Hedwig von Olfers

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Hedwig von Olfers, after a photograph
Hedwig von Olfers, portrait of a youth

Hedwig von Olfers , née von Staegemann (born May 11, 1799 in Königsberg , † December 11, 1891 in Berlin ), was a German writer and famous salonnière in Berlin.

family

Hedwig was the daughter of the lawyer , poet and Prussian State Councilor Friedrich August von Staegemann and Elisabeth Fischer , divorced Graun (1761-1835).

On December 3, 1823, she married the physician and diplomat Ignaz von Olfers in Berlin . There were four children from the marriage:

The family also included the foster daughter of a Klein Oels maid, Anna (Annerle) Richter (1851–1879), a talented musician, who was adopted in 1852 .

Life

Cantianstrasse 4: until 1877 the von Olfers family's home; the famous Yellow Salon was located here

The house of Hedwig von Olfers was in Berlin under the reign of the kings Friedrich Wilhelm III. and Friedrich Wilhelm IV. the social center of the city. At the age of 16 Hedwig had already gathered Berlin's educated and artistically talented youth in the salon of her parents, the Councilor of State Friedrich August von Staegemann and his wife, the Salonnière Elisabeth von Staegemann . Back then, she became the archetype of the beautiful miller's wife , when in 1816 the guests of the parents' salon were entertained with the self-composed social song game 'Rose, die Müllerin'. Participants were Wilhelm Müller , who later became famous as a poet ( Die Schöne Müllerin , Die Winterreise ) , the later author of religious poetry Luise Hensel , her brother Wilhelm Hensel , who achieved fame throughout Europe as a portrait artist, Clemens Brentano and also the composer Ludwig Berger , who, eight years before Schubert, set the songs interspersed with the Liederspiel as a cycle of 'Gesänge aus einer Societal Liederspiel DIE SCHÖNE MÜLLERIN' op.11.

After marrying Ignaz von Olfers, a physician, diplomat and later General Director of the Berlin Royal Museums, Hedwig tried successfully to continue the sociability of her parents' salon in line with the salon tradition of Rahel Varnhagen von Ense . Artists, scholars and well-known representatives of the military and court society met, initially every Friday, later mostly on Thursday, for tea to exchange ideas and musical soirees in the Yellow Salon at Cantianstrasse 4, and from 1877 at Margaretenstrasse 7.

In a sovereign manner, Hedwig von Olfers knew how to level political differences and differences of class and to bring people of different origins, religions and ways of thinking together. Her style shaped a whole generation of salonniers, including Marie von Schleinitz , with whom she herself frequented in old age.

In addition to a volume of poetry and smaller literary works , the memories, letters and diaries published in two volumes by her daughter Hedwig Abeken are particularly interesting. They are among the most important sources of personal history of the 19th century.

Hedwig von Olfers died of pneumonia at the old age of 92 and was buried in the grave of her foster daughter Anna Richter in the old Matthäus cemetery .

Habitués

About Hedwig von Olfers

  • Herman Grimm: You could say she never ceased to be a young girl who was just gaining her first experiences, her existence was a constant astonishment.
  • Erich Schmidt: Your conversation knew no gossip and no comfortable, well-worn newspaper judgments; always carried lightly by grace, through the wonderful satisfaction of our spiritual need to experience new things, inspired backwards and forwards, without any false education or prudery, controlled by an imperturbable rhythm, drawn from the full, improvisational, with slight leaps, some discreet, yes, sudden transitions, definite, also mischievously surprising, never instructive.
  • Richard Voss: Those unforgettable Olfer tea evenings! The old Excellency, Hedwig von Olfers, sat at a round table in front of the old-fashioned sofa, her youthful rosy face dignified by a light-colored bonnet. And this old friend was the guide and mild ruler of the spirits that gathered around her.
  • Ernst von Wildenbruch: For this nature there was no other possibility of being than to experience. Profound introspection, which surprised her surroundings every moment with words of primal wisdom, and besides that, a world-friendliness that caused her surroundings to burst out laughing just as often - this contradiction, transfigured by the magic that nature puts in the hearts of her loved ones at birth - through naivety.

Works

  • The Children's Advocate (Berlin 1868)
  • Parents suffering and lust (1873)
  • Poems (Berlin 1892)
  • Hedwig von Olfers, b. v. Staegemann 1799-1891. A résumé.
    • Vol. 1: Parents and young people 1799–1815. Edited by Hedwig Abeken, Berlin 1908.
    • Vol. 2: Blooms in romance, matured in selfless love. Compiled from letters. 1816-1891. Edited by Hedwig Abeken, Berlin 1914.

literature

  • Marie von Bunsen: Die Frau und die Geselligkeit , in: Oskar AH Schmitz (Hrsg.): Bücherei der Deutschen Frau , Vol. 2, Leipzig undated (1916)
  • Richard Voß: From a fantastic life , J. Engelhorns Nachf., Stuttgart 1920
  • Petra Wilhelmy: The Berlin Salon in the 19th Century (1780–1914) . In: Publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin . Volume 73, Berlin 1989
  • Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger: The Berlin salons. With cultural-historical walks , Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 2000

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from: Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger, p. 298
  2. ^ Richard Voss, p. 166
  3. ^ Marie von Bunsen, p. 43f

Web links

Wikisource: Hedwig von Olfers  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Olfers, Hedwig von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Staegemann, Hedwig von (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1799
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1891
Place of death Berlin