreement with her husband, moved to Switzerland with Huber in December 1792. Caroline Böhmer was now supposed to have a relationship with Forster.

The reaction of the German forces against the French Revolution in general and the Mainz Republic in particular had, after initial military defeats, e.g. B. in September 1792 at Valmy , meanwhile made progress. Coalition troops began to recapture the French-occupied parts of the empire in early 1793. Nevertheless, on March 18, 1793, the Republic of Mainz and three days later its annexation to revolutionary France was proclaimed.

During this time, Caroline Böhmer became pregnant by the 19-year-old Lieutenant Jean Baptiste Dubois-Crancé, who was stationed in Mainz at the beginning of 1793 as the nephew of the French General d'Oyré and to whom she had given herself on a ball night in February - “a child of Embers and Night ”, as she writes. On March 25, 1793, Forster left for Paris for further political talks on behalf of the Mainz Republic. Left alone and under the impression of the impending reconquest of Mainz by Prussian troops, Caroline Böhmer also left Mainz five days later, together with the mother and daughter-in-law of the leading Mainz Jacobin Georg von Wedekind , his children and sister Meta Forkel and their eight-year-old daughter Auguste .

Detention and persecution

Caroline Böhmer and her companion were stopped by the Prussian military in neighboring Oppenheim on the same day and arrested when Caroline Böhmer's connection to the leading Mainz Jacobins was recognized. In addition, because of the similarity of names, she was thought to be the wife of her brother-in-law Georg Böhmer. She was initially held at the Königstein Fortress in the Taunus Mountains, and then placed under house arrest in Kronberg in the Taunus Mountains from June 14th . She feared her pregnancy would be discovered and was determined to kill herself if it was discovered.

Relatives, friends and acquaintances such as the brothers Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel - but not Wilhelm von Humboldt and Goethe - tried to obtain their release. The submission of her brother Gottfried Philipp Michaelis directly to King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia finally brought success. The monarch replied:

"Well-known, especially dear. It is by no means my will that innocent persons should share the deserved fate of the criminals who were imprisoned on the Königstein. Since I now reject your assurance that your sister there, the widow of Bergmedikus Boehmer, is not to blame for anything, I have ordered Major von Lucadow to release her and her child. I will make you aware of this in response to your letter of the 1st of this, and I am your gracious Fr. Wilhelm. "

- Letter from Friedrich Wilhelm dated July 4, 1793

After paying costs, Caroline and Auguste Böhmer were released on July 5, 1793. August Wilhelm Schlegel came from Amsterdam and brought her from Kronberg to Leipzig and finally to a doctor in the neighboring town of Lucka . There she gave birth to her son Wilhelm Julius under a false name on November 3, 1793. Friedrich Schlegel visited her there several times, looked after her and was one of the godparents. Communicating with an officer in revolutionary France was dangerous at the time. Caroline Böhmer dared to correspond with the child's father, but turned down the offer of marriage. Nor did she want to give him the child for adoption in France. Instead, she took care of the child in Lucka in January 1794 and initially moved with her daughter Auguste to friends, the Gotter couple, in Gotha . In later letters she describes how attached she and Auguste were to Wilhelm Julius. But she never saw her son again, he died on April 30, 1795 of an infectious disease.

After her release from prison, Caroline Böhmer remained socially ostracized as a “frivolous” woman and “Democrat” and consistently discriminated against by the authorities. A contribution to the damage to their reputation had contributed to a Pasquill published in 1793 under the title Die Mainzer Klubbisten zu Königstein: Or, the women cover each other's shame . The anonymous author, who is relatively well informed about the private circumstances in the Forster house, shows Caroline Böhmer, Meta Forkel and the Wedekind women in fortress custody on Königstein as boastful, horny women who have nothing else in mind than chasing men off each other.

When she visited her home town of Göttingen, she was declared an undesirable person by decree. The planned move to Dresden was prohibited from the outset. That was the result of their apparently complete official monitoring, at least in the Kingdom of Hanover . These repressive measures were carefully determined in advance and on a permanent basis by the state capital. B. from a letter to the Göttingen authorities from 1794:

“To the Prorector Hofrat Feder zu Göttingen. It has happened that Doctor Böhmer, born Michaelis, who is currently in Gotha, found herself there some time ago. Since we cannot allow them to stay in Göttingen, (...). However, if, contrary to suspicion, more than one doctor should appear there, she will have to be removed immediately, and the prorector will have to hand over this rescript to his successor in office for imitation when the prorector changes. "

August Wilhelm Schlegel

August Wilhelm Schlegel (around 1800)
The busts of Caroline and the Schlegel brothers in Jena

Even old friends turned away from Caroline Böhmer or - like their hosts in Gotha - came under pressure because of her. In 1795, she and her daughter Auguste found makeshift accommodation with their mother in Braunschweig . A few months later, August Wilhelm Schlegel came from Amsterdam. In view of her difficult economic and social situation, Caroline Böhmer married him on July 1, 1796; a week later they moved to Jena, where they found themselves better received in the university town's academic circles. Goethe also paid her a surprise visit there on July 17th and in December Caroline and August Wilhelm Schlegel went to Weimar for a few days .

In principle, however, the political persecution continued. In 1800 the Hanover government instructed the authorities in Göttingen:

“To the Prorector, Konsistorialrat Planck, and Hofrat Meiners zu Göttingen. (...) We hear from several quarters that Professor August Wilhelm Schlegel from Jena will be there with his wife, the former widowed Böhmer, bored Michaelis. (...) So the same person and you, if the proposed professor wanted to stay there longer than a few days while passing through, will tell your relatives and, if necessary, yourself that she has to go away. "

It is therefore not surprising that Caroline Schlegel initially toyed with the idea of ​​emigrating to America with her husband. But the Schlegel brothers increasingly became the focus of the Jena Romantics . For Caroline Schlegel, this second marriage ultimately meant a return to civil society. She took an active part in the literary development of the district.

During this time she also worked on Schlegel's translation of Shakespeare's works , with Schlegel discussing translation problems with her, selecting translation variants and creating the fair copy. She has been accused of the fact that her contributions were often worsening improvements and that she took too much liberty with the text, but overall her cooperation was certainly a help for Schlegel, who was working under time pressure. Between 1797 and 1799 Schlegel and his wife translated six of Shakespeare's most important and best-known works: Julius Caesar , What you want , Romeo and Juliet , The Tempest , Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice .

The alienation between Friedrich Schiller and the Schlegels (and thus ultimately the Romantics as a whole) and their turn to Goethe also fell during this period . It remains unclear what the essential moment of this alienation was. On the one hand, Schiller had broken off his relationship with August Wilhelm Schlegel, whose first Shakespeare translations had appeared in the Horen , after Friedrich Schlegel had criticized the Horen for the too many translations it contained. On the other hand, deeper, philosophical contradictions between the emerging “poetry schools” of the Romantics and the Classics may have been the cause. The Romantics rejected Schiller's rigid idealism and made fun of his pathos . Caroline Schlegel reports in 1799: “But yesterday at noon we almost fell from our chairs with laughter about a poem by Schiller, the song about the bell”.

After all, the aversion that existed between Caroline Schlegel and Charlotte Schiller from the start may also have contributed. In Charlotte Schiller's environment they made no secret of their aversion to Caroline Schlegel, they called her "Lady Lucifer" and "The Evil" and gave advice such as the following:

Die Schillern lets you know, as soon as the mallet is out of the house, you should open all the doors and windows and then shoot two pounds of smoke powder so that the air from the previous occupant is purified to the last breath. The Schillers wanted to add a pound of smoke powder themselves.

Caroline Schlegel may have known how to take revenge (more subtly and with far-reaching consequences) by making her contribution to the fact that Schiller was ultimately frowned upon by the Romantics and Goethe as the "true governor of the poetic spirit on earth" (according to Friedrich Schlegel) Was seen.

In 1798 the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling came to Jena. Like Novalis and Ludwig Tieck , he too soon visited the Schlegel house. A love affair developed between him and Caroline, which her husband tolerated.

Friedrich Schlegel Lucinde 1799

As late as 1799, Caroline Schlegel played an important role in Friedrich Schlegel's novel Lucinde : she is said to have been portrayed in the chapter "Apprenticeship Years of Masculinity". But then the relationship between brother-in-law and sister-in-law cooled noticeably - probably also under the influence of his girlfriend Dorothea Veit - and developed into open hostility.

Thorwaldsen: Auguste Böhmer, handing her mother Caroline a drinking vessel

At the beginning of March 1800, Caroline Schlegel fell seriously ill with a "nervous fever" (possibly typhus ), which put her life in danger for six weeks. Then she was supposed to recover in the Franconian town of Bad Bocklet , where she was visited in June by Schelling accompanied by her daughter Auguste. Caroline Schlegel recovered, but Auguste, who was caring for her, suddenly fell ill with dysentery and died on July 12, 1800. The early death of Augustes caused lasting consternation in the cultural life of the time. Caroline Schlegel herself was devastated by grief: "I am only half alive and walking like a shadow on the earth".

She forbade her love for Schelling and only wanted to see him as a (spiritual) son. The spiritual father should be Goethe. She wrote to Schelling: “He [Goethe] loves you as a father, I love you as a mother, what wonderful parents you have. Don't offend us. ”Caroline Schlegel's wish for a tomb for her daughter was initially unfulfilled; only after her death did Schelling send it to the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen . Although he completed the relief in Rome, the work was not installed in Bad Bocklet. It can be seen today in the Thorwaldsen Museum in Copenhagen , a copy is in the Kurmittelhaus in Bad Bocklet.

Friedrich Schelling

Friedrich Schelling (approx. 1800)

August Wilhelm Schlegel went from Jena to Berlin at the end of 1800 to give private lectures (there was no university there at that time, today's Humboldt University was only founded in 1809). Caroline Schlegel stayed behind. Their relationship continued to cool; instead, she first met Schelling "semi-officially". The couple agreed on a divorce. In order to avoid the lengthy official path with a personal appearance in court, they tried, with the help of Goethe, to have Caroline's sovereign, Duke Carl August von Sachsen-Weimar, determine the divorce . Schelling himself had a draft by Caroline Schlegel sent to Schlegel in Berlin in October 1802 in which the couple presented to the Duke:

“Most Serene Duke, Most Gracious Prince and Lord! (...) Since we joined each other six years ago, such decisive changes have occurred in our mutual relations that we see ourselves in the position of a legal separation of our connection, as an equal necessity and an equal happiness for both, consider."

The Duke accepted the request and the divorce became effective on May 17, 1803. Caroline Schlegel and Friedrich Schelling married in Murrhardt on June 26, 1803 . She followed him in the same year, initially at the University of Würzburg , which came under Bavarian supervision after 1803 . There the couple lived in a house provided by the university in close proximity to the newly appointed professors Paulus and von Hoven , who maintained contact with the circles around Charlotte von Schiller in Weimar and Friedrich Schlegel, who was now completely at odds with his brother further felt called to fight "the evil" alias "Mrs. Lucifer" alias Caroline Schelling with all possible means. Paulus writes, for example: "It is very good that our apartment is separated from yours by a church, where people smoke diligently according to Catholic custom." Above all, the women of the professors actively participated in the correspondence directed against Caroline: Henriette von Hoven reports to Mrs. Schiller, and Dorothea Schlegel was provided with gossip by Mrs. Paulus. For example, rumors were spread that Caroline was having a relationship with zoology professor Martin Heinrich Köhler.

Obelisk on the grave of Caroline Schelling in Maulbronn

When Würzburg fell to the Habsburg Ferdinand in the Peace of Pressburg in 1806 , who thereby became Grand Duke of Würzburg , Schelling refused to take the oath to the new government. That was easy for him in so far as, apart from the very personal grievances of the married couple Paulus and Hoven Schelling, the arch-Catholic city of Würzburg was not in a good position. Young priests were forbidden to attend his lectures, nor could he expect anything from a Habsburg grand duke as master of the university. In 1806 Schelling was called to Munich .

In May 1808, Schelling became general secretary of the newly founded Academy of Fine Arts , with his salary increased from 1200 to 3000 guilders annually, which enabled a relatively comfortable life. The couple did not have too many social contacts during their time in Munich, apart from Clemens and Bettine Brentano and Ludwig Tieck with his sister, who were in Munich at the time.

During a visit to Schelling's parents in Maulbronn, Caroline died on September 7, 1809 at 3 a.m. - like her daughter Auguste at the time of diarrhea. On September 10th she was buried in the cemetery behind the church of Maulbronn Monastery. An obelisk there commemorates them with the inscription: “Rest gently, you pious soul, until the eternal reunion. God, before whom you are, reward in you love and loyalty, which is stronger than death. "

In memory of Caroline Schlegel and the Jena Romantic Circle, the city of Jena awards the Caroline Schlegel Prize every three years .

Caroline, Auguste and Goethe

Without a doubt, there was a special relationship between Caroline, her daughter Auguste and Goethe . When Goethe stayed at her father's house in Göttingen on September 28, 1783, Caroline had, to her regret, arranged to meet differently. Shortly afterwards, however, she reported that she was in possession of a manuscript of Iphigenia . On August 10, 1784, Goethe, in his capacity as minister, came to visit the mining industry in Clausthal, where Caroline and Wilhelm Böhmer had been living for several weeks. However, he stayed with the local government representative and left on August 14th. A personal encounter between Madame Böhmer and the poet prince cannot be proven during this time. Nine months later, on April 28, 1785, Caroline's first child Auguste was born. The Schelling biographer Walter E. Ehrhardt, referring to this temporal connection, asserted that Auguste was the child of Caroline and Goethe, but failed to provide concrete evidence.

After 1785 we only know of a meeting between Caroline and Goethe from August 1792, when he was staying with Georg Forster in the republican Mainz for three days on the way to the deployment of the army of the monarchical coalition against the French Republic. In later years Auguste was considered his "pampered darling". After Auguste's untimely death, Goethe offered to contribute an inscription to her tomb and suggested that his mother put an urn with a picture of Augustus in her apartment (which Caroline declined as tasteless).

Goethe's unfinished tragedy Eugenie or the Natural Daughter , begun in 1801, can be seen as a veiled dedication to Auguste, as can the way he performed Schlegel's Ion . There is no evidence that Goethe participated in the release of Caroline and Auguste from prison in the Königstein Fortress. But when Caroline was later sharply attacked by representatives of the Weimar Classics, Goethe wrote only respectfully about her. He was therefore accused of having “affection for the mallets”. When in 1803 it was clear that Caroline and Schlegel's marriage would fail, Goethe helped both of them with the divorce by changing their request to the sovereign himself. A few months before her death, Auguste had begun translating a novella about Tancred by Boccaccio . After Augustes death, Goethe retired to Jena and devoted himself to a translation of Voltaire's Tancrède - "considering the brevity and transience of human life" (letter to Schiller of July 25, 1800). In 1830, when Caroline had already died, Goethe is said to have asked his friend Jenny von Pappenheim not to miss a visit to Augustes grave on her trip.

Works

Editorially adapted from: Franz Muncker:  Schelling, Caroline . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 31, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1890, pp. 3-6.

August Wilhelm Schlegel said of Caroline in 1828 that she had all the talents to shine as a writer, but without her ambition being directed towards it.

Most of the time Caroline was actually content with quietly working on Schlegel's essays and reviews, reading foreign books for him, drafting individual sections of his essays, and now and then executing these drafts with words that no longer required him to change .

She played a major role in the essay on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1797), in the assessment of some plays and novels by Iffland, J. Schulz, Lafontaine (1798) and in the conversation “The Paintings” (1798). Above all, she spurred Schlegel on to translate Shakespeare's plays again and again. Romeo and Juliet , What you want, and in particular the German translations of Shakespeare, which were worked out in the first years of their marriage, only passed through their hands before they came to the printing house.

Caroline wrote several reviews of works of fiction on her own, which were printed in the Jenaer Literaturzeitung, the Athenaeum , Becker's Erholungen and similar magazines of those years. She also contributed a single fragment to the Athenaeum .

After a letter from her groom Schlegel to Schiller, she had also written a story around 1796; In addition to literary jokes and other trifles, only the fragmentary draft of a novel that was supposed to depict the psychological development of a woman similar to her has survived.

In 1801 she translated a French singspiel Philippe et Georgette in a free way, later she translated some of Petrarch's sonnets ; but almost nothing of this was printed.

Letters and other sources

"She [Caroline] demonstrated her talent as a writer most of all in her gracefully chatting letters, permeated with understanding, fantasy, a true sense of art and poetic spirit, spiced with teasing and fine malice, the most beautiful letters from women from the heyday of our newer literature." (Franz Muncker :  Schelling, Caroline . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 31, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1890, p. 6.):

  • Georg Waitz : Caroline: Letters to her siblings, her daughter Auguste, the family… . 2 vols. Hirzel, Leipzig 1871.
  • Erich Schmidt : Caroline. Letters from the early romantic period. 2 vols. Insel, Leipzig 1913.
  • Sigrid Damm : Caroline Schlegel-Schelling. "Dear friend, I have come a long way this early morning". Letters . Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1988, ISBN 3-630-61303-9 .
  • Sigrid Damm: Caroline Schlegel-Schelling. A picture of life in letters. Insel, Frankfurt a. M., Leipzig 2009, ISBN 3-458-35120-5 .

An important source for Caroline's life are the memories of her sister Luise:

  • Luise Wiedemann: Memories of Luise Wiedemann, née Michaelis, Carolinen's sister. In addition to her siblings' lives and letters from Schelling and others. Ed. by Julius Steinberger. Association of Göttinger Buchfreunde, Göttingen 1929. In it: Life outline of Caroline Albertine Michaelis , pp. 77–85.

literature

Movie

  • “ I want to be happy or the art of living , Caroline Schlegel-Schelling”, a film by Vera Botterbusch (www.verabotterbusch.de) with Tanja Kübler, Roman Dudler, Eva Mende, Silvia Fink, Thomas Koch, Angela Bohrmann, Oliver Boysen , 45 min., Bayerischer Rundfunk 1998.

Web links

Wikisource: Caroline Schelling  - Sources and full texts
Wikiquote: Caroline Schelling  - Quotes
Commons : Caroline Schelling  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erich Schmidt: Caroline. Leipzig 1913, vol. 1, p. 314.
  2. ^ Ernst Behler: Friedrich Schlegel. RoRoRo picture monographs. Reinbek near Hamburg 1996, p. 28.
  3. ↑ The Mainz club lists in Königstein: Or, the women expose each other's shame. A tragic-comic play in one act. (1793) In: Franz Blei (Ed.): Deutsche Litteratur-Pasquille. Leipzig 1907 digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Ddiemainzerklubb00bleigoog~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D~doppelseiten%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D
  4. ↑ The respective contributions can be assigned in detail, since the manuscripts have been preserved. See Kleßmann Universitätsmamsellen 2008, p. 234f.
  5. ^ Letter from Rosina Eleanore Döderlein to her fiancé Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer
  6. ↑ Kleßman: Universitätsmamsellen. 2008, pp. 234, 238.
  7. ^ Letter of September 18 to Luise Gotter.
  8. ↑ Erich Schmidt: Caroline. Leipzig 1913, vol. 2, p. 6.
  9. ↑ [1]
  10. ↑ Kleßmann Universitätsmamsellen 2008, pp. 271ff
  11. ^ Peace of Pressburg, Art. XI
  12. ^ A b Walter E. Ehrhardt: Goethe and Auguste Böhmer. Was she perhaps Goethe's natural daughter? P. 277–294 In: Steffen Dietzsch and Gian Franco Frigo (eds.): Vernunft und Glaube. A philosophical dialogue between modernity and Christianity. Akademie Verlag 2006, ISBN 3-05-004289-3 .
  13. ↑ Erich Schmidt: Caroline. Leipzig 1913, vol. 2, p. 38 f.
personal data
SURNAME Schelling, Caroline
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Michaelis, Dorothea Caroline Albertine; Böhmer, Caroline; Schlegel, Caroline
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1763
PLACE OF BIRTH Goettingen
DATE OF DEATH September 7, 1809
Place of death Maulbronn