Charlotte von Hezel

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Charlotte Henriette Hezel , also Charlotte von Hezel (born Schwabe ; born January 8, 1755 in Ilmenau , † April 3, 1817 in Dorpat ) was a German writer , editor and journalist . She was the first woman to publish a magazine under her own name . With her weekly paper for the fair sex , she wanted to contribute to women's education and offer other authors an opportunity to publish.

life and work

Charlotte von Hezel was the only daughter of four children of the pastor and superintendent Johann Wilhelm Schwabe and his wife Dorothea Crusius, a "talented occasional poet". She received literary and musical training in her parents' home “with her inclination for scientific lecture”. Her three brothers enjoyed a university education and worked as ministers, lawyers and doctors. Charlotte von Hezel was taught mainly by her brother, the lawyer , historian and classical philologist Heinrich Elias Gottlob Schwabe (1750-1831).

On June 14, 1778, Charlotte married the court counselor and theologian Johann Wilhelm Friedrich von Hezel , with whom she initially lived near Ilmenau, where Hezel , who had meanwhile been appointed Imperial Palatine , finished seven volumes of his biblical work with the help of his wife. Their marriage resulted in two sons and two daughters. Son Johann Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Hezel (1786–1831) completed a degree in philosophy and worked as a lawyer ; the names and résumés of the other children have not survived.

In 1779, Charlotte von Hezel began to publish her weekly paper for the beautiful sex , which appeared in Ilmenau. This made her the first woman to publish a magazine - four years before Sophie von La Roche and her Pomona for Teutschland's daughters . Hezel not only dealt with topics such as fashion and housekeeping in the magazine, but wanted to contribute to women's education and published texts on art history and literature, medicine and other scientific articles.

With the publication of this weekly, Charlotte von Hezel made a name for herself in the literary public and was henceforth a literary and politically ambitious writer and editor.

In 1786, her husband accepted a call as "Professor of Exegesis and Oriental Literature" in Giessen , where the Hezel family lived until 1801. During this time Henriette Hezel founded a women's reading society with other wives of Giessen university professors and cultivated their friendship with Christoph Gottlieb von Murr . In 1801 the von Gießen family moved to Dorpat after Wilhelm Friedrich Hezel accepted an offer there.

Weekly paper for the fair sex

As early as the beginning of the 18th century, women's magazines were gradually becoming popular (the world's first women's magazine “The Ladies' Mercury” appeared in 1693). Initially, the writings were published by men, until in 1779 Ernestine Hofmann from Hamburg - anonymously and without revealing her female identity - was the first woman to publish the paper For Hamburg's Daughters , but hid "behind the fictitious authority of a wise old ... advisor and friend of women". She was followed by Charlotte von Hezel in the same year, also anonymously, but “revealed her gender and scattered such clear indications” that her identity could easily be determined by interested parties.

The magazine was published twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, with eight pages each. The editions were mainly devoted to art and artist stories, “women's dietetics ” and the display of new publications. With the content of the weekly paper, Hezel sought to provide women with knowledge that went beyond the realm of family life and the effectiveness of contemporary women, which was largely limited to the home and family.

Usually the title page was adorned with a gloss or a poem. In the first edition, Hezel published one of her poems:

To cook and spin for a man -
Unworthy profession
If only that's what with these senses -
And nature created me for this spirit.
Did she just stretch out the wonderful zones
for men?
And may I, like the bull, only inhabit it
Who, when he dies, only knew his food?
Shouldn't I live in that life too?
Who will do a miracle
And give my spirit Sappho's power of thought there,
Did I let it rest here by the pot and the spindle?

Under the heading of new fonts, Hezel presented newly published books, but also drama texts or dealt with the biographies of well-known artists, with a focus on women writers.

For the first time in a weekly there is a series of articles dealing with “women's dietetics” from a popular medical perspective. According to the publisher, these were written by a doctor; however, she does not mention the author's name. Possibly it was Hezel's brother Ernst Schwabe , who was a medical professor in Giessen.

Another category contained popular scientific treatises, for example “On the age of sealing wax or Spanish waxes” or “History of the engraving art”, while fiction entertainment played no role in writing.

The weekly was only published for eight months with four issues each, according to von Hezel's statement, however, not because there was a lack of subscribers, but because the postal distribution channels, which were still unreliable at the time, caused too many difficulties. In a last post, Hezel made her displeasure with the Nuremberg Oberpostdirektion and the difficulties and delays in delivery public.

According to Weckel, the magazine had proven 173 subscribers; Archangeli, on the other hand, speaks of 130 subscribers, 32 of whom were female.

Women reading society

In 1786, Charlotte von Hezel and other wives of Giessen university professors founded a women's reading society in which men were denied access by statute ("... where no hint of a male nation should touch the room ..."). The founders cooperated with the bookseller Justus Friedrich Krieger, who created the logistical prerequisites, i.e. made the premises and the books and magazines available. Only the participants decided on membership and the content of their library - a novelty at that time.

In the directory of new books which came out in the Frankfurt and Leipzig autumn fairs in 1789 , JF Krieger informed the Giessen public about the project:

“Spreading science is always praiseworthy and permissible whenever it is based on the moral. A new attempt of our enlightened century makes a new attempt, Friedrich Krieger the elder in Giessen, who is inclined to hold a weekly scholarly meeting intended for the fair sex, namely 1) the meeting should be held every Friday at three o'clock a week. 2) Merely the meeting of the fair sex, where no breath of male nation should touch the room. 3) Pleasant reading from famous women writers will be the main subject. 4) The waitress should also be female, by a young girl in modern clothes. 5) Advance every six months for the Entreé is 1 Rthl. determined that lovers are so inclined to join this institute, kindly sign; then resp. Women categorized alphabetically so that the dispute over rank is avoided. "

With von Hezel's departure, Christiane Crome, the sister of the Giessen professor of camera studies, August Wilhelm Crome, continued the reading circle, whose further fate is unknown.

literature

  • Christine Haugg: Female sociability and literary conspiracy in the run-up to the French Revolution - About the project to found a women's reading society in Giessen 1789/1790 .
  • Helga Neumann: Between emancipation and adaptation. Königshausen & Neumann, 1999. ISBN 3-8260-1728-5 .
  • Charlotte Henriette Hezel: Weekly paper for the fair sex. Reprint of the 1779 edition. With an afterword by Hans Henning. Leipzig edition, 1967.
  • Ezra Greenspan, Jonathan Rose: Book history . Volume 2. Penn State Press 1999. ISBN 0-271-02006-7 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ezra Greenspan, Jonathan Rose: Book history . P. 97.
  2. ^ Carl Wilhelm August von Schindel: The German writers of the 19th century. Leipzig 1823, p. 212f.
  3. ^ Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Johann Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Hezel. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital
  4. ↑ Hans Henning (ed.): Weekly paper for the fair sex. Leipzig 1967, Weckel. Pp. 59-74
  5. ↑ Heinrich Döring: The learned theologians of Germany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Verlag JKG Wagner, 1831. P. 728 ff.
  6. ↑ Helga Neumann: Between emancipation and adaptation. P. 141
  7. ↑ ibid
  8. ↑ Ulrike Weckel: Between domesticity and public. The first German women's magazines in the late 18th century and their audience. Tübingen 1998. p. 237
  9. ↑ Ulrike Weckel: Between domesticity and public. The first German women's magazines in the late 18th century and their audience. Tübingen 1998. pp. 60/61
  10. ↑ Ulrike Weckel: Between domesticity and public. The first German women's magazines in the late 18th century and their audience. Tübingen 1998. p. 59
  11. ^ Melanie Archangeli: Subscribing to the Enlightment. Charlotte von Hezel Markets “The weekly paper for the fair sex ”, in: Book History 2 (1999), p. 107.
  12. ^ Justus Friedrich Krieger: Directory of new books which came out in the Frankfurt and Leipzig autumn fairs in 1789 and are available in cheap prices from Justus Friedrich Krieger, the older university bookseller in Giessen. Giessen 1789, p. 46.
  13. ↑ Holger Zaunstöck, Markus Meumann: societies, networks, communication: new research on socialization in the century of the Enlightenment. Verlag Walter de Gruyter, 2003. ISBN 3-110-93232-6
  14. ↑ Goethezeitportal of the University of Munich: Women's Reading Society (PDF; 146 kB)
  15. ↑ Haaser, http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2011/7984/pdf/NeesChrista_2010_11_05.pdf , note 140, p. 38
personal data
SURNAME Hezel, Charlotte of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hezel, Charlotte Henriette; Schwabe, Charlotte Henriette (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, editor and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1755
PLACE OF BIRTH Ilmenau
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1817
Place of death Dorpat