Lotte room

Tower of the Zimmer family in Tübingen, today the Hölderlin tower

Charlotte Zimmer (usually called Lotte , colloquially "Loddle" , born November 22, 1813 in Tübingen ; † November 7, 1879 there ) was the landlady and nurse of the mentally confused Friedrich Hölderlin in Tübingen. Their correspondence and their reports are valuable testimonies to Hölderlin's living conditions and visits at that time. In Tübingen she was honored with a memorial and the name of a dormitory for people with mental illness.

origin

Lotte Zimmer was the daughter of the master carpenter Ernst Friedrich Zimmer (* 1772, † 1838) and his wife Maria Elisabetha, b. Gfrörer († 1849), whom he married in 1801. Of her five siblings, only two survived the birth: Christiane (* 1803) and Christian Friedrich (* 1806). Her godfather was the Tübingen draftsman Johann Christian Partzschefeldt .

Hölderlin was forcibly taken to Tübingen by his family on September 15, 1806 and interned there in the city clinic. In May 1807 he was released from the clinic, with the prognosis of "at most three years" to live. On May 4, 1807, 37-year-old Hölderlin moved in with the Zimmer family to take care of them, shortly after the then 34-year-old Ernst Zimmer bought the " tower " on the Neckar. Zimmer ran a carpenter's shop on the ground floor and lived upstairs with his family. A room was set up in the tower for Holderlin, and Holderlin's mother, who lives in Nürtingen, paid for board and lodging. Looking back, Ernst Zimmer writes:

“I visited Holderlin in the clinic and regretted him very much that such a beautiful, Herlicher spirit should go to the bottom. Since there was nothing more to be done with Hölderlin in the clinic, the Canzler Autenrit suggested that I take Hölderlin into my house, he didn't know of a more suitable place. "

From around 1810, further rooms in the tower house were rented to students, as the Zimmer family also lived from the rental income. Holderlin received a lot of visitors, always following the same ritual.

Role in sick visits

Lotte, or earlier her father, brought in the visitors. Hölderlin never received his visitors sitting, but always leaning against a cupboard while standing. He allowed nothing but the exchange of courtesies. Holderlin tried to keep his distance by addressing his visitors with invented titles. For him everyone was a "Majesty" or "Your Holiness". The only favor he was persuaded to do was to write short poems. They were mostly quatrains that he quickly, almost mechanically, scribbled on paper. He then signed these with fantasy names, e.g. B. "Scardanelli", "Buanarotti" or "Salvator Rosa" and added fantastic dates. Lotte could not say whether these visits were good for him or not, but he must have felt like an object to be seen, for many only came to see how a mad poet lives. The student Wilhelm Waiblinger wrote on July 3, 1822 about a visit to Hölderlin and Lotte's sister Christiane:

Hölderlin's tower room on the first floor

“We were climbing a flight of stairs when we were met by a very pretty girl. I do not know whether I was more delighted by a large, living eye ... or the very dearest, delicate neck and the young, so lovely bosom or the proportions of the small figure, enough my eyes were drunk on her when she asked whom we wanted to go to. We were spared the answer, for an open door showed us a small, whitewashed amphitheater room, devoid of any ordinary decoration, in which stood a man with his hands in his trousers that reached only to his hips and incessantly before us compliments made. The girl whispered, that's it! "

Care 1838–1843

After the death of her father in 1838, Lotte's sister Christiane initially wanted to take care-dependent Hölderlin with her into her household. Lotte took over the maintenance in the tower. From January 1839 she took care of Holderlin and also took care of the accounts with Holderlin's guardianship. It is mainly these files and a few surviving letters from later times that prove Lotte Zimmer's activity as Holderlin's nurse. The Nürtingen guardianship files were only discovered in the 1990s. Hölderlin died in Tübingen in 1843, the circumstances of death are documented, among other things, by letters from Lotte Zimmer.

After Hölderlin's death

Lotte Zimmer was able to keep the house until 1865, when it was sold and she moved to live with her sister in Balingen for a few years . Around 1875 she lived in Tübingen again, albeit for rent. She died unmarried in Tübingen on November 7th, 1879 at the age of 65, a little over 36 years after Hölderlin's death.

Memorial for Lotte Zimmer by Johannes Kares in Tübingen on Bursaplatz, 2011

The Lotte-Zimmer-Haus of the Freundeskreis Mensch in the southern part of Tübingen , which opened in 2006 and is a facility for living and day care for mentally ill people, is named after Lotte Zimmer . In Tübingen, a monument, a bronze by Johannes Kares , commemorates Lotte Zimmer.

Fonts

• Angelika Overath (Ed.): "From the Reality of Life" - Hir das Blatt: News from everyday life with Friedrich Hölderlin. Mitget. by Lotte Zimmer . Compiled by Angelika Overath and Gregor Wittkop from known and unknown sources. Friedenauer Presse, Berlin 1997

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Volker Richert: Hölderlin monument by Johannes Kares in Tübingen.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) ArtCore, March 15, 2011.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Anja Thüer: Forgotten History.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Hölderlin - Large Stuttgart Edition - Complete Works , Ed .: Friedrich Beißner / Adolf Beck, Volume 7.3, No. 528
4. ^ Gregor Wittkop. Holderlin. The foster son. Texts and documents 1806–1843, with the newly discovered Nürtingen guardianship files. Stuttgart / Weimar 1993.
5. ↑ Tübingen, Lotte-Zimmer-Haus ( Memento of the original from January 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Karl Corino: Cutter bucket with handle: Why neither Holderlin nor Lotte Zimmer deserve this monument . Schwäbisches Tagblatt, March 23, 2011.