Katharina von Zimmermann

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Heinrich Pfenninger : Katharina Zimmermann, 1775
Katharina Zimmermann: Johann Wolfgang Goethe, graphite drawing 1775

Katharina von Zimmermann (* 1756 in Brugg ; † September 10, 1781 in Hanover ) became known through Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's autobiography From My Life .

Life

Katharina Zimmermann was the second child of the doctor and writer Johann Georg Zimmermann and Susanna Katharina Steck. After the early death of her mother and the death of her grandmother from consumption in March 1771, she first stayed in Hanover with an acquaintance of her father's wife von Döring, and later with friends of her father's in Minden . Her father, who had meanwhile given up his household, sent her from Minden to Lausanne in May 1773 . The friend and colleague of the father, Simon-Auguste Tissot , was asked to do everything that belongs to a perfect education , even if it exceeded the estimated 400 Reichstaler per year . Katharina stayed with the four Murizet sisters who lived in Tissot's house and who were already taking in a girl from Poland.

In March 1775 Zimmermann intended to retire his daughter to Bern with the Haller family . Possibly the daughter's love affair was the reason for this. However, the father decided to personally bring the daughter back in May. On the return journey to Hanover, which they reached on October 5th, Zimmermann and his daughter were guests of the Goethe family in Frankfurt from September 22nd to September 27th. Johann Wolfgang Goethe was then 26 years old; his engagement to Lili Schönemann was about to be dissolved. To Johann Kaspar Lavater , he complains about the same time that he might extend further his letters, Goethe wrote on September 28 , his daughter is in itself not only interlocked resigned it is, and the door has softly ajar. When Zimmermann looked around the Wetterau for a few days on September 27 , while Katharina stayed with Goethe's mother, Goethe took a closer look: Slim and well-built, she appeared without delicacy, her regular face would have been pleasant if there had been a train of participation in it would have opened .

Goethe addressed the visit in his later autobiography From My Life. Poetry and truth . At that time Katharina confided in his mother (" Frau Aja ") and declared that she did not want to move in with her father. She would rather live as a slave or maid in Goethe's house than be exposed to the harshness and tyranny of her father. Frau Aja then spoke to Goethe and suggested that he marry Katharina. A marriage with a noble purpose, as it was quite common in bourgeois circles, he rejected with the words: “If it were an orphan, […] one could think about it and negotiate, but God save me from a father-in-law who would Such a father is! ”This version is doubted by Goethe's biographer Karl Goedeke , referring to Zimmermann's attitude towards his“ tenderly beloved daughter ”. Rather, Goedeke cites as an argument that, in his opinion, Katharina's still existing love affair in Lausanne. The desperate lover only committed suicide the following year.

In Hanover in December 1775, Katharina rejected the marriage proposal from a very well-off young courtier, supported by her father, because she assessed him as a petit-maître (roughly: vain dude ). Re-admitted to Frau von Döring's house in Hanover, she suffered a hemorrhage on December 31, 1780 as the first manifestation of pulmonary tuberculosis . She died on September 10, 1781 in the presence of her father. Johann Georg Zimmermann was present at the autopsy, during which he determined the sure signs of a pulmonary tuberculosis leading to death.

Katharina von Zimmermann as the archetype of the Mignon

Alfons Matthes believed that in 1900 he had found the archetype of the Mignon in Katharina von Zimmermann . This view did not prevail.

estate

A profile drawing of Goethe with the provenance of the Schaffhausen chaplain Veith (1835), which appeared in the art trade in 1917 and 2010, has been made by Katharina von Zimmermann.

literature

  • Karl Goedeke: On the chronology and biography of Goethe , In: Blätter für literary entertainment, Volume 2, FA Brockhaus, 1857, p. 913ff.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Goethe, Poetry and Truth , Volume III, Insel Taschenbuch 151, Frankfurt am Main, 1975, p. 727f. ISBN 3-458-01851-4
  • Alfons Matthes: Mignon, Goethe's heart: a soul disclosure in three parts, heart disclosure, poetry disclosure, and life disclosure s, Schkeuditz-Leipzig, W. Schäfer, 1900, p. 116f.
  • Johann Georg Zimmermann: The death of innocence. In: Ueber die Einsamkeit , Leipzig, Weidmann and Reich, 1785, Volume 3, p. 228ff. [1]

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Robert Steiger: Goethe's life from day to day: a documentary chronicle. Volume 1. 1749-1775 . Artemis, Zurich 1982, pp. 750-752.
  2. ↑ Karl Goedeke: On Goethe's chronology and biography, In: Blätter für literary entertainment, Volume 2, FA Brockhaus, 1857, p. 913ff.
  3. ↑ Cf. Christoph Lorey: The marriage in the classical work of Goethe , Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1995, p. 42.
  4. ^ Karl Goedeke: Goethe and Schiller , reprint of the edition from 1859, Salzwasserverlag, 2012, p. 35.
  5. ↑ Karl Goedeke: On Goethe's chronology and biography, In: Blätter für literary entertainment, Volume 2, FA Brockhaus, 1857, p. 913ff.
  6. ↑ Markus Zenker: Therapy in the literary text: Johann Georg Zimmermann's work "About Solitude" in his time, Walter de Gruyter, 2007, note 155 on p. 49.
  7. ↑ Alfons Matthes: Mignon, Goethe's heart: a soul disclosure in three parts, heart disclosure, poetry disclosure, and life disclosure, Schkeuditz-Leipzig, W. Schäfer, 1900, p. 116f.
  8. ↑ Michael Wetzel: Mignon: the child's bride as a phantasm of the Goethe time . Fink, Munich 1999, pp. 340–344, raises the question again and discusses it from the point of view of masturbation, which Katharina's Swiss pensioner Tissot fought against with pamphlets, and nymphomania.
  9. ↑ Richter & Kafitz Bamberg auction catalog, auction of July 24, 2010: painting, lot GE-523 .
personal data
SURNAME Zimmermann, Katharina von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zimmermann, Catharina von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Well-known Goethe
DATE OF BIRTH 1756
PLACE OF BIRTH Brugg
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 1781
Place of death Hanover