Story of the Miss von Sternheim

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Title page of the first edition of the first part (1771)

The story of Fräuleins von Sternheim by Sophie von La Roche is considered the first German-language novel to be written by a woman . The morally sensitive epistle novel was published anonymously by the editor Christoph Martin Wieland in 1771, during the Enlightenment period .

content

In the novel Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim , a section of the life of Sophie von Sternheim, daughter of an ennobled colonel and his wife from the English aristocracy , is described. The story is told mainly through letters from Sophie to her friend Emilia, but other authors also have their say in letters. The novel is divided into two parts.

The first part describes the past of Sophie's parents. Her father, Colonel Sternheim, falls in love with Sophie, the sister of his friend Baron von P. Although there is a difference in class , the two eventually marry. Sophie is born and raised according to Christian values. Her mother dies early, so the father is mainly responsible for her upbringing. When Sophie von Sternheim was nineteen, her father died too. She has to leave her father's estate and move to the capital D. to live with her uncle and aunt, Countess Löbau. Contrary to her natural, virtuous upbringing, she should become the prince's mistress , because her uncle hoped for a political advantage. Sophie is supposed to adapt to the court and take care of her appearance instead of educating herself.

At court, Sophie met Lord Derby and Lord Seymour, both of whom came from good English families. While she initially finds Lord Derby repulsive, she feels drawn to Lord Seymour, which he initially replies. Irritated by her naive behavior, he finally turns away. At a country and mask festival, Sophie talks to the pastor and is seen with the prince, whereupon Lord Seymour concludes that there is a relationship between her and the prince. Sophie later sees through her aunt's intrigue and feels deceived.

In the meantime, Lord Derby plays a virtuous man and helps the T. family, whom Sophie has also taken care of. She is impressed by his behavior and sees the only way to escape her fate as a mistress and restore her virtue is to marry Lord Derby. This stages a mock wedding. His servant disguises himself as a clergyman and trusts the two of them. After a few weeks, Lord Derby leaves Sophie and goes back to England as he is bored with her melancholy and it turns out that she still has feelings for Lord Seymour. After this disappointment, Sophie changes her name to “Madam Leidens”, teaches at a servants' school with Madam Hills girls and suggests virtue to them.

In Spaa she met Lady Summers, who she brought to England on her estate to work for her as a partner. There she meets her neighbor Lord Rich, who falls in love with Sophie and, as it turns out later, is Lord Seymour's brother. Lord Derby is now married to Lady Summers' niece. Before his visit to Lady Summers with his wife, he has Sophie kidnapped because he is afraid of complications. He orders her to be taken to a poor charcoal burner family in the Bleigebirge . Sophie takes on Derby's illegitimate daughter there. After Derby asks Sophie for the last time and she refuses to marry, his servant locks Sophie in a tower while Lord Derby is led to believe that Sophie is dead. He then becomes terminally ill and confesses to Lord Seymour and his brother where he is from Sophie so that her body can be fetched and buried appropriately. Lord Seymour notes that her demise was only fake: the family had pretended to be Sophie's death in order to save her, since they took good care of them and looked after the illegitimate daughter of Lord Derby. She marries Lord Seymour, has a son, and leads a virtuous life.

interpretation

Immediately after its publication, the novel found enthusiastic readers and is one of the works that significantly influenced the literary epoch of sensitivity and established the genre of the women's novel . Since the Fraulein von Sternheim opposes the nobility conventions and remains virtuous on her own, the readers take the protagonist as a model for self-determination. With the help of her upper-class, pietistic origin, Sophie von La Roche was able to understandably illustrate her human expressions of feeling and ethical values ​​in this work in this very emotional movement within the framework of the European Enlightenment . She turns so primarily to the emerging reading public of the women of the educated middle class :

“She showed the adaptation strategies and incipient attempts at autonomy of women psychologically empathetic in her female figures and presented their subject formation. La Roche thematized the pursuit of moral satisfaction and good affects such as sympathy, friendship, philanthropy and compassion, and she polemicized against the negative ones such as pride, jealousy , Passion or insincerity. "

- Becker-Cantarino 2008 : p. 87

Together with the human ability to behave morally, given by nature, virtue in the 18th century meant the concrete implementation of the idea of ​​human perfection. Perfection represented the goal as well as the God-given task of man. Numerous educational pamphlets and novels from this time, including the story of Fraulein von Sternheim , therefore deal with the questions of whether and how virtue was learned, trained and in itself and others can and should be checked. Using the young protagonist , it is shown “[…] what virtue a person can be capable of. At the same time, however, the novel gives indications of how the will to virtue and the striving for virtue leave people susceptible to deception. "( Dane 1996 : p. 171)

La Roche does not offer all of this in a style of “dry book learning” ( Becker-Cantarino 2008 : p. 93), but of course conveys the story with the help of inner soul processes. “These enable access to the world of text through the identificatory compassion of the reader” ( Becker-Cantarino 2008 : p. 93). The work, however, does not represent a static, psychological drawing, but tells the story of Sophie von Sternheim, “[...] who gets involved in difficult circumstances, destroys her external happiness, then goes her own way as Madame Leidens and - is finally redeemed. Her 'story' lives from the tension between Christian suffering and striving for autonomy over her life, the tension between patriarchal society and the female subject. "( Becker-Cantarino 2008 : p. 93)

At the court, to which Sophie had to move and where she could make her fortune in society with a befitting marriage, the middle-class Sophie is "the temptation of a complacent life and the 'snares of vice' '(pleasures, luxury, festivities, intrigues over Power and money, games, seduction, sexual stimuli). ”( Becker-Cantarino 2008 : p. 96) However, she sticks to her values, so she reads, writes, deals with female handicrafts, gives alms to the needy and seeks friendships . She does not see through the scheming game of the court - as the princely mistress she is to become a pleasure object and thus serve the political power of her uncle. Sophie also does not recognize the true love of Lord Seymour, who informs her about her situation as an object of eroticism. Insecure and disaffected and without consulting anyone close to her, she quickly decides to secretly marry Lord Derby in order to escape life at court. She turns disappointment, shame, anger and pride into the pleasure object of the wrong derby.

Sophie quickly realizes her deception and her misfortune. This situation describes “both the dilemma and the ambivalent situation of bourgeois women in the 18th century. She is defined as a person through the commandment of virtue [...]. At the same time, as an individual, she is not autonomous, but in the family area and society dependent on men and their interests (father, uncle, the prince, Derby, Seymour). "( Becker-Cantarino 2008 : p. 96)

Due to the numerous thematic problem contexts, the novel must be illuminated and interpreted from different perspectives, for example due to its didactic orientation, its importance in the context of social history or the changing roles of women and genders in the 18th century. Here, the didactic intention, which the story of Sophie von Sternheim aims at, appears central : Sophie is plunged into disaster because of her mistake in making a mistake in Derby, suppressing the ideal of a love marriage and thus entering into a marriage based on reason. Even her dying father asked the pastor in his last letter to take care “[…] that the noble-thinking [sic] heart of the best girl should not be carried away by any apparent virtue. [...] since it is pure sensation, so many, many have the miserable power to offend them. ”( La Roche 2006 : p. 53)

The limits of the enlightened ideal of virtue become clear here: It seems as if all the misfortune that happens to it lies in virtue. Through this one-dimensional worldview, she quickly assumes that others, including Derby, share this view of life and act according to this ideal. However, it is difficult for Sophie to recognize real and honest virtue in the disguised, deceptive and superficial court life, since virtue is primarily attributed to people through their public appearance and actions and the real intentions and convictions of the people in question are largely unrecognized by the protagonist stay - only to the reader do the characters' letters reveal their true intentions, as well as their pretended intentions. Public action and behavior therefore not only had to be virtuous, it had to be publicly recognized as such. It therefore requires self-reflection and self-control, with a view to others as well as oneself. Among other things, this results in the danger of vanity and calculation, so that virtue quickly turns into its opposite. It also becomes clear that it is not possible to infer the character as a whole from just individual actions of a person:

"Virtue is fragile and prone to deception as long as a virtuous person does not learn to see through the personal dispositions and interests of those who interpret them."

- Dane 1986 : p. 187

In addition to philosophy , history , languages and music , Sophie is taught to dance early on , following the intention and conviction of her father, in order to be able to train the movements of a fast and tall growing person to achieve harmony and make them pleasant. At court she now receives compliments for her skills, but is also thought to be flirtatious. Sophie herself, however, is unable to recognize these two possible interpretations to which she and her appearance are subject.

Sophie doesn't like the courtly ceremonies and the dressing up at the cleaning table, but she comes to terms with it. Only at the festival, at which the participants appear in peasant clothes, does she feel comfortable (due to her modesty and humility) and find satisfaction and confirmation there with the values ​​of her origin, but cannot see through the superficiality of this artificial staging. She looks good in her dress and attributes this to the simplicity of the clothes, but for Derby it is just a disguise in which she stands out from the other women through her personality. These different points of view come together independently of one another and the reader's task is to learn to recognize and correctly assess them.

Her way of interpreting human behavior makes Sophie prone to delusion. As a result, in the novel she temporarily loses her virtue in the eyes of the courtly public, especially in those of Lord Seymour. The dependency of the interpretation of situations and behaviors depends strongly on the feelings of the respective characters, which can be recognized by the various characters when describing a situation in a letter. The resulting errors in the characters and their reasons are (initially) only brought before the reader's eyes. It becomes clear that “no person can be exclusively good or bad, as shown by Seymour's mistakes at the beginning of the novel and Derby's late insight and remorse at the end. Almost without exception, each of the characters is involved in the successful outcome, even if Sophie's own virtuous persistence is the most important prerequisite for it. [...] The fallibility of humans remains anthropologically conditioned despite their will to virtue. The will to virtue and virtuous behavior alone do not protect against mistakes and do not provide security [...] ”( Dane 1996 : p. 191)

The novel deals not only with virtuous sensitivity, it also aims at a certain understanding of the human being in the time of courtly absolutism .

Parallels with La Roche's biography

Sophie von La Roche with her daughter Maximiliane and her husband (c. 1773/1774)

The thought often arises that La Roche's novel Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim is autobiographical . In fact, the novel contains some parallels to La Roche's life, but these only led to La Roche's first impulse to write. The main reason for the novel was La Roche's grief and loneliness, which she suffered when two of her eight children, the eldest daughters Maximiliane and Luise, were taken to an educational institution in France against her will. A good friend and confidante of La Roche, Pastor Johann Jakob Brechter, advised her to write down her feelings. For La Roche, writing had always been a tried and tested tool that she used to cope with private crises.

The creation of the novel is based on several motifs, here two major motifs can be clearly recognized: A disappointed mother who creates a "new child" to pursue her maternal role and thus processes the grief over the loss of her two daughters, as well as her pedagogical interest in questions of upbringing, which she writes with didactic intent and thus passes on to third parties. The protagonist Sophie can therefore be described as a mixture of the ideal female figure and autobiographical echoes.

La Roche, who had an extraordinary interest in questions of upbringing - perhaps precisely because she could not raise her two daughters herself - made up for this in her novel in her very own way. She now created the "paper girl" Sophie that she educates in her novel according to her values. It is not difficult to see that La Roche places great emphasis on intellectual education and domestic utility in raising Sophie's up. Parallels can also be drawn here with La Roche, who experienced similar good things as a young girl in the Gutermann house. According to her own confessions, La Roche has drawn herself in the protagonist Sophie, but only externally of her memory as a young Augsburg girl.

The protagonist Sophie loses her mother in the novel at the age of eight. La Roche also lost her mother very early, and the memories of her mother's early death may have played a role here.

Form of the novel

The first sensitive epistolary novels in Germany were not written until around 1770. La Roche's work Die Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim is one of these and was published anonymously by Wieland with a foreword by him.

In terms of form and content, La Roche's novel comes closest to the English model. La Roche's epistolary novel consists of two parts that appeared separately in May and June 1771. The fate of Sophie von Sternheim is communicated to the reader on the one hand by her own letters to her friend Emilia, on the other hand in the form of letters from alternating senders to changing addressees, who repeatedly describe the same event from different perspectives . Sternheim's perspective is in the foreground in the novel, she sends a total of 29 letters to her friend Emiliana, but the letters only go in one direction, so there are no answers. It is important to mention that the main character Sophie von Sternheim is only introduced on page 50 of a total of 349 pages. Before that, the getting to know each other and the marriage of the parents are described.

style

Sophie von La Roche used different stylistic means in her novel, some of which were still unknown in German literature at the time. On the one hand she introduces the first multi-dimensional novel, on the other hand she psychologizes her characters. La Roche uses the narrative trick of changing perspective . As a result, on the one hand, she is not forced to only reflect Sophie's perspective, on the other hand, she comes closer to her characters and can shape them. The change of perspective ensures that the linear action is broken by the multi-dimensional perspective. La Roche also used this multi-stranded character to give her characters a special intensity and to refine them. She creates individual characters by varying not only the style but also the flow of the letters of the people who write them. Personal, private and subjective impulses as well as feelings are placed in the foreground in the individual letters. The characters' characters and motifs are not characterized by what they say or how they act, but rather how they express themselves. With this, too, La Roche created a new impetus for the German literary world, because the psychologization of fictional characters was completely unknown in German novels until then. With her novel and her writing style, Sophie von La Roche set new parameters for German novel literature in the following years.

Wieland as editor

Editor Christoph Martin Wieland (painting by Anton Graff , 1794)

Sophie von La Roches novel was published anonymously by Christoph Martin Wieland . In the 18th century women in Germany had neither the right nor the possibility to publish their works without male support. With a novel in particular, it was unthinkable for women to debut in the literary “men's world”. Sophie von La Roche's career therefore began through her long-time friend Wieland, who published her work. La Roche began her novel as early as 1766, but only completed it after she had fulfilled her role as mother. Wieland not only acted as an advisor for the novel, because he was always at La Roche's side in literary questions, but he also made it possible for her to publish it with his publisher Reich in Leipzig. Wieland opened up a significant place for the novel in the literary world, as he named La Roche's novel as a women's novel in his preface , thus giving life to a new generic term.

But Wieland's preface also has an aftertaste. With its catchy label as a "woman's novel", he limits the novel La Roches for reception and literary posterity. In the novel, Wieland also spreads the reader , as he “tries to represent a number of comments on the text of the interests of men and to limit the heroine as a woman” ( Becker-Cantarino 2008 : p. 90) sanctioned women's role by pointing out that women are not allowed to develop their own morals. Wieland also plays with the role of editor. In the preface he notes that he is editing the manuscript in the printed and not in the handwritten version. This gives you an idea that the novel was already scheduled for publication. Even the writing on the title page of the novel, “Drawn from original papers and other reliable sources by a friend of the same” ( Becker-Cantarino 2006 : p. 7.), leaves the original claim that he found the letters, collected and despite some Deficits viewed as a successful work, disregarded.

In the foreword, Wieland addresses possible critics and points out deficits from the outset. Since he suspected that his editorial fiction would quickly become apparent, he secured himself against criticism by the critics by trying to legitimize the novel: He repeatedly emphasized the modesty and virtue of the wife of La Roche in order to ensure that she received the best possible reception To provide. La Roche owes Wieland her breakthrough as a celebrated writer and acceptance in a literary world that to date has been almost exclusively male.

reception

The story of Fräuleins von Sternheim became one of the great successes of the book market with Philipp Erasmus Reich in Leipzig in March and September 1771, and Sophie von La Roche suddenly became an important writer. In the first year three editions had to be printed, five more editions followed in the next fifteen years.

Contemporary reception

Sophie von La Roche received enthusiastic letters and literary greats announced their visit to get to know the author of the novel personally. Reading and positive criticism of the novel even prompted the philologist Eulogius Schneider to include excerpts from the work as an example of a good writing style in his style.

The foreword by the editor Christoph Martin Wieland disarmed the supposed critics in advance by flattering them. The few negative votes met with violent opposition from enthusiastic readers and were therefore less important. There were only critical objections to the editor's preface, who was initially believed to be the author. It is noticeable that the approval for the work came from very diverse camps of the readership: Late Enlightenment figures such as Striker and Dränger , younger and older generations expressed their enthusiasm for the author's first work.

A review was published in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek , edited by Johann Georg Sulzer and Friedrich Nicolai , which emphasizes the novel's “healthy morality spread everywhere” and the “moral heroism” of Miss von Sternheim.

The reception of the work in the circle of the Enlightenment was consistently positive, the approval of the strikers and pushers, however, increased to exuberance. Johann Gottfried von Herder , Maria Karoline Flachsland , Johann Heinrich Merck and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe almost competed in their enthusiastic positions on the novel. In letters to his friend Merck, Herder said: "Everything you tell me about the author of the Sternheim are true Gospels for me".

The strikers and pushers were downright fascinated by the feelings described in the story of Fräuleins von Sternheim . This is particularly clear in Goethe's review of the novel, which he published in the Frankfurter Gelehrten Werbung . In it he aims at the critics from the Enlightenment camp: "But all gentlemen are wrong if they believe that you are judging a book - it is a human soul."

The young readers of the 1770s often identify with the character in the novel, Sternheim, and with her longings and ideals. In their enthusiasm, however, they overlooked the fact that Fraulein von Sternheim's outlook on life differed only slightly from rationalistic thinking. The majority of contemporary readers were apparently not bothered by the less innovative plot of the novel. The first German women's novel thus paved the way for trivial literature well into the 19th century . At the end of the 18th century, the enthusiasm for the novel continued to decline until it was almost completely forgotten.

Modern reception

In the 1970s it was found that the life and work of La Roche had only rarely been the subject of historical research until then and that her person was almost only mentioned in connection with contemporaries whose lives she had helped shape. In addition, apart from the story of Fräuleins von Sternheim , her work was hardly available on the book market.

Today it is above all feminist- motivated literary studies that show interest in Sophie von La Roche as a person and work, and which has given the most important German writer in the last third of the 18th century a new topicality. As the author of the first German women's novel, she also received due attention in traditional literary historiography, but there, too, she was mainly mentioned as Wieland's fiancée, friend of the young Goethe and as the grandmother of Bettina and Clemens Brentano . In contrast, the most recent research contributions have placed their literary designs on female socialization in eighteenth-century society in the foreground.

expenditure

literature

  • Rolf Allerdissen: The sensitive novel of the 18th century . In: Helmut Koopmann (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Deutschen Romans . Düsseldorf 1983, p. 184-203 .
  • Barbara Becker-Cantarino: My love for books. Sophie von La Roche as a professional writer . Heidelberg 2008.
  • Ralf Bogner (Hrsg.): German literature at a glance. 400 works from 1200 years. One canon . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2009.
  • Iwan-Michelangelo D'Aprile, Winfried Siebers: The 18th Century. Age of Enlightenment . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2008.
  • Gesa Dane: Sophie from La Roche. Story of the Miss von Sternheim . In: Philipp Reclam jun. (Ed.): Novels of the 17th and 18th centuries . Stuttgart 1996, p. 171-195 .
  • MS Doms: Sophie von La Roche. Story of the Miss von Sternheim . In: Ralf Georg Bogner (ed.): German literature at a glance. 400 works from 1200 years. One canon . 1st edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2009, p. 211-212 .
  • Bernd Heidenreich: Sophie from La Roche. A work biography . Frankfurt am Main 1986.
  • F. Herboth: Sophie von La Roche. 1731-1807 . In: Rainer Frank Max, Christine Ruhrberg (eds.): Reclams Romanlexikon. Vol. 1. German-language verse and prose poetry from the Middle Ages to the Classical . Reclam, Stuttgart 1998, p. 275-278 .
  • Volker Meid: 1771 Sophie von La Roche . Story of the Miss von Sternheim. In: Metzler Literature Chronicle . 3rd expanded edition. JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2006, p. 237 .
  • Jeannine Meighörner: “What I think of it as a woman” - Sophie von La Roche, Germany's first bestselling author . Sutton, Erfurt 2006.
  • Ivar Sagmo: Dietetics of Passions. Sophie von La Roche and her “Beautiful Image of Resignation” . In: Kurt Erich Schöndorf (Ed.): Step out of the shadows. Aspects of female writing between the Middle Ages and Romanticism . Frankfurt am Main 2000, p. 45-46 .
  • Armin Strohmeyr : Sophie von La Roche. A biography . Leipzig 2006.

Web links

Full text
Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. Herboth (1998), pp. 275f.
  2. Bogner (2009), pp. 211f.
  3. cf. Niethammer, Ortrun: Kindlers Literature Lexicon Online story of the Fräuleins von Sternheim. URL: http://www.kll-online.de/ Accessed on June 23, 2010 9:11 am
  4. Juliane Ziegler: Role Models: An Independent Woman , in: chrismon plus January, 01.2015, p. 29.
  5. See Becker-Cantarino (2008): p. 87.
  6. See Dane (1996): p. 171.
  7. See Becker-Cantarino (2008): p. 96 f.
  8. See Dane (1996): p. 183.
  9. See Dane (1996): p. 187 f.
  10. Cf. Dane (1996): p. 189 ff.
  11. See Dane (1996): p. 191.
  12. a b cf. Meighörner (2006): p. 70ff.
  13. cf. Strohmeyer (2006): p. 141.
  14. cf. D'Aprile, Siebers (2008): p. 179.
  15. cf. Bogner (2009)
  16. cf. Strohmeyer (2006): p. 145.
  17. cf. Meighörner (2006): p. 75.
  18. cf. Becker-Cantarino (2008): p. 88f.
  19. cf. Becker-Cantarino (2008): p. 90.
  20. cf. Becker-Cantarino (2008), p. 89.
  21. ^ Heidenreich, Bernd: Sophie von La Roche. A work biography. Frankfurt Am Main, 1986, p. 64.
  22. Strohmeyr, Armin: Sophie von La Roche. A biography. Leipzig, 2006, p. 154.
  23. Strohmeyr, Armin: Sophie von La Roche. A biography. Leipzig, 2006, p. 138.
  24. JKA Musäus: LaRoche, Sv: Story of Fraulein von Sternheim. T.1.2 .: Review published in 1772 in Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek , Volume 16, 1st St., pp. 469–479.
  25. Allerdissen, Rolf: The sensitive novel of the 18th century. S195.
  26. Sagmo, Ivar: Dietetics of Passions. In: Step out of the shadows. Frankfurt am Main 2000, p. 46.