Charlotte von Kathen
Charlotte von Kathen (born April 14, 1777 in Berlin as Jeanne Henriette Charlotte von Mühlenfels , † February 7, 1850 in Putbus ) was a landlady on Rügen and maintained a literary salon . Her correspondence with personalities of her time are important contemporary documents today.
Life
Charlotte von Mühlenfels was the daughter of grenadier captain Bernhard Gottlieb von Mühlenfels († 1799) and Johanna Pauline von Campagne (1747–1797). In 1783 the family moved to the Sissow estate in the south of the island of Rügen . Not yet twenty years old, she married Lieutenant A. D. Karl Emanuel Ludwig von Kathen (1767–1842), who owned the Varbelvitz and Götemitz estates.
Although she had nine children, had to look after her two younger sisters after the death of her parents and had to manage a correspondingly large farm household, she felt that her intellectual life was not fulfilled. She therefore ran a literary, sociable salon in her house in Götemitz, which became a focal point on the island of Rügen for people interested in religion and literature. Culturally interested landlords and tenants, pastors and scholars from the island, Greifswald and Berlin met regularly at her home. These included Ernst Moritz Arndt and Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten . She was close friends with Arndt for more than fifty years. Arndt wrote her several hundred letters. Charlotte von Kathen also corresponded with the Greifswald philosophy professor Friedrich Muhrbeck and with Ludwig Nicolovius .
In 1803 she became acquainted with Friedrich Schleiermacher when he was a guest at the wedding of his friend, Pastor Ehrenfried von Willich, with Charlotte's younger sister Henriette Charlotte Sophie. After Willich's death Schleiermacher married the widow and thus became Charlotte von Kather's brother-in-law. During the French period Schleiermacher always openly shared his political convictions with her in his letters, which was not the case in many other correspondence. During each of his longer visits to Rügen he stayed with her at Gut Götemitz. Schleiermacher introduced Charlotte von Kathen to Henriette Herz , whose Berlin salon had been a model for the Götemitzer circle. Henriette Herz, who had to give up her salon after the death of her husband, worked from March 1808 to the end of 1809 in Götemitz as a tutor for Charlotte's children.
When Karl von Kathen, who had almost exclusively taken care of the management of the property and took no part in his wife's social life, fell seriously ill, he had to hand over the estate to his son Wilhelm von Kathen in 1837. First the family moved to Putbus, then in 1841 to Stralsund, where Karl von Kathen died in 1842. In 1844 Charlotte von Kathen went to Putbus with a daughter and spent the last years of her life there.
literature
- Matthias Wolfes : Kathen, Johanna Henriette Charlotte von. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 27, Bautz, Nordhausen 2007, ISBN 978-3-88309-393-2 , Sp. 736-741.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ April 14th according to the entry in the church register of the French community and the military community in Berlin. She celebrated her birthday on April 15th.
- ^ History of the Götemitz manor house. August 24, 2009, accessed May 2, 2010 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kathen, Charlotte von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kathen, Jeanne Henriette Charlotte von; Kathen, Johanna Henriette Charlotte von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Landlady on Rügen, Salonnière |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 14, 1777 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 7, 1850 |
| Place of death | Putbus |