Christiane Henriette Sophie von Laßberg

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Rock stairs or so-called eye of a needle

Christiane Henriette Sophie von Laßberg from Goethe called Christel of Laßberg , born 1761 in Kromsdorf in the district of Kleinkromsdorf as the daughter of Colonel Johann Maximilian Albrecht von Laßberg , she committed suicide out of unfulfilled love for the Livonian baron and chamberlain von Wrangel on January 16, 1778 at the age of only 17 near the raft bridge in the Park on the Ilm . Allegedly she should have had a copy of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther with her. Near the raft bridge, the so-called eye of the needle or the rock gate was created as a reminder. Without Goethe's personal commitment, it would probably be forgotten today.

Christiane Henriette Sophie von Laßberg was court lady and dancer at the court theater under Goethe's and Karl Siegmund von Seckendorff's directorate. The then court page Carl Wilhelm Heinrich Freiherr von Lyncker recorded it in his memories, as did Goethe. Lyncker's descriptions of the course of events are more detailed than those of Goethe. According to Lyncker's notes, the Society of Court Actors in Charlotte von Stein's house was busy rehearsing for the theater almost every day. At one such rehearsal for Goethe's The Triumph of Sensibility , she was missed. By then she was probably already dead. According to Lyncker's notes, she was found on January 17, 1778 by Goethe's servants Philipp Seidel, Christoph Sutor and Paul Götze. Otherwise almost nothing is known about her life.

The death of Christiane Henriette Sophie von Laßberg and its aftermath on Goethe

The death of the daughter of Colonel Johann Maximilian Albrecht von Laßberg, the owner of Kleinkromsdorf and city commandant of Weimar, had so preoccupied Goethe that he wanted to erect a memorial to her. With the creation of the rock staircase and the eye of the needle on the evening after Christiane's death, Goethe started together with a group of workers and the garden architect and court gardener Carl Heinrich Gentzsch and thus created the first garden scene in the Ilm Valley based on the model of the Wörlitz Park . In a sense, this is the birth of the Park on the Ilm. An actual memorial for Christiane von Laßberg did not come about. The project was probably forgotten. The so-called eye of the needle can still be regarded as such. There is also a drawing of the lower part of the rock staircase with chunks of travertine piled up on the sides , making the hollowed out rock the narrow passage to the rock gate. Goethe himself had made this after 1778. The travertine block, which rests on the laterally stacked blocks, through which the eye of the needle was created, is not yet present in Goethe's drawing. According to a letter to Charlotte von Stein dated January 19, 1778, Goethe invented a strange place where the memory of poor Christel will be hidden ... I dug out a good piece of rock with Jentschen, one overlooks her last paths and the one in the utmost seclusion Place of her death. Goethe was not the only one who drew these rock stairs. Georg Melchior Kraus drew this at least twice. Susanne Müller-Wolff sees the motif for this rock gate in a presumed inspiration of Goethe, which he received in May 1778 during a visit to Wörlitz .

Goethe also echoed this event in the poems Der Fischer and An den Mond in the first version from 1778. In fiction, on the other hand, her suicide became the subject of a fictional plot. The death of Christiane Henriette Sophie von Laßberg was an event in Weimar. Weimar itself was in a sense a gossip in which nothing could be hidden. That was also true here.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in front of a tomb with a female bust (Christel von Laßberg (?)) And urn , paper cut around 1780

There is a silhouette from around 1780 in which Goethe is standing in front of a tomb with a bust of a young woman. This bust, in turn, was associated with Christel von Laßberg, but it could not have been assigned to her with certainty. The original of this silhouette is in turn in Tiefurt Castle . Hans Wahl and Anton Kippenberg describe it as one of the most beautiful silhouettes of this art. That the editors really meant that is certainly proven by the fact that they provided the front of the dust jacket of this volume with this silhouette.

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  1. ↑ Florian Kühnel: Sick honor ?: Noble suicide in the transition to modernity . Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2013, p. 30 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ It is almost at the forefront of the subsequent suicides known as the Werther effect . https://www.berner-buendnis-depression.ch/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/werther-effekt.pdf
  3. ↑ Karl Frhr. von Lyncker: At the Weimar court under Amalien and Karl August , ed. by Marie Scheller, Berlin 1912, p. 65 f.
  4. ↑ Carl Wilhelm Heinrich Freiherr von Lyncker: I served at the Weimar court: Notes from the time of Goethe , ed. by Jürgen Lauchner, Böhlau Verlag Köln-Weimar Vienna 1997, p. 53 u. 186. ISBN 3-412-05297-3 . Wrangel left Weimar in April 1778. Lyncker had incorrectly given the first name Albertine, which was probably confused with the dead woman's sister.
  5. ↑ Jochen Golz (Ed.): Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Diaries, Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe , Vol. I / 1: Text 1775–1781 , Stuttgart-Weimar, p. 60.
  6. ↑ Carl Wilhelm Heinrich Freiherr von Lyncker: I served at the Weimar court: Notes from the time of Goethe , ed. by Jürgen Lauchner, Böhlau Verlag Köln-Weimar Vienna 1997, p. 186.
  7. ↑ Susanne Müller-Wolff: A landscape garden in the Ilmpark: The history of the ducal garden in Weimar , Cologne-Weimar-Vienna 2007, p. 40 ff. ISBN 978-3-412-20057-2
  8. ↑ Effi Biedrzynski : Goethe's Weimar: The Encyclopedia of the people and places , Artemis & Winkler Verlag, Mannheim 2010, p 267, respectively.
  9. ^ Hans Wahl : Goethe as a draftsman of the German landscape 1775–1786 , p. 2 and p. 49.
  10. ↑ Johann Wolfgang Goethe Briefe, Vol. 3 I: November 8, 1775 - end of 1779 text , ed. by Georg Kurscheidt and Elke Richter, Berlin-Boston 2014, p. 191 No. 324. ISBN 978-3-05-006504-5
  11. ^ Birgit Knorr: Georg Melchior Kraus (1737–1806). Painter - educator - entrepreneur. Biography and catalog raisonné. Dissertation, University of Jena 2003 ( full text ), p. 42 and p. 131.
  12. ↑ Susanne Müller-Wolff: A landscape garden in the Ilmpark: The history of the ducal garden in Weimar , Cologne-Weimar-Vienna 2007, p. 42. ISBN 978-3-412-20057-2 However, she does not give a concrete example of comparison from the Wörlitzer Park . Perhaps she is referring to the island of Stein or the grotto of Egeria .
  13. ↑ Nicholas Boyle : Goethe: the poet in his time, Vol. 1: 1749-1790. Translated from English by Holger Fliessbach, 3rd unaltered edition, Ch. Beck, Munich 2000, p. 345 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  14. ↑ Nicholas Boyle: Goethe: the poet in his time , Vol. 1: 1749-1790. Translated from English by Holger Fliessbach, 3rd unaltered edition, Ch. Beck, Munich 2000, p. 305 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  15. ^ Andreas Merke: Christianes last paths: a detective novel from the classic Weimar , Verlag Berlin: Rütten and Loening 1999. ISBN 978-3-352-00521-3
  16. ↑ Konrad Kratzsch: Klatschnest Weimar: Ernstes und Heiteres, Menschlich-Allzumenschliches from the everyday life of the classics , 3rd extended edition, Würzburg 2009, p. 58 f. Kratzsch quotes from the memoirs of Carl Wilhelm Heinrich Freiherr von Lyncker.
  17. ↑ http://www.goethezeitportal.de/wissen/illustrationen/johann-wolfgang-von-goethe/goethe-silhouetten.html
  18. ↑ August Ohage: About silhouettes, the photos of the Goethe era , in :, Elmar Mittler (Ed.): "Göthe has been here for several days, why knows God and Göthe". Lectures on the exhibition "The Good Head Shines Out Everywhere" - Goethe, Göttingen and Science (= Göttingen library publications. Vol. 13). Goettingen State and University Library, Goettingen 2000, ISBN 3-930457-14-8 , pp. 55–90. Here p. 85 Fig. 20. Digital
  19. ↑ Ohage is based on a reproduction from: Hans Timotheus Kroeber (ed.): The Goethe time in silhouettes , Weimar 1911, plate 27.
  20. ↑ Hans Wahl and Anton Kippenberg (eds.): Goethe and his world . With the participation of Ernst Beutler , Leipzig 1932, p. 92 and p. 259.
personal data
SURNAME Laßberg, Christiane Henriette Sophie von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Laßberg, Christel von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German nobles
DATE OF BIRTH 1761
PLACE OF BIRTH Kromsdorf
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1778
Place of death Weimar