Christophine Reinwald

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Christophine Reinwald

Christophine Reinwald (born September 4, 1757 in Marbach as Elisabetha Christophine Friederike Schiller ; died August 31, 1847 in Meiningen ) was the older sister of Friedrich Schiller , who dedicated herself to his memory after the poet's death.

Life

Christophine Schiller was the first child of the officer and court gardener Johann Kaspar Schiller and his wife Elisabetha Dorothea Schiller . Two years after her birth, her brother Friedrich Schiller was born in 1759, to whom she developed a close brotherly and sisterly relationship during her childhood. Four other sisters were added between 1766 and 1777, but only Luise Dorothea Katharina and Karoline Christiane survived the sixth year of life. In 1764 her family moved to Lorch and in 1766 to Ludwigsburg . In 1775 the Schiller family finally moved to the Solitude near Stuttgart , where Johann Casper Schiller took over the management of the ducal gardens.

Christophine was one of the first to recognize Friedrich's talent, was privy to his work during his academic years and, along with his mother, was one of the people who knew about his escape from Stuttgart in 1782. In Ludwigsburg, in addition to looking after her younger siblings and doing housework, a rare change was her good acquaintance with the painter Ludovike Simanowiz , who modeled herself on drawing and painting.

In May 1783, through her brother Friedrich, she met the Meiningen librarian and later councilor Wilhelm Reinwald , whom she met personally in 1784 and married in Gerlingen in 1786 . Reinwald had been a friend of her brother since 1782. Friedrich Schiller was initially not happy about this connection, but later regularly visited the Reinwalds in Meiningen . Christophine had a tolerable marriage with Wilhelm that never resulted in children. Christophine Reinwald achieved a sideline income for the family through drawing lessons for Meiningen town girls.

When her brother was unable to visit his father on his deathbed due to his own illness in 1796, his sister instead of Friedrich traveled to Württemberg to read Friedrich's letters to his father. After her mother's death in 1802, she oriented herself even more closely to her brother Friedrich and published souvenir sheets for the poet's friends, in which she reported on their youth together. After the death of her husband in 1816, she left Meiningen and initially stayed with her sister in Möckmühl , but could no longer develop a bond with her old family. After traveling to Switzerland together with her friend Luise Heim (daughter of the Meiningen councilor Johann Ludwig Heim , niece of Ernst Ludwig Heim ), she returned to Meiningen in autumn 1822. She first lived in the Stone House and from 1832 in the Heimschen House, where a plaque commemorates her. There she died shortly before her 90th birthday.

Christophine Reinwald found her final resting place in the Meiningen Park Cemetery . In 2006, as part of the “ Friedrich Schiller Code ” project, her bones were removed from the grave for a DNA test and then reburied.

She was a sponsor of the writer Ludwig Köhler .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. a b Pabst: Biography in the Rhönlexikon
  2. Andreas Seifert: Christophine Reinwald: "No other place in the world". Meiningen museums.
  3. a b Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 412.
  4. ^ Institute for Forensic Medicine - Innsbruck Medical University
  5. Weimar Classic Foundation pdf