Ludmilla Assing
Rosa Ludmilla Assing (born February 22, 1821 in Hamburg , † March 25, 1880 in Florence , 1873/74 Assing-Grimelli ) was a German writer, biographer, translator, editor and illustrator. She also wrote under the pseudonyms Achim Lothar and Talora . Assing contributed to the political events of her time, such as the March Revolution in 1848 and the Italian Risorgimento .
Assing bequeathed her own extensive literary estate and what is now known as the Varnhagen Collection to the Royal Library of Berlin .
Life
Ludmilla was the second daughter of the writer, educator and silhouette artist Rosa Maria Varnhagen and the Jewish medical doctor David Assur Assing , who came from Königsberg . She grew up in a liberal and musically and spiritually inspired family. Her mother received Heinrich Heine , Friedrich Hebbel , Karl Gutzkow and the poets of Junge Deutschland in her salon ; her daughters Ottilie and Ludmilla took part in political discussions.
After the death of their parents, the sisters moved to live with their uncle Karl August Varnhagen in Berlin . While Ottilie left the house during a dispute and later emigrated to the USA, Ludmilla Assing stayed with him and his wife Rahel Varnhagen until Varnhagen's death in 1858 and inherited their extensive estate (→ see article Varnhagen Collection ).
Even before 1848, Ludmilla Assing wrote feuilletons, later also political reports, for example in the Telegraph for Germany , later in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , in Europe. Chronicle of the educated world and the seasons . She and her uncle experienced the March Revolution in Berlin . Her eyewitness accounts of the barricade fight appeared that same year. As a talented draftsman, she also created pastel portraits of Varnhagen's visitors, including a portrait of Gottfried Keller , with whom she corresponded for years. Her friends also included Ferdinand Lassalle , the couple Emma and Georg Herwegh , Hedwig Dohm and Prince Pückler .
When she published the scandalous letters of Alexander von Humboldt and later the Varnhagen diaries (14 vols., 1862–1870) in the spring of 1860 , she became world-famous and prosecuted at the same time. Otto von Bismarck had the diary volumes relating to 1848 confiscated and put the publisher Brockhaus under pressure by banning the newspaper.
Assing continued her work as a publisher and writer, initially at other publishers and later again at Brockhaus. She lived in Florence from 1862. In the same year she was sentenced to eight months in absentia. In Italy, she joined the left wing of the Risorgimento , writing bilingual for Italian and German magazines and translating from Italian. In 1863 she was in a relationship with the journalist Andrea Gianelli. Their child Carlo died at the age of three weeks. At the beginning of 1864, the second trial against her, among other things for lese majesty and again in absentia, ended with a two-year prison sentence. She was in contact with Mikhail Bakunin and translated his article. She published in the Allgemeine deutsche Arbeiter-Zeitung and in Il Popolo d'Italia, founded by Giuseppe Mazzini .
Between 1861 and 1874 she published a large part of her aunt Rahel Varnhagen's correspondence. She also published the literary estate of Prince Pückler and his biography in 1873. She was a correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse and wrote for the Wiener Abendpost and the Frankfurter Zeitung . Your anonymously written correspondence from Italy forms a little history of the Risorgimento in itself. Assing ran a salon in which, for example, Angelo De Gubernatis and Giovanni Verga were guests. In 1873 Ludmilla Assing married Cino Grimelli, who was 25 years his junior, which caused quite a stir in German newspapers. After a few months the divorce took place.
Ludmilla Assing died of meningitis after spending two weeks in the Manicomio di S. Bonifacio near Florence . Her burial place is on the Cimitero Evangelico agli Allori , Via Senese in Florence. Her grave bust was designed by Cesare Sighinolfi.
estate
Ludmilla Assing bequeathed her estate to the Royal Library of Berlin (today's Berlin State Library ). He was transferred there - including numerous works of art and valuable books, her uncle's autograph collections and other literary legacies (such as those of Ludwig Robert , Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau and Friedrich Apollonius von Maltitz ) - by their executor Salvatore Battaglia in the spring of 1881. It is kept there as the Varnhagen collection. After the war-related relocation of numerous incunabula during World War II, the most valuable part of this collection, comprising letters from and to 9,000 people, is kept in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska . In Germany, Assing's journalistic work and her donation to the Varnhagen Collection have hardly received any appreciation.
From her legacy, the Scuola Ludmilla Assing was also founded, which should be run as a commercial school according to democratic principles ( “secondo i principii della vera democrazia” ). It can be traced back to around 1936.
Works
- approx. 50 volumes from the estate of Varnhagen von Ense and from the estate of Prince Pückler-Muskau
- Countess Elisa von Ahlefeldt , the wife of Adolph von Lützow , the friend of Karl Immermann , a biography. Along with letters from Karl Immermann, [Anton Wilhelm] Möller and Henriette Paalzow . Berlin 1857. Digitized by the Central and State Library Berlin, 2013. URN urn: nbn: de: kobv: 109-1-9109450
- Sophie von La Roche , Wieland 's friend (1859)
- Letters from Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense (1860)
- Translation by Piero Cironi: The Art of the Rebels and The National Press in Italy (1863)
- Translation of Giuseppe Mazzini's collected writings in 2 volumes (1865)
- Vita Piero Cironi (Prato 1865); German translation: Piero Cironi, A contribution to the history of the revolution in Italy , Leipzig: Matthes 1867
- Biography: Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau . 2 volumes (1873/1874) new edition 2004, volume 1 ISBN 3-487-12029-1 ; Volume 2 ISBN 3-487-12030-5
- Features and political reports (partly anonymous) for: Telegraph für Deutschland ; Seasons. Magazine of literature, arts and social entertainment; Europe. Chronicle of the Educated World; German General Newspaper (Leipzig); Conversations at the home hearth; Frankfurter Zeitung; New Free Press; The gazebo ; German sheets; Westermann's Illustrirte Deutsche Monatshefte; Wiener Abendpost; Il Dovere; L'Igea; Il Popolo d'Italia; Rivista europea; Lo Zenzero.
literature
- Lieselotte Blumenthal: Assing, married Grimelli, Rosa Ludmilla. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 419 ( digitized version ).
- Nikolaus Gatter: “Poison, downright poison for the ignorant public.” The literary estate of Karl August Varnhagen von Ense and the polemic against Ludmilla Assing's editions (1860–1880) . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 1996, ISBN 3-89528-149-2 .
- Nikolaus Gatter: "Literacy in women's skirt": Ludmilla Assing. Contemporary witness, writer, documentarist . In: Johanna Ludwig, Ilse Nagelschmidt, Susanne Schötz (eds.): Women in the bourgeois revolution of 1848/49 . Federal Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth, Berlin 1998, pp. 188–196.
- Nikolaus Gatter: “Last piece of the telegraph. We all helped bury him… ”Ludmilla Assing's journalistic beginnings in the year of the revolution . In: International Yearbook of the Bettina von Arnim Society . Vol. 11/12, 1999/2000, pp. 101-120.
- Varnhagen Society: Macaroni and spirit food. Almanac of the Varnhagen Gesellschaft e. V. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8305-0296-6 (with the lectures of the Ludmilla Assing Colloquium in the Villa Romana, Florence 2000).
- Martin Hundt : Ludmilla Assing and Karl Marx . In: Contributions to Marx-Engels research. New series 2005. Argument Verlag, Hamburg 2005, pp. 259–268
- Walter Schmidt (Hrsg.): Actors of a radical change. Men and women of the revolution of 1848/49. Volume 3. Fides, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-931363-15-4 .
- Nikolaus Gatter: "If you could have everything complete, that would also be my ideal." Ludmilla Assing and the correspondence from and with (the) deceased. In Jana Kittelmann (ed.): Letter networks around Hermann von Pückler-Muskau. Thelem Verlag, Dresden 2015, pp. 207–226, ISBN 978-3-945363-06-5 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Ludmilla Assing in the catalog of the German National Library
- Literature by and about Ludmilla Assing in the catalog of the Berlin State Library .
- Varnhagen Society : Biographical Chronicle Varnhagen / Assing
- Frauen-Kultur-Archiv, Universität Düsseldorf: Ludmilla Assing (short portrait), accessed on November 1, 2018
- Rotraut Fischer, Christina Ujima: Vanishing Point Florence. German-Florentines during the Risorgimento between epigonality and utopia ; especially about the role of Ludmilla Assings, accessed on October 31, 2018
- NEWW Women Writers
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Varnhagen / Assing Biographical Chronicle on the Varnhagen Society website, accessed on October 31, 2018
- ^ A b Correspondence between Assing and Keller
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Assing, Ludmilla |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lothar, Achim |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 22, 1821 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hamburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 25, 1880 |
| Place of death | Florence |