Elise Lensing

Elise Lensing , full name Maria Dorothea Elisabeth Lensing , (born October 14, 1804 in Lenzen on the Elbe , † November 18, 1854 in Hamburg ) was the long-time patroness and friend, later the lover of Christian Friedrich Hebbel , who was considered one of the great Playwright's realism applies. The cleaning and seamstress Lensing, who was eight years older than him, supported him financially as far as she could.

Life

Maria Dorothea Elisabeth Lensing was born as the daughter of the surgeon and surgeon Lensing on October 14, 1804 at Seetorstrasse 18 in Lenzen on the Elbe. After the death of her husband, Elise's mother married the Hamburg carpenter and boatman Johann Jakob Arendt Ziese and moved to Hamburg in 1830 . After training in Magdeburg and an apprenticeship in Calbe , Elise also moved into her stepfather's house in Hamburg.

In early 1835 she met Friedrich Hebbel, who rented a room in her stepfather's house. Hebbel was 22 and Elise 30 at the time. In Hamburg, Elise Lensing taught at times as a teacher before a paternal inheritance gave her a certain degree of independence. After just six weeks, Hebbel moved to a neighboring house to avoid gossip. But it was already too late - the no longer quite youthful, but devoted and loving caring woman, had already lost her heart to the penniless and lonely writer. When he moved out after six weeks, Hebbel wrote:

“I left Elisen's house yesterday. I have reason to put a small memorial to the 6 weeks that I spent with her, because just as the kindness met me as soon as I entered, I took the love away with me. The girl is infinitely attached to me; if my future wife feels half for me, then I am satisfied. "

This love affair resulted in two sons who died early: Max (1840–1843) and Ernst (1844–1847).

Nevertheless, Hebbel experienced "the terrible depth" of existence during this first time in Hamburg . After an unsuccessful visit to the Johanneum, Hebbel left Hamburg to study law in Heidelberg. This dry course of education did not fulfill him either. Hebbel wrote:

“I am currently a student and in Heidelberg, the latter with all my soul, the former with half my soul. The great waves of academic life roll past me like a boulder and rarely pull me away with them. This is no more my merit than my fault. It takes the full feeling of carefree youth, the cheerful courage to live, not clouded by any circumstances, if one is to throw oneself joyfully into a circle which has as little to do with human beings as with humanity's highest interests and which because strength and faculties always seek their medium, for which necessity the arbitrary and phantasical supposes. I wanted me to be able to, but no one comes off the galley as they step into it. All my endeavors are directed towards poetic creation and activity; what is not related to it in any way is not there for me. "

So Hebbel broke off his studies and traveled on via Strasbourg and Stuttgart to Munich , where he was aiming for a doctorate in philosophy. The two and a half years that Hebbel spent in Munich were poor in external events, but all the more significant for his internal development. He was no longer a student. jur., but literary man. However, since he couldn't make a living from it and the Hamburg scholarship was soon used up, he was increasingly dependent on Elise Lensing's support. However, hunger, illness and financial worries made him fail again. In the cold, snow and wet, Hebbel met Elise on March 30, 1839 after a twenty-day forced march, demolished and exhausted in Hamburg. He described his contradicting feelings when they met:

“An oppressive feeling when I saw the towers of Hamburg, which suddenly jumped into my eyes when the road bended; nothing but half, torn, in themselves null and void relationships; an army of clouds and only one star: Elise; She, who had been informed from Gottingen of the day of my arrival, arrived in Harburg in the afternoon by steamboat; Painfully sweet reunion, because we did not stand to each other as we should and badly I repaid her for her infinite love, her countless sacrifices, with a dull, lazy being. "

He stayed with Elise Lensing in the Hanseatic city for around four years. Even now there was no improvement in his economic situation.

In 1842, Hebbel received a grant from the Danish King Christian VIII for a two-year educational trip that took him to Paris , Rome , Naples and Vienna . Hebbel stayed in the city on the Danube until his untimely death. He actually wanted to return to Hamburg, where Elise Lensing had given birth to a second son. He had found out about the death of his first son in Paris. But Hebbel married the castle actress Christine Enghaus in Vienna in 1846 and, free from material worries and hardships, found the leisure he needed to become an important poet of the 19th century. When he married the famous actress, a world collapsed for Elise Lensing, who for many years had been Hebbel's only support in human, spiritual and material terms.

In 1847 the sensitive nature of Christine Enghaus finally succeeded in bringing about a rapprochement between the disappointed Elise and the often harsh poet Friedrich Hebbel. In May 1847 she invited Elise to Vienna, where she spent over a year as a guest with the Hebbels. When Elise returned to the Hanseatic city, the two women had become friends. Christine gave Elise her son Carl, whom she had brought into the marriage, with her to Hamburg. This son of Christine, who had been adopted by Hebbel, was eventually raised by Elise, a task that gave meaning to Elise's life. In 1867 Carl Hebbel emigrated to Valparaiso ( Chile ), where he co-founded the German school. He died of a heart attack on September 18, 1895 while visiting his birth mother Christine at the main post office in Vienna. Elise Lensing died in Hamburg in 1854 and was buried in the St. George's cemetery. Hebbel was very shocked by her death. He wrote:

“Elise is no more; on November 18th, 1854 towards morning it is different. Long before that there was nothing left to hope for, and therefore only death to be desired; so the science of pain does not shake me as much at the moment of arrival as it shivered and will shiver inside me! What a tangled life; how deeply intertwined with mine, and yet against the will of nature and without the right inner reference! Nevertheless, I will meet no one better than her in the purer regions when they open up to me one day. "

Stele and pillow stone for Elise Lensing in the Ohlsdorf cemetery

When Hamburg expanded and this cemetery was leveled, Christine Hebbel bought a grave in Hamburg-Ohlsdorf in 1899, 36 years after Hebbel's death in 1863, and relocated her friend (grid square J 10 above the Cordes monument in the area of ​​the rose grove ). On the stele erected by the Hamburg Literary Society in 1913 is the Hebbel slogan "Wreaths of flowers are kidnapped by the slightest west wind / crowns of thorns but not by the most powerful storm".

In Hamburg-Barmbek-Nord , Elise-Lensing-Weg is a reminder of Hebbel's long-time friend.

literature

• Sibylle Knauss : Oh Elise, or, love is a lonely business , novel biography. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-423-10331-0 .
• Heike Steinhorst: Lensing, Maria Dorothea Elisabeth (Elise). In: Eva Labouvie (Ed.): Women in Saxony-Anhalt, Vol. 2: A biographical-bibliographical lexicon from the 19th century to 1945. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2019, ISBN 978-3-412-51145-6 , p. 268-271.
• Hamburgische Biografie-Personenlexikon , Wallstein Verlag , 2001, pp. 247–248, [1]

Web links

• Biography Maria Dorothea Elisabeth (Elise) Lensing at Frauenbiografien hamburg.de
• Hebbel family overview (including stepson Carl) in the Hebbel Museum

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Barbara Leisner, Heiko KL Schulze, Ellen Thormann: The Hamburg main cemetery Ohlsdorf. History and tombs. 2 volumes and an overview map 1: 4000. Hans Christians, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-7672-1060-6 , p. 110, cat. 716 (older photo of the two stones with inscriptions on the stele)
2. ↑ Stele and pillow stone Elise Lensing at knerger.de