Elise von Hohenhausen (1789-1857)

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Elisabeth Philippine Amalie Freifrau von Hohenhausen (born November 4, 1789 in Waldau , today Kassel , † December 2, 1857 in Frankfurt (Oder) ) was a German poet , storyteller , publicist , translator and salonnière .

Life

Early years

Elise von Hohenhausen was the daughter of General Adam Ludwig von Ochs (1759–1823) from the Electorate of Hesse. She grew up in Waldau near Kassel, where her grandfather was a pastor. From an early age she was interested in the English language, which she mastered extremely well.

In October 1809 she married Leopold Freiherrn von Hohenhausen , who initially worked as a civil servant in Minden , the capital of what was then the Weser department of the Kingdom of Westphalia , and in May of the same year was appointed sub-prefect of the Eschwege district in the Werra department.

Open-minded literary and correspondent for various scientific societies, Leopold von Hohenhausen promoted his wife's literary inclinations. She published her first poems in Cottas Morgenblatt for educated estates , in the Eschweger Sonntagsblatt and in the magazine for the elegant world . Elise von Hohenhausen gave birth to two daughters in Eschwege: Sophie Johanna Josephine (1810–1841) and Elise Friedrike Felicitas (1812–1899), later Elise Rüdiger , who was mainly known under the abbreviated name F. (for "Elise Freiin") von Hohenhausen was also active as a writer.

After the end of Napoleonic rule, Leopold von Hohenhausen, who had been compromised by his proximity to Jérôme Bonaparte, had to quit his job, but was able to take up a position as a government councilor in Prussian services in Minden as early as 1815, where her son Carl (1816-1834) was born. With the participation of the couple, the Mindener Sonntagsblatt , which they co-founded, became an important periodical of the Vormärz , in which Heine , Grabbe , Hoffmann von Fallersleben and Freiligrath made their debut.

In 1817, Elise von Hohenhausen's first volume of poetry was published, Spring Flowers (lyrical poems, Münster 1817).

Berlin salon sociability

In the summer of 1820 the family moved to Berlin , where Leopold tried to get a better position through the mediation of the Prussian State Chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg . In her apartment at Unter den Linden No. 59 (later at Krausenstrasse 10), Elise von Hohenhausen invited to tea parties on Tuesdays. Her guests included Helmina von Chézy , Fanny Mendelssohn and her husband Wilhelm Hensel , Rahel and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense , Friederike and Ludwig Robert , Adelbert von Chamisso and Fürst Pückler as well as Heinrich Heine , whose talent Elise recognized and encouraged early on and whom she was able to support - with a often misunderstood word - celebrated as the “German Byron ”. Here Heine read the poem Allnachtlich im Traume, dedicated to Friederike Robert, for the first time , the end of which ( "and crying loudly, I fall at her sweet feet" ) aroused general laughter. In the Berlin apartment of their mutual friend Chézy (Jerusalemer Strasse 35), Wilhelm Hensel made a portrait drawing of Elise von Hohenhausen for his sketchbook in the presence of Friedrich von Uechtritz.

With the early death of the state chancellor, her husband's career plans came to nothing. Although Elise tried, for example through correspondence with General Gneisenau , to get him a secure position in Berlin, the family could not gain a foothold in the Prussian capital and returned to Minden in 1824.

In 1834 their melancholy son Carl, who studied at the University of Bonn , took his own life with a pistol shot. Elise von Hohenhausen dedicated the book Carl von Hohenhausen, Downfall of a Young Man of 18 Years , to him in 1837, which was sharply attacked by the pietistic Evangelical Church newspaper. The daughter Sophie also died prematurely in 1841.

Translator from English

Elise von Hohenhausen became known to a broad reading public less through her own poems, which were praised by the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, but rather through translations of the works of Lord Byron , Walter Scott , Edward Young , Tennyson and Longfellow . She wrote the first German translation of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem Der Rabe , written in 1853 .

As a mediator of Byron's poetry, which was still little known in Germany due to Napoleon's continental barrier, she appeared in 1820 when she was working on the anthology Letters to a German Noblewoman on the latest English poets . Her enthusiasm carried over to the young Heine, whom Elise had met in May 1818 in the family of his uncle Salomon Heine in Hamburg , and whose tragedies Almansor and Ratcliff were inspired by Byron's work.

Late work and travel

After her husband retired, the couple moved to Kassel . Once again, her apartment on Wilhelmshöher Allee became the center of a witty conviviality in which Herman Grimm , Julius Rodenberg and Friedrich Oetker , among others , frequented. After the death of her husband, who died of a stroke on December 22nd, 1848, Elise von Hohenhausen received a small pension of less than a third of his previous earnings.

Elise von Hohenhausen, who was mourning her son, was sharply attacked by the Pietist party for publishing his diaries. Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg accused her in the Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung of having driven her son to suicide through the "literary evening entertainments" with poems by Heine and Byron, through theater visits and neglected religious instruction. In her later work, however, Elise von Hohenhausen herself showed pietistic tendencies, published consolation and edification pamphlets and devoted herself to the upbringing of Christian girls.

With her literarily gifted daughter Elise Friederike, who married Oberregierungsrat Karl Ferdinand Rüdiger (1800–1862) in 1831 and lived in Frankfurt an der Oder, the widow made several trips through Germany. In Bonn she met Karl Simrock , in Bad Kissingen with Prince Pückler, in Berlin with Karl August Varnhagen. In May 1852, mother and daughter visited Heinrich Heine, who was seriously ill, at his "mattress dormitory" at 50 Rue d'Amsterdam in Paris .

From 1854 Elise von Hohenhausen lived with her daughter and her husband in Frankfurt an der Oder, where she died on December 2, 1857.

family

She married Leopold von Hohenhausen on October 1, 1809 (* May 16, 1779, † December 22, 1848). The couple had several children:

  • Sophie Johanna Josephine Elise Leopoldine Sylvia Wilhelmine Henriette (* July 11, 1811; † June 27, 1841) ⚭ Rudolf Friedrich Wilhelm von Düring called Oetken (* March 18, 1811; † January 13, 1890), parents of Helene von Düring-Oetken (1841–1931), writer
  • Elise Friederike Felicitas (1812–1899), writer ⚭ 1831 Baron Karl von Rüdiger († 1872), Prussian councilor
  • Karl (1816–1834)

Honors

  • King Frederik VI. of Denmark awarded Elise von Hohenhausen the Great Golden Prize Medal (1816) for spring flowers .

Fonts

Literary works

  • Spring flowers. Poems, Münster 1816
  • Minden and its surroundings, the Weserthal and Westphalens gate. Minden 1819
  • Nature, art and life. Memories, collected on a trip from the Weser to the Rhine and on an excursion to the shores of the North and Baltic Seas. Hammerich, Altona 1820
  • (Cooperation :) Spring gifts. Stories. Published by Friedrich Raßmann , Basse, Quedlinburg 1824
  • Poggezana. Romantic-historical story. Danzig 1825
  • Novellas. 3 vols., Verlags-Comptoir, Braunschweig 1828
  • Carl von Hohenhausen, the downfall of a youth of 18 years. For the heart of parents, educators, religion teachers and doctors, with a biography. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1836
  • Berlin more than twenty years ago. In: August Lewald (Ed.): The new Europe. Chronicle of the Educated World , Vol. 1 (1846), pp. 225-230; 251-253.
  • Johann and Cornelius de Witt or the eternal edict. Historical tragedy in five acts from the time of Ludwig XIV. Hotop, Kassel 1847
  • Rousseau , Goethe and Byron. A critical-literary outline from an ethical-Christian point of view . Hotop, Kassel 1847
  • The Marquesas Island. A Christmas present. Heyse, Bremen 1853
  • The virgin and her future in our time, or maternal advice from a boarder to her departing pupils about their entry into the world, use of time, daily division, wisdom of life, decency [...] together with a collection of examples relating to this, containing: the fate of girls, after life drawn . Voigt, Weimar 1854
  • Read me in your sufferings and I will comfort you. A book of life and comfort in difficult days . Voigt, Weimar 1855
  • The secret of happiness or the key to salvation. In stories and novelets that fight the mistakes of youth, independently developed from an original by Countess Drohojkowska . Voigt, Weimar 1855
  • The angel of the morning. The star of the evening. The demons of the night. Three historical stories, loosely based on the French by Alfred von Driou. Voigt, Weimar 1857

Translations

  • from Lord Byron:
    • The Corsar, a legend translated into German poetry. Hammerich, Altona 1820
    • (with Friedrich Gottlob August Schumann :) Cain, a mystery, Dante's prophecy. Schumann, Zwickau 1825
    • Poetry. Schumann, Zwickau 1827
  • from Walter Scott:
    • Ivanhoe. A novel. 2 vol., Schumann, Zwickau 1822
    • Kenilworth. A novel. 4 vols., Schumann, Zwickau 1823
    • St. Ronan's Fountain. A novel. 4 vol., Schumann, Zwickau 1825
    • (with Willibald Alexis and Wilhelm von Lüdemann :) Historical and romantic ballads from the Scottish borderlands. Schumann, Zwickau 1826
  • (Collaboration :) Letters to a German noblewoman about the latest English poets. With translated excerpts from excellent passages from her poems and with portraits of the most famous living poets in England. Edited by Friedrich Johann Jacobsen. Hammerich, Altona 1820
  • Henry W. Longfellow: The Golden Legend. Friedrich, Leipzig 1856
  • Edward Young: Night Thoughts. Hotop, Kassel 1844

Life testimonies

  • “My dear dear Lies!” The letters from Annette von Droste-Hülshoff to Elise Rüdiger . According to the manuscripts ed. and with an afterword v. Ursula Naumann, Frankfurt a. M. [u. a.]: Ullstein 1992 (The woman in literature 30269), ISBN 3-548-30269-6

selection

  • Reading book Elise von Hohenhausen. Compiled and with an afterword by Klaus Gruhn. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2019 (Nylands Kleine Westfälische Bibliothek 84). ISBN 978-3-8498-1291-1

literature

  • Ernst Kelchner:  Hohenhausen, Elise Freifrau von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1880, p. 673 f.
  • Eckhard Schulz:  Hohenhausen, Elise Freifrau von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 482 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Hohenhausen, Elise von , in: Damen-Conversations-Lexikon , Volume 5, o. O. 1835, pp. 303-305.
  • Hohenhausen, Elise Felicitas, baroness of . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 1. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 370 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Fritz Hackenberg: Elise von Hohenhausen, a Westphalian poet and translator. In: Westfälische Zeitung 73 (1915), pp. 115-172.
  • Petra (Dollinger-) Wilhelmy: The Berlin Salon in the 19th Century . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1989, pp. 274-81, 345-48, 531-533, 820-29, ISBN 3-11-011891-2 .
  • Claudia Belemann: "... a lively excitement and great freshness ... despite bitter fortunes." The life and work of the author, translator and literary mediator Elise von Hohenhausen, b. from Ochs. In: Literature in Westphalia. Contributions to research Vol. 2 (1994), pp. 101-133, ISBN 3-506-75202-2 .
  • Irina Hundt: Heinrich Heine was a constant guest. Byron was worshiped in Elise von Hohenhausen's salon. In: Berlinische Monatsschrift 1996, no. 2, pp. 82–85.
  • Werner Simon, York-Egbert König : Elise von Hohenhausen (1789–1857) on the 150th anniversary of her death. In: Eschweger Geschichtsblätter 18 (2007), pp. 77–80.
  • Fritz W. Franzmeyer: Relationship with reservations? - On the mutual relationship between Heinrich Heine, Elise von Hohenhausen and the city of Minden. In: Literature in Westphalia. Contributions to research, Vol. 10 (2009), pp. 37-93, ISBN 978-3-89528-782-4 .

Web links

Wikisource: Elise von Hohenhausen (1789–1857)  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the baronial houses for the year 1858. Eighth year, p.724
  2. ^ Heinrich Heine: Book of Songs (= historical-critical complete edition of the works, edited by Manfred Windfuhr , Vol. 1/1). Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1975, ISBN 3-455-03001-7 , p. 843.
  3. ↑ Armin Paul Frank, Erika Hulpke: Poes deutscher Rabenhorst: Explorations of a translational longitudinal section, Part I (1853-1891). In: Brigitte Schultze (Hrsg.): The literary translation: case studies on their cultural history (Göttingen Contributions to International Translation Research 1). Schmidt, Berlin 1987, pp. 130-132.
  4. ↑ See Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg: Foreword . In: Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung, Vol. 20 (1837), No. 1–4, Col. 1–32.
  5. ↑ Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of noble houses 1901. Second year, p.260
personal data
SURNAME Hohenhausen, Elise von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hohenhausen, Elisabeth Philippine Amalie Freifrau von (full name); Ochs, Elisabeth Philippine Amalie von (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and translator
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1789
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel
DATE OF DEATH December 2, 1857
Place of death Frankfurt (Oder)