Cornelia Schlosser
Cornelia Friederica Christiana Schlosser ( née Goethe ; * December 7, 1750 in Frankfurt am Main ; † June 8, 1777 in Emmendingen ) was an author of letters and sister of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe .
Life
Cornelia Friederica Christiana Goethe was born as the second child of Katharina Elisabeth Textor and the Imperial Councilor Johann Caspar Goethe . Her brother Johann Wolfgang was 15 months older than her. The two siblings were brought up together, which was unusual for the time, as the girls should actually be prepared for their role as wives and mothers. Cornelia was sent to the “play school” at the age of three, where she learned to read and write from Magdalena Hoff . From the age of seven, she and Johann Wolfgang received lessons from a private tutor. As languages she first learned Latin and Greek , two years later began teaching French . Other subjects were English , Italian , law , geography , mathematics and calligraphy , as well as singing and piano lessons and drawing. Cornelia also learned fencing and horse riding and received lessons in propriety and dance . Her free time was extremely strict, but it enabled her to pursue literary interests and discussions with her brother, who was her most important contact.
Despite her thorough training, Cornelia was not allowed to study like her brother as a woman and stayed at home in Frankfurt when Johann Wolfgang began his studies in Leipzig in 1765 . In May 1767 he wrote her the following from Leipzig:
"I am entranced by your letter, your writings, your way of thinking ... I see a mature spirit, a Riccoboni , a stranger, an author from whom I can learn ietzo myself ... Oh, my sister, please no more such letters, or I'll be silent ... I confess to you, all of my art would not be able to write a scene like nature gave you. "
He compares her with the writer and actress Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni (1713–1792), the wife of the Italian actor and playwright Antonio Francesco Riccoboni in Paris, who at that time had a name as a writer as far as Leipzig, as you can see. Nevertheless, Goethe later burned the writings his sister had left with him, so that only her French correspondence with her friend Katharina Fabricius survived . She noticed how the brother's attitude towards women changed in Leipzig, where he settled into the male primacy that prevailed at the time. His letters reflect the differences that existed between the sexes at the time: In them he refers them to their feminine duties such as “keeping house, like studying culinary art”. There are letters from this period that Cornelia wrote in French to her friend at the time, Katharina Fabricius. Cornelia suffered from her neglect as a woman, but saw no alternative to marriage: "It is obvious that I cannot always remain a girl, and it would be very ridiculous to undertake that."
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At that time Cornelia was secretly in love with a young Englishman who had been in Frankfurt since 1764, but left it in 1768 without saying goodbye to her. She supported her brother in his work when he was back in Frankfurt during the following years and encouraged him, among other things, to dramatize Götz von Berlichingen .
When Johann Wolfgang accepted a position at the Imperial Court of Justice in Wetzlar in 1772, Cornelia stayed behind in Frankfurt and became engaged to the lawyer Johann Georg Schlosser , a friend of her brother. She suspected the same spirit in Schlosser as in her brother and married him on November 1, 1773. Her husband was given a high official post in the margraviate of Baden , so that the two moved first to Karlsruhe and then to Emmendingen .
Cornelia Schlosser was initially able to make friends with her role as a wife and wrote to Caroline Herder on December 13, 1773 from Karlsruhe : “All my hopes, all my wishes have not only been fulfilled - but far, far exceeded. If God loves, he'll give him such a man -. ”The question arises, however, to what extent the proud Cornelia would have admitted that she did not marry out of love. At that time Johann Georg Schlosser wrote in a letter to his brother: “You are disgusted with my love!”, And Goethe also reported in a conversation with Eckermann: “The thought of surrendering to a man was repugnant to her, and one might think that from this peculiarity in marriage many an unpleasant hour arose. Women who dislike the same thing or who don't love their husbands will feel what this is saying. I could therefore never think of my sister as married; she would rather be considered an abbess in a monastery. "
Indeed, it soon became apparent that the marriage was not a happy one. Cornelia got lonely in the small provincial town of Emmendingen, where her husband wanted to enforce his religious ideas and worked as a state reformist. Schlosser saw in her only the housewife, who should fulfill the social obligations. He viewed women as subordinate creatures who had to overtax any scientific activity and who should therefore only be offered light intellectual entertainment. Cornelia was beginning to get sick and was reluctant to run her household. Schlosser wrote: "Every wind, every drop of water locks her in the room and she is still too afraid of the cellar and kitchen".
At best, there was a change in meetings with personalities with whom Schlosser had contact and who visited him in Emmendingen. She also had a close relationship with Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz , who had been “taken care of” by her brother and Schlosser. Lenz speaks of Cornelia as his “Muse Urania” in several of his poems. She chose him as the godfather of her second daughter, to whom he wrote the poem Welcome little citizen to the birth.
Cornelia barely escaped death when her first daughter Maria Anne Louise ("Lulu") was born on October 28, 1774, recovered very slowly and lay in bed for almost two years. She wrote: "... what it means to lie in bed as a woman and mother for two years without being able to put on a stocking ..." She became pregnant again in 1776 and noted in a letter: "There creep I'm pretty slow through the world, with a body that is nowhere good for grave. ”Her second daughter Catharina Elisabeth Julie (“ Juliette ”) was born on May 10, 1777. Cornelia died just four weeks later at the age of 26.
Trivia
Since 2010, the city buses in Emmendingen have been named after well-known personalities who were born in the city or who lived and worked there temporarily, including Cornelia Goethe , Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz and Johann Georg Schlosser . The name Goethe is on the side of the bus; supplemented by brief biographical information.
literature
- Georg Witkowski : Cornelia, Goethe's sister . Rütten & Loening, Frankfurt a. M. 1903 (2nd edition 1924; reprinted by Lang, Bern 1971)
- Melanie Baumann (Ed.): Cornelia Goethe, Letters and Correspondance secrete 1767–1769 . Kore, Freiburg 1990, ISBN 3-926023-22-8 .
- Ulrike Prokop : The illusion of the great couple. Female Lifestyles 1750–1770 . Fischer, Frankfurt 1991, ISBN 3-596-27397-8 .
- Ulrike Prokop: The illusion of the big couple. Volume 2: The diary of Cornelia Goethe. Fischer, Frankfurt / Main
- Walfried Linden: Marie, Gretchen, Helena. Goethe and his sister Cornelia in the mirror of their female figures . In: Yearbook of Psychonal Analysis . 27, 1991, pp. 224-238.
- Sigrid Damm : Cornelia Goethe . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1987. Further editions by Insel Verlag 1988 ff. Paperback edition by Diana 1999. Paperback edition by Insel Verlag 2015, ISBN 3-458-36117-0 .
- Stephanie Fleischer: literature and lifestyle. Cornelia as a reader of contemporary letter novels . In: Welfengarten . Jahrbuch für Essayismus 6, 1996, pp. 69-82.
- Ilse Nagelschmidt: Letters and Diaries as an Effect of Biographical Narration. Two women in the mirror of the text. Cornelia Goethe. Brigitte Reimann . In: Regina Fasold (ed.): Encounter of times. Festschrift for Helmut Richter on his 65th birthday . Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 1999, pp. 277-291, ISBN 3-933240-79-4 .
- Gerlinde Kraus: Cornelia Goethe - A typical women's life in the 18th century? Portrait of a Frankfurt citizen . Schroeder Verlagbuchhandlung, Mühlheim am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-9811251-8-4
Web links
- Literature by and about Cornelia Schlosser in the catalog of the German National Library
- Cornelia Schlosser. In: FemBio. Women's biography research (with references and citations).
- Sabine Hock : Article about Cornelia Goethe
- Picture gallery of Cornelia and her family
Individual notes
- ↑ Quoted from: You value women . Festival in Bremen, November / December 1993, Catalog Bremen, p. 57.
- ↑ Welcome little citizen poem by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz
- ↑ Cf. Katharina Rutschky : Cornelia Goethe as a misunderstood genius , review of Sigrid Damm's biography in: Die Zeit No. 18/1988.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Locksmith, Cornelia |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Goethe, Cornelia Friederica Christiana |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German letter writer and sister of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 7, 1750 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Frankfurt am Main |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 8, 1777 |
| Place of death | Emmendingen |