Louise zu Stolberg

This article is about the poet, translator and editor. For other people with a similar name, see Luise zu Stolberg .

Countess Louise Auguste Henriette zu Stolberg-Stolberg , also called Luise Stolberg or L (o) uise von Stolberg , (born January 13, 1799 in Stolberg (Harz) ; † August 15, 1875 ibid) was a German poet , translator and editor .

Restless youth

Louise was born as the daughter of Hereditary Count Friedrich zu Stolberg-Stolberg (1769–1803) and Countess Marianne. born of the marrow . Her mother was an illegitimate daughter of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm II with Wilhelmine Encke, Countess von Lichtenau . After her parents' divorce, which took place she was born in the year, she took the father to Denmark, where he on March 4, 1800 Lehnsgräfin the county Gyldensteen, Constanze Countess Knuth married. Marianne von der Mark married the Polish baron Kaspar von Miaskowski on March 14, 1801.

In the spring of 1804, her father's second marriage was also divorced, and he married Countess Henriette von Jett in Regensburg. After a long stay on Funen , Louise followed her mother , who was also her third marriage (to the French Etienne de Thierry), to Paris , where she attended a boarding school.

At the age of fifteen Louise came to the court of Friedrich Wilhelm III. , where she made friends with her cousin, the Crown Prince and later King Friedrich Wilhelm IV . After he ascended the throne, Louise zu Stolberg became an ardent royalist . After the death of her father, his brother Joseph (1771–1839) became regent of the county of Stolberg-Stolberg . On May 22, 1819 he married his niece Louise in Berlin after signing a marriage contract.

She apparently suffered from her changeful family relationships: “All my relationships are called Stief!” She confessed to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense in 1841 , as he noted in his diary. She kept a portrait of her mother and a small bust of her grandmother, the Countess von Lichtenau, for life.

Countess in Stolberg

In her marriage to the older hereditary count, she proved her practical ability to live as the mistress of Stolberg Castle and on the country estate in Rottleberode , where the couple spent every summer. She was the mother of five children: Alfred (1820–1903), Mathilda (1823–1873), Elisabeth (1825–1907), Maria (1835–1872) and Luise (1835–1872). After the death of her husband, she took over the guardianship and administration until her heirs were of legal age. She spent the years of her widowhood, from a few trips to Berlin to her maternal half-sister, Josephine Countess von Königsmarck, née. apart from Miaskowski (1804–1862), in Stolberg.

“She cares for everyone to the best of her ability,” wrote Varnhagen, “keeps things moderate, communicates, cheers, she practices the most beautiful human business, the feminine one, of benefit through her presence, through words and senses, when the hand is not enough. "

Literary activity

The poems of Louise zu Stolberg, initially published anonymously but later known under her name (in changing spellings), were primarily an expression of her political sentiments. She showed unreserved veneration to the ruling monarch in König, of whose divine right she was convinced. She dedicated three collections of poetry to him under the title King Songs . The March Revolution of 1848/49 condemned them most decidedly. When the request of the Democrats in the Second Chamber of the Prussian National Assembly wanted to convert the cadet schools into civil schools, she wrote her childhood friend, the King, a letter of protest.

In response , she was occasionally anonymous contributor to the ultra-conservative Kreuzzeitung .

With her convictions she stood in irreconcilable opposition to the freedom efforts of the poets of Vormärz and Young Germany , which she received as a reader. She read travel reports by Heinrich Laube with enthusiasm, and sought polemical arguments with other authors. So she included satirical verses and epigrams against Heine and Georg Herwegh in the volume Psychorama des Scheintodten . She pays poetic homage to other contemporaries such as Alexander von Humboldt , Friedrich Rückert , George Sand and Rahel Varnhagen von Ense .

Stolberg also shared an interest in Persian poetry with Rückert and conducted language studies in order to be able to translate from Persian . A number of essays that are believed to have been in her estate must be considered lost.

Letter writer

Louise zu Stolberg conducted extensive correspondence with many contemporary authors, including Bettina von Arnim , Karl August Varnhagen, Friedrich von Bodenstedt , and Ida Hahn-Hahn . The writer Hohenzollern Prince Georg of Prussia used to submit his dramatic manuscripts to her for examination. The collection of letters, which was once organized into 38 volumes, must now largely be considered lost. Parts are in archives and private collections; occasionally one-off items appear in the autograph trade.

Last years of life

After the death of Friedrich Wilhelm IV, she dedicated the royal songs to his widow Elisabeth . She showed little interest in the government of his successor, the later Emperor Wilhelm I, and the work of Bismarck . The publication of Varnhagen's diaries by his niece Ludmilla Assing , which primarily documented political events and statements in her selection, tried to counteract with a brochure that allegedly contained “suppressed pages”, in reality copies she had made of notes made available on loan .

After her health was weakened in the spring of 1875, Louise zu Stolberg died at the age of 76 on August 15 of the same year.

Works

• King songs , Stolberg am Harz, Leipzig 1841.
• Psychorama of an apparent death , Leipzig 1847.
• King songs. Second row , Berlin 1858.
• (Ed.) Varnhagen von Ense in Stolberg. Suppressed pages from his diary , n.d., ca.1862.
• The green room , Berlin 1865.
• In memory of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia. Older and newer royal songs , Berlin 1867.

literature

• Feodor von Wehl : Psychorama of an apparent death. In: Telegraph for Germany . Vol. 11 (1848), No. 23, pp. 757-764.
• Karl August Varnhagen von Ense : Psychorama of an apparent death. In other words: Memories and Mixed Scriptures. Vol. 8, Leipzig 1859, pp. 421-424.
• OW Gerlach: Funeral speech, spoken on August 19, 1875 at the coffin of your exalted, the widowed, ruling Countess mother, Mrs. Louise, Auguste, Henriette zu Stolberg-Stolberg , Stolberg am Harz 1875.
• Elise von Hohenhausen : King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. And Countess Stolberg. A souvenir picture. In: Deutsches Tageblatt, January 1, 1886
• Pfitzner:  Stolberg-Stolberg, Luise Countess too . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 36, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1893, pp. 370-372.
• Stolberg-Stolberg, Countess Luise too . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 2. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 340 ( digitized version ).
• Paul Kahl: "Should this demon suddenly break out with us now, unprepared ..." Between constitution and divine right. From the letters of Karl August Varnhagen von Ense to Louise Countess zu Stolberg-Stolberg. In: Schiller-Jahrbuch 47 (2003), pp. 11–37.

Web links

• Literature by and about Louise zu Stolberg-Stolberg in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Varnhagen von Ense in Stolberg. Suppressed pages from his diary. OO, no year approx. 1862, entry from June 18, 1841, p. 6.