Marianne Ehrmann

Marianne Ehrmann
anonymous silhouette
Life dates
Born	Marianne Brentano November 25, 1755 Rapperswil SG , Switzerland
Died	August 14, 1795 (Age 39) Stuttgart , Germany
activity	Editor, writer, journalist
husband	Theophil Friedrich Ehrmann

Marianne Brentano , married Ehrmann (born November 25, 1755 in Rapperswil , † August 14, 1795 in Stuttgart ) was a German- Swiss actress , writer , journalist of the Enlightenment and was one of the first publishers in German-speaking countries.

Life

Family and youth

Marianne Ehrmann was born in Rapperswil on Lake Zurich , in Switzerland. Her father, Franz Xaver Brentano, was a businessman who lost his fortune during his lifetime. He had eight children with his wife and Ehrmann's mother, Maria Sebastiana, née Conti. After the death of her siblings and parents, she had to fight her way through life as an outsider at the age of 16 or 19.

From 1771 or 1775 she lived temporarily with her uncle, the theologian and enlightener Dominikus von Brentano , who worked as a collegiate chaplain and clergyman secretary in the Kempten monastery and supported her. However, for moral or religious reasons, he could not give her a place of refuge for long, so she had to move from him as housekeeper to another relative who did not treat her well.

Life crisis and change

In 1777 Marianne Ehrmann married an officer who was addicted to gambling so that she no longer had to live with her relative. She entered into this marriage not for love, but to gain an advantage in society. She knew that a woman without a father and a husband would lead a defenseless life. The marriage was unhappy, the violent husband often beat Ehrmann when he came home with an empty wallet. Pregnancy even ended in stillbirth. Eventually the officer went into hiding after money fraud and Marianne Ehrmann had to take over his debts, with her uncle Dominikus von Brentano supporting her. With his help, she obtained divorce in 1779 . Due to a nervous breakdown , her uncle enabled a recreational and educational trip through Germany and Italy. After her return she had to earn her own living and tried her hand at being a governess in Vienna , which she did not succeed, which resulted in a social decline. Marianne Ehrmann finds herself as the fallen girl who becomes the main theme in her writings.

Paths to journalism

After her divorce she could no longer flee to her relatives. A second marriage was also not in sight, so there was only one alternative for the divorced Marianne Ehrmann: around 1780 she joined traveling actors in Vienna under the stage name Madame von Sternheim , which is borrowed from a novel by Sophie von La Roche . That was the only way to preserve material and ideal independence, because because of her spirited and direct manner, she could not find a job as a housekeeper or educator. However, she also learned that an actress is not being properly respected. This gave her a humiliating social position and later warned against this profession in one of her novels.

But Marianne Ehrmann was lucky. After four years of moving around, she managed to take off after her debut as a writer. In 1783 she separated from the acting troupe in Strasbourg to work as a writer after the success of the philosophy of a woman . At that time Theophil Friedrich Ehrmann, who had a doctorate in law, was working as a reviewer for political and literary magazines in Strasbourg. Theophil Friedrich Ehrmann, who was seven years his junior, fell in love with Marianne Ehrmann and wanted to marry her. His family, from the wealthy bourgeoisie, was against the relationship with an elderly, destitute and divorced woman. Their marriage was secretly concluded in Germany around 1785/86. Marianne Ehrmann was initially hidden from his family in the country. After that she had to stay in his city apartment. Theophil Ehrmann, however, stayed with his parents. During this time, Marianne Ehrmann's first publications were made. After a lot of arguments, he was reconciled with his parents.

In 1787 the Ehrmanns moved to Isny and tried to set up a publishing company on the basis of literary production. They did not succeed in doing this because self-publishing turned out to be financial ruin. A year later the company moved to Stuttgart . Her autobiographical novel Amalie met with a great response . A True Story in Letters that appeared in 1788. In 1790 a house daughter, Johanne Christiane Husuwadel, came to the couple's house. In 1792 Marianne and Theophil Ehrmann took in an illegitimate baby as theirs, as Marianne Ehrmann could not have children due to her illnesses.

From 1790 the educator Marianne Ehrmann published the women's magazine Amaliens Erholidays . In her marriage to Theophil Ehrmann, Marianne Ehrmann had many more options: she and her husband were able to build up a presence as a writer, publicist and editor. This ensured her an independent existence. Right from the start, the couple relied on income from writing, with Marianne Ehrmann contributing most of the common income. She didn't take the risk of becoming a writer, because from the start she had little chance of being recognized as an 'honorable' woman in society. So she no longer had a reputation to lose, but could only win someone better. At the beginning of her career, Marianne Ehrmann had no social support whatsoever. She was a bad example to other women in society as she wrote about her past and childlessness.

Marianne Ehrmann had to show consideration for her husband. Although he led her into journalism, he resented her success and the fact that she was taking on the breadwinner role. Theophil Ehrmann was himself a scientist, but this was not recognized and he was therefore unsuccessful, making his wife look ridiculous and exposing her. For these reasons, Marianne Ehrmann developed depression and was often ill. Nevertheless, she was very happy in this marriage, as her husband helped her to a second, socially legitimate existence. He supported her in getting into writing, even though she had a difficult time getting into Stuttgart society.

In 1793, Marianne Ehrmann realized her ideas with the Orell, Gessner, Füssli & Cie. appearing magazine Die Einsiedlerinn from the Alps . In terms of content, it was directed massively against the conditions in contemporary society, which, however, was formulated with great caution.

Front cover of the first edition of Amalia's Hours of Relaxation

Marianne Ehrmann-Brentano died of pneumonia on August 14, 1795 at the age of 39 in Stuttgart.

Journalistic work and editorial activities

Amalia's relaxation hours. Teutschland's daughters consecrated by Marianne Ehrmann (Jan. 1790 - Dec. 1792)

Amalia's Recovery Hours was the first women's magazine to be published monthly. From the time it was published, Marianne Ehrmann was a confident author and no longer had to hide behind a pseudonym. She was now responsible for all statements in her magazine. This was published in 1790 in the first year of self-publishing, Verlag der Expedizion des Beobachter , the Ehrmann couple. Marianne Ehrmann tried very hard to advertise her magazine. She sent advance notices to acquaintances, friends and potential patrons in order to distribute them among friends, but mostly without great success. After the first six sample issues, an increase of 60 subscribers was determined, so the publication of the magazine was continued. Distribution even went to outsiders, such as the local post office. The debts incurred through self-publishing were paid off, but Theophil Ehrmann was no longer able to cover the necessary expenses for Amalia's recovery hours after the first half of the year. So the publisher was handed over to the post office. Marianne and Theophil Ehrmann only had to do the editorial work and the writing. The publishing house was finally handed over to the JG Cottaische Verlagsbuchhandlung in Tübingen, so all rights were overwritten by the contract. From January 1791, Amalia's recovery hours at Cotta were relocated.

Marianne Ehrmann was responsible for the punctual receipt of the contributions and the completeness of the manuscripts. The publisher determined the number of copies of the magazine and was able to reprint it to the couple without any additional fee. Marianne Ehrmann received 66 bottles. ( Guilders ) for eleven sheets in one month. The fee was to be increased to 16.5 per sheet as soon as the number of subscribers exceeded 2000. With the new publishing house, Marianne Ehrmann was able to concentrate completely on her journalistic work.

The magazine was very successful. The print run of around 1,000 copies for a paper aimed at women was relatively high. The subscription for six months cost two guilders. Most of the audience came from southern Germany, such as Württemberg , but also from other areas of Germany such as Leipzig , Berlin and Hamburg . There were also numerous subscribers from abroad, such as Switzerland, France , Italy and Denmark . They also belonged to the higher social circles, the upper middle class. With this magazine, Marianne Ehrmann wanted to give her readers their idea of ​​social structures, the aim of which should not only have an instructive and ennobling effect on the minds of their fellow human beings, but they should also judge the social structures and express their opinion on them.

From the second year of the issue, a preliminary censorship was set, which was not the case before. Censors were able to prevent questionable articles from being printed and oblige the editors to change them or delete them from the magazine. Marianne Ehrmann therefore had to formulate her socially critical content very carefully. The magazine Amaliens Erholungsstunden included true stories, anecdotes, narratives, articles on history and geography, current news, glosses on social and moral issues, etc. These alternated and were loosened up and supplemented by music supplements, poems and title pages. The first part of the magazine consisted of moral and satirical articles, such as the position of women in society and the everyday world of readers. Using individual fates, Marianne Ehrmann illustrated the reality of female life and gave readers advice on possible dangers and virtues worth striving for. The second part served to entertain the readership.

Theophil Ehrmann also worked on his wife's magazine. He wrote popular science and daily political articles that were always to be found at the end of that issue. He dealt with the position of women and their rights and duties in other countries. In Marianne Ehrmann's articles there were often malicious men against whom she warned her readers. She exposed the mindset of men as small-minded and ridiculed them. At the time Amalien's Recovery Hours was being published, the female public was severely restricted. Through her contributions she advocated women's rights. Marianne Ehrmann wanted women to be accepted as individuals and taken seriously. She also called for better education and training for women and thus for men to be 'improved'.

The second year of the magazine changed compared to the first: popular scientific articles by Theophil Ehrmann disappeared. He dealt almost exclusively with the translation of foreign language anecdotes and stories. Marianne Ehrmann's contributions remained dominant, but were worded more and more cautiously and attacks against men fell sharply. True stories and serial novels about the fallen girl have almost never been picked up in the magazine. Instead, love stories and historical novels were published that were only intended for entertainment and did not come from Marianne Ehrmann, but from male employees.

In the third year of Amalia's relaxation hours , the magazine became more and more conventional, so that no articles by Theophil Ehrmann appeared. Marianne Ehrmann's articles also continued to decline. Your demands for a fairer society for women no longer sounded confident as they did at the beginning of the publication. The magazine was thus determined by external contributions, which ascribed the woman an existence as a wife with almost no rights, but with certain duties. The magazine was adapted to contemporary social values. The couple separated from the publisher and gave him the magazine, which renamed it the new Journal Flora .

The hermit from the Alps. Teutonic daughters consecrated by Marianne Ehrmann (Jan. 1793 - Dec. 1794)

In the spring of 1792, the Zurich publishing house Orell, Gessner, Füßli & Cie. Marianne Ehrmann to continue her work as a publicist. In 1792, Marianne Ehrmann wanted to publish a magazine at the same time as the former Cotta publishing house. At the beginning of December 1792, the first issue of the hermit from the Alps was completed. Since her old audience stayed with the new magazine Flora , Marianne Ehrmann had to attract new readers with this new magazine. The couple informed their previous subscribers of Amalia 's recovery hours about their new magazine by sending out circular letters . In the new issue, Marianne Ehrmann once again had the chance to revive her tried and tested newspaper profile.

With the start of the cooperation with the new publishing house, Marianne Ehrmann's business position improved. Her husband took over the legal processes. When problems arose between him and the publisher, the publisher wanted to terminate the collaboration with the couple. Out of respect for Marianne Ehrmann alone, she was allowed to continue to publish the magazine. The Hermit from the Alps hardly differed from the previous magazine. The distribution of readers also remained the same. The wide distribution area spoke for a great success of the magazine. This again included true stories and serial novels. Theophil Ehrmann wrote only a few articles, but took over the correction of the articles. Marianne Ehrmann chose her employees herself. She hired Friedrich David Gräter, who became a good friend. Among their employees were u. a. Friederike Brun and Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel also represented.

The editing of the magazine was in the hands of Marianne Ehrmann. The publisher only got the manuscripts to print. For Marianne Ehrmann, working as an editor was a full-time job: she had to prepare the manuscripts, select contributions from her staff and write her own articles. Theophil Ehrmann's correction also took a particularly long time. In addition, there were Marianne Ehrmann's illnesses, which delayed the publication of the magazine, so that there were only a few articles from her in the November and December issues. The booklets therefore consisted of 70% external contributions. From the second year in 1794, the magazine appeared very irregularly and unpunctually. In September 1794, the March issue was only available in the Rhineland. In February 1795 the editors were still working on the September issues. At the beginning of June the last issue was finished and Marianne Ehrmann, plagued by years of illnesses, no longer thought of continuing the magazine.

The hermit from the Alps limited herself to discussing the role of women in society, but without a political background, as was customary in Amalia's recreational hours. Political events such as the French Revolution were only reported privately. A very big topic of this magazine was the social inferiority of women. In this issue, Marianne Ehrmann called for education for women. The new magazine Die Einsiedlerinn from the Alps remained far behind its predecessor in terms of content and topic. Marianne Ehrmann's dream of individual female independence and the hope for a progressive, female public were not realized.

Literary works

• Philosophy of a woman: From an observer in 1784. Kempten 1784. Freely available as digitized version.
• Idle hours in a woman's room . 1784.
• Carelessness and good heart or the consequences of upbringing . An original play in five acts. Hot publishing house approx. 1786. Also published under the pseudonym Hagemann, Grätz 1798.
• Graf Bilding. A story from the middle ages. 1788.
• The unfortunate Hanne . 1790.
• Stories. 1795.
• Amalia's celebration hours. 1796. Selection from the estate.
• Antonie von Wanstein. A story from our age . 1798

Since August 1788 she was involved in the journal, Der Beobachter, published by her husband, a work with political, moral and satyrical content. Since the 1990s, Marianne Ehrmann's works have been made available again in new editions.

• Marianne Ehrmann: One woman, one word. Small fragments for thinkers . Edited by Maya Widmer u. Doris Stump. Kore, Freiburg (i. Brsg.) 1994, ISBN 3-926023-51-1 .
• Marianne Ehrmann: Amalie. A true story in letters . 1787. Ed. Maya Widmer u. Doris Stump (Swiss texts, vol. 6). Chronos Verlag, Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-0340-0820-1 .
• Marianne Ehrmann: The hermit from the Alps . Edited by Annette Zunzer (Swiss Texts, Vol. 15). Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-0340-0827-9 .
• Marianne Ehrmann: Nina's letters to her lover . Zenodotus, 2007, ISBN 978-3-86640-129-7 .

literature

• Rochus von Liliencron:  Ehrmann, Theophil Friedrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 721. (Description shared with her husband)
• Constantin von Wurzbach : Sternheim, Madame . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 38th part. Imperial and Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1879, p. 308 ( digitized version ).
• Britt-Angela Kirstein: Marianne Ehrmann. Publicist and editor in the late 18th century . DUV, Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 3-8244-4251-5 . (also dissertation, Univ. Oldenburg, 1994)
• Helga Stipa Madland: Marianne Ehrmann: Reason and Emotion in Her Life and Works . Peter Lang, 1998, ISBN 0-8204-3929-0 .
• Therese Bichsel: Your heart needs a man: Marianne Ehrmann-Brentano. Writer and thinker. Novel . Zytglogge, Oberhofen 2006, ISBN 3-7296-0707-3 .
• Wolfgang Petz: Between experience and fiction: Upper Swabia in the eyes of the writer couple Marianne and Theophil Ehrmann . In: Dietmar Schiersner u. a. (Ed.): Augsburg, Swabia and the rest of the world. New contributions to national and regional history. (Festschrift Rolf Kießling). Augsburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-89639-822-2 , pp. 299-323.
• Ruth P. Dawson: "Confronting the Lords of Creation: Marianne Ehrmann (1755-1795)." In Dawson: The Contested Quill: Literature by Women in Germany 1770-1880. University of Delaware, Newark, Del. 2002, ISBN 978-0-87413-762-0 , 221-285.
• Mary Helen Dupree: The Mask and the Quill. Actress-Writers in Germany from Enlightenment to Romanticism. Bucknell Univ. Press, Bucknell, PA 2011, ISBN 978-1-61148-024-5 , pp. 100-133.
• Friedrich, Margret / Urbanitsch, Peter: From citizens and their wives. Böhlau publishing house. Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-205-98526-5 .
• Helga Neumann: Between emancipation and adaptation. Protagonists of the German magazine industry in the late 18th century (1779-1795). Publishing house Königshausen und Neumann GmbH. Würzburg 1999, ISBN 3-8260-1728-5 .
• Ulrike Weckel: Order, Politics and Sociability of the Sexes in the 18th Century. Wallstein. Göttingen 1998, ISBN 3-89244-304-1 .
• Ulrike Weckel: Between domesticity and the public: The first German women's magazines in the late 18th century and their audience. Niemeyer. Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-484-35061-X .
• Erichwege: The family book of Friedrich von Matthissons: Transcription and commentary on the facsimile. Wallstein Publishing House. Göttingen 2007, ISBN 3-8353-0002-4 .

Web links

Commons : Marianne Ehrmann  - Collection of Images

Wikisource: Marianne Ehrmann  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Marianne Ehrmann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Marianne Ehrmann at Zeno.org .
• Works by Marianne Ehrmann in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Maya Widmer: Ehrmann, Marianne. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• The Hermit from the Alps , 1794, doi: 10.3931 / e-rara-14448

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Web Forgotten Women Guide (PDF)
2. ↑ Ways 2007: 59
3. ^ Neumann 1999: 178
4. ^ Neumann 1999: 179f.
5. ^ Neumann 1999: 181
6. ↑ Neumann 1999: 182f.
7. ^ Neumann 1999: 184f.
8. ↑ Kirstein 1994: 45 f.
9. ↑ Kirstein 1994: 47ff.
10. ^ Profile on Bibliomedia
11. ↑ Weckel 1998: 119
12. ↑ Weckel 1998: 120
13. ↑ Weckel 1998: 123
14. ↑ Weckel 1998: 125
15. ↑ Weckel 1998: 127f.
16. ↑ Weckel 1998: 139
17. ^ Neumann 1999: 93
18. ↑ Weckel 1998: 123
19. ^ Neumann 1999: 95
20. ^ Neumann 1999: 98
21. ^ Neumann 1999: 100
22. ^ Digitized at Zeno.org. [1]
23. ↑ see also Anne Fleig: Action-Game-Spaces: Dramas by female authors in the theater of the late 18th century. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1999, ISBN 3-8260-1525-8 , p. 109.