Double salon
The Herz couple's double salon was an important cultural event in the period around 1800 in the early days of Berlin's literary salon culture .
development
At the beginning of the development of the Herzschen Salon , Marcus Herz was the sole host of a more scientifically oriented salon, in which the participants could discuss physical events and experiment. No women were allowed in his event, but he made an exception with his wife Henriette Herz , because she lived with him in a house.
Henriette Herz has been enthusiastic about literature and languages since childhood and developed more and more interest in her own salon. However, it should not be based on scientific and physical topics, but rather deal with your own interests, literature and art.
At first, while Marcus Herz was leading his Wednesday company , Henriette Herz held a womens wreath in the next room, which was the origin of the virtue union for cultivating friendship . There the women discussed literary works, such as by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . Little by little, the Tugendbund developed into a small salon, which gained more and more prestige and finally was in no way inferior to that of her husband. The sociability in her salon also continued to develop, and famous personalities gradually increased their visits, including important men such as the brothers Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt , Friedrich Schleiermacher , Jean Paul , Ludwig Börne , Friedrich Schlegel and Johann Gottfried Schadow . In the case of Marcus Herz, however, the decision remained that women were not allowed into his salon.
With the beginning of the French Revolution , people's thinking changed in what was then Prussia. The voices of women also rose more and more, and they increasingly demanded more rights of their own. Henriette Herz also represented this opinion in her salon, who rebelled against the feudal-absolutist social order in which women had no say. In her salon, this contributed to liberal thinking in what was then Prussia. This shows how different the salons of the Herz couple were.
differences
Marcus organized his salon on the scientific , the real and Henriette led a literary salon, which was particularly influenced by the way of thinking of the romantic epoch . The philosophical was people's dream thinking. Because of these differences, there were two different salons in the same building. This shows that Henriette and Marcus Herz were fundamentally different people with different ideas about life. But even if the two were so different, their double salon worked with their different intellectual thematic ways of thinking. There were also differences of opinion or differences with guests from the other salon. The publisher and writer Friedrich Nicolai , guest of Marcus, spoke somewhat disparagingly about the weekly joke markets , where aesthetics are negotiated and exchanged . But even these little swipes could not harm Henriette Herz's salon, and so gradually more listeners than her husband's.
At that time, romanticism was very popular with many listeners. In addition, women were also able to take part for the first time and were treated equally with men in the literary field. If Marcus Herz had not kept his decision that women would not be tolerated in his salon, then the rush to his meetings might have grown steadily, because there were definitely women who would have been interested in the scientific experiments and the lectures. But Marcus Herz probably wanted to keep the crowd in his salon deliberately small in order to achieve more quality than quantity in his salon. In a comparison of both salons, Henriette Herz's is to be assessed as more progressive than Marcus Herz's. Henriette adapted to the new ideas of the French Revolution and let both women and men visit her salon and thus supported the development of independence for women in society.
literature
- Verena von der Heyden-Rynsch: European salons. Highlights of a submerged female culture , Artemis & Winkler, Mannheim 1997, ISBN 978-3760819426
Individual evidence
- ^ Website of the Schadow Society (accessed January 28, 2013)
- ↑ European salons - climax of a submerged female high culture p. 136 (indirect)
- ↑ European salons - climax of a submerged female high culture, pp. 140–141
- ↑ European salons - climax of a submerged female high culture, p. 136 f.