Maximiliane from La Roche

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Maximiliane from La Roche

Maximiliane von La Roche (born May 3, 1756 in Mainz , † November 19, 1793 in Frankfurt am Main ), actually Maximiliane Euphrosyne de La Roche , after marriage to Maximiliane Brentano , was a daughter of the writer Sophie von La Roche and Georg Michael von La Roche, Chancellor of the Elector of Trier.

Maximiliane von La Roche and her husband Peter Anton Brentano (right), as well as her mother Sophie von La Roche (left)

Maximiliane, called "Maxe", was close friends with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe after his time in Wetzlar . Lotte's famous black eyes (protagonist in his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther ) go back to “Maxe”.

Life

In Thal-Ehrenbreitstein, where the family lived near Koblenz , Maximiliane's mother Sophie von La Roche ran a literary salon, whose guests courted the daughter because of her grace and charm. Madame de La Roche tolerated the cult of her Maximiliane as long as the “chère Maman” was not forgotten.

Maximiliane married on January 9, 1774 at the age of 17, widowed, 21 years older Italian businessman and Kurtrierischen Councilor Peter Anton Brentano (1735-1797), one of the most successful merchants in Frankfurt. On the day of the wedding, Maximiliane moved as the landlady and stepmother of five children to the Nürnberger Hof in Frankfurt's old town. All at once , the young woman saw herself “transferred from the cheerful Thal-Ehrenbreitstein and a happy youth to a gloomy trading house” (Goethe), where, as Johann Heinrich Merck blasphemed, it stank of oil and cheese everywhere. At first Maximiliane found it difficult to get used to her new environment and role. From 1777, the Brentano family lived in their own house at the Golden Head in Grosse Sandgasse. Between 1775 and 1793 Maximiliane Brentano gave birth to twelve children, including Bettina von Arnim , née. Brentano, and Clemens Brentano . Her son Clemens and her daughter Bettina wrote literary history as romantic poets. The children, especially the poet's son Clemens, loved their mother idolatrously.

In 1793 Maximiliane Brentano died a few months after the birth of her twelfth child at the age of only 37.

Significance for Goethe's work The Sorrows of Young Werther

On the recommendation of his Darmstadt friend Johann Heinrich Merck , Johann Wolfgang Goethe came to La Roche in September 1772. Because of his unhappy love for the fiancé Charlotte Buff, he set out from Frankfurt on a hike on the Lahn and Rhine rivers, which ended in Thal-Ehrenbreitstein. There he got to know Maximiliane, who was then 16 years old, and soon felt attracted to the beautiful girl who, as he later wrote in Poetry and Truth , “was of course no other than amiable: rather small than tall in stature, nicely built; a free, graceful education, the blackest eyes and a complexion that could not be thought of as purer and more blooming ”.

Almost a year and a half later, Goethe met her again in Frankfurt, where she was now living as the wife of Peter Anton Brentano. Although she was out of reach for Goethe as a married woman, he adored her and there were violent arguments with her husband.

Goethe then decided to write down his epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther and thus also set Maximiliane a literary monument. In Werther , he fused Charlotte Buff and Maximiliane Brentano to form Lotte. Both the black eyes of “Maxe” and her husband's jealousy towards Goethe entered the novel.

children

The marriage of Peter Anton Brentano and Maximiliane had twelve children:

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The text is based on a font published by the Frankfurt Press and Information Office on the occasion of the 250th birthday of Maximiliane von La Roche, released on April 27, 2006
personal data
SURNAME La Roche, Maximiliane of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brentano, Maximiliane
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Daughter of the writer Sophie von La Roche and a childhood friend of Goethe
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1756
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1793
Place of death Frankfurt am Main