Caroline von Wolzüge

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Carl von Ambère: Portrait of Caroline von Woliehen, 1808

Caroline von Wolzüge (born Sophie Caroline Auguste von Lengefeld ; * February 3, 1763 in Rudolstadt , † January 11, 1847 in Jena ) was a novelist in. She became known for her novel Agnes von Lilien . She was Friedrich Schiller's sister-in-law .

Life

Caroline von Lengefeld was a daughter of the Oberlandjägermeister Carl Christoph von Lengefeld (1715-1775) at the court of the Prince of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and his wife Louise von Lengefeld , née von Wurmb , in Thuringia . There she grew up with her younger sister Charlotte . At the age of sixteen she was betrothed to the government councilor Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig von Beulwitz in 1779 . In 1784 he married Beulwitz, who had meanwhile been appointed secret legation councilor in the service of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt.

The sisters' interest in the literary life of their time was aroused early on. There were close ties to the court of muses of Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in Weimar. Before Caroline's marriage, she and Beulwitz, her mother and sister made an educational trip to French Switzerland in 1783, where she met Johann Caspar Lavater and Wilhelm von Wolhaben (1762–1809), and on the return trip Friedrich Schiller . The family was close friends with the latter from 1787 onwards and Charlotte married him in 1790. Until his death, Schiller had an intensely friendly relationship with his sister-in-law Caroline, which was promoted by shared literary interests. Through Beulwitz the contact was made with Caroline von Dacheröden and with the Erfurt governor Karl Theodor von Dalberg , later elector in Mainz.

Since 1790 Caroline pursued the separation from her husband and withdrew to Gaisberg and Cannstatt . After the childless couple had divorced von Beulwitz in 1794, Caroline von Lengefeld married Wilhelm von Wolhaben, now legation councilor, the eldest son of Schiller's patroness from Bauerbach's days, Henriette von Wolhaben, in the same year. Her husband Wilhelm was appointed Saxon-Weimar Chamberlain in Weimar in 1796 and a Privy Councilor on Goethe's side in 1803. From 1797 Caroline was at home in Weimar and had a major influence on the intellectual and social life of the city. Their house became a meeting place for writers and philosophers: besides Schiller, they were often visited by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Christoph Martin Wieland , Johann Gottlieb Fichte , Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and Wilhelm von Humboldt. Caroline is considered a possible co-author of the story The Palace of Truth in Wieland's collection of fairy tales, Dschinnistan .

Inscription on the grave cross of Caroline von Wolzüge (Jena)

After several strokes of fate - the death of Schiller (1805), her husband (1809), her only son Adolf (1825) and her sister (1826) - Caroline von Wolhaben withdrew further and further from the social life of Weimar. She lived in Jena from 1825 and until her death in 1847 led a lonely life, characterized by enthusiastic religiosity.

Literary work

In terms of writing, Caroline von Wolhaben stood out primarily through two works: the novel Agnes von Lilien , which appeared in Schiller's magazine Die Horen in 1796/97 , and the biography of Schiller's life published in 1830 . Written from family memories, his own letters and the news of his friend Körner .

The novel Agnes von Lilien is the story of a sensitive and enthusiastic girl who is open to everything beautiful, but who feels strange and misunderstood in the real world and is drawn to an ideal man who unites all virtues. The novel is written in first-person form, as a fictional autobiography, and not with the superior knowledge of an adult woman who records her life in retrospect, but from the perspective of a naive and “natural” young woman and has a number of structural and narrative defects Inconsistencies. The mentality and the canon of virtues and values ​​that characterize the novel, however, met the zeitgeist of the turn from the 18th to the 19th century. In 1802 the novel was also published in a French translation.

Caroline von Wolzüge (painting around 1800 by Philipp Friedrich von Hetsch )

The novel , which was published anonymously and was heavily inspired by Samuel Richardson 's sensitive letter novels, which is also widely read in Germany, met with overwhelming approval from contemporary readership and literary criticism . Sir Grandison from Richardson's epistolary novel, The Story of Sir Charles Grandison , served as a template for the main male character in Agnes von Lilien , who ideally combines all virtues . Friedrich Schlegel even suspected Goethe to be the author, because the novel suggests echoes of Wilhelm Meister's years of apprenticeship . Others attributed the novel to Friedrich Schiller . The novel met with rejection from the romantics, however, and eventually it fell into oblivion because the subject matter and the mentality conveyed are very time-bound. Afterwards, Caroline von Wolhaben was disappointed and wrote short stories and novels, one of which ( Cordelia ) was published in 1840, but they met with relatively little response.

Despite occasional new editions, Agnes von Lilien has largely fallen into oblivion and only found limited interest again in the Schiller year 2005, but it is a novel that, in an ideal-typical way - also with its weaknesses - reflects the intellectual zeitgeist of the time around 1800 his ( pietistic ) enthusiasm and sensitivity and his enthusiasm for psychological questions (“empirical soul science”).

For the author Caroline von Wolhaben one can say with Jochen Golz: "The traces of Caroline's life in artistic texts and life testimonies are nonetheless of considerable value for an undisguised view of classical culture and its history."

Works (selection)

  • The Leukadische Fels (play), 1792.
  • Agnes von Lilien (novel), Berlin 1798.
  • Stories , 2 volumes, 1826.
  • Schiller's life. Written from family memories, his own letters and the news of his friend Körner , Stuttgart 1830.
  • Cordelia (novel), 1840.

literature

  • Ernst Müller:  Wolhaben, Caroline von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 44, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, pp. 202-205.
  • Caroline von Wolzüge: Agnes von Lilien. With reviews by Friedrich Schlegel and Wilhelm von Humboldt and an afterword edited by Thomas Anz . Verlag LiteraturWwissenschaft.de (TransMIT), Marburg 2005, ISBN 3-936134-10-3 .
  • Jörg Aufenanger : Schiller and the two sisters . Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag dtv, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-423-24446-1 .
  • Kirsten Jüngling , Brigitte Roßbeck: Schiller's double love. The Lengefeld sisters Caroline and Charlotte . Propylaea, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-549-07207-4 . (Paperback edition: List, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-548-60650-4 )
  • Stefanie Kugler, Dagmar Heinze: About the impossibility of loving the other. Caroline von Wolzogens “Die Gigeuner” and Caroline Auguste Fischer's “William the Negro”. In: Herbert Uerlings (Ed.): The subject and the others. Interculturality and Gender Difference from the 18th Century to the Present . Schmidt, Berlin 2001, pp. 135-154.
  • Jochen Golz (Ed.): Caroline von Woliehen 1763–1847 . German Schiller Society, Marbach 1986, ISBN 3-929146-86-X . [Contains u. a. an overview of Caroline's literary legacy from Peter Boerner and Norbert Oellers]
  • Peter Boerner : News about Goethe: Messages from the thought books of Caroline von Wolzogens. In: Michael Ewert, Martin Vialon (Ed.): Convergences. Studies on German and European literature. Festschrift for E. Theodor Voss. Königshausen & Neumann , Würzburg 2000, pp. 37–45.
  • Nikolas Immer (Ed.): Caroline von Woliehen: My heart needs love. Letters and literature from Schiller's sister-in-law . Weimarer Verlagsgesellschaft, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-7374-0232-3 .
  • Renate Feyl : The gentle yoke of excellence, Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1999

Radio / theater

Filmography

Web links

Wikisource: Caroline von Woliehen  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Caroline von Wolzüge  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pier Pernutz: Opening address for the exhibition "The forester Carl Christoph von Lengefeld - a green visionary". In: Specialized prose research - Crossing borders. Volume 10, 2014, p. 305 f.
  2. ^ Roland Beyer: Carl Christoph von Lengefeld (1715–1775), forester and visionary of the 18th century. Time travel and role play. In: Specialized prose research - Crossing borders. Volume 10, 2014, pp. 311–314, here: p. 312.
  3. ↑ Jochen Golz (Ed.): Caroline von Wolehmen 1763-1847 .
  4. ↑ According to the audio game database. Hörspieldatenbank HspDat.to Retrieved on May 6, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Wolzog, Caroline von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lengefeld, Caroline von (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1763
PLACE OF BIRTH Rudolstadt
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1847
Place of death Jena