Rahel Varnhagen from Ense

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Portrait of Rahel Varnhagen. Lithograph (1834) by Gottfried Küstner after Moritz Daffinger's pastel from 1818

Rahel Varnhagen von Ense , née Levin (born May 19, 1771 in Berlin ; † March 7, 1833 there , also Robert or Robert-Tornow , adopted family name from the mid-1790s, Friedericke Antonie , baptismal name from 1814) was a German Writer and salonnière of Jewish origin. Rahel Varnhagen belonged to the romantic epoch and at the same time represented positions of the European Enlightenment . She stood up for Jewish emancipation and the emancipation of women a.

Live and act

Rahel Varnhagen von Ense was born in 1771 as the eldest daughter of the Jewish banker and jeweler Markus Levin (also Loeb Cohen, 1723–1790) and his wife Heichen, called Chaie Levin, née Tobias (died 1809) in the (no longer existing) corner house of Spandauer Strasse and Königstrasse in Berlin, across from the former town hall. As early as 1795, the use of the family name Robert is documented, which the family had probably adopted after the death of their father and which in 1812 was named Rahel Robert-Tornow (addition to differentiate from a Huguenot family Robert in Berlin, probably after the Havelland place name ) in their citizenship - Certificate stood. Her siblings, for whom she had to take on a responsible role as the eldest daughter, were Markus Theodor (Mordechai, 1772–1826), Rose (1782–1853), and Moritz (Meyer, 1785–1846); her youngest brother was the writer Ludwig Robert , called Louis (Liepmann, 1778-1832).

List of the spa and bathing guests who arrived at Teplitz in 1822, number 51, the previous owner was marked “Varnhagen v. Ense "(Archives of the Varnhagen Society)

While her brothers attended secondary schools (Ludwig Robert was a student at the French grammar school ) and completed a commercial training, Rahel was tutored by private tutors. She learned French, English and Italian, received piano and dance lessons and made early trips to Breslau (1794), Teplitz (1796) and Paris (1800). Their general education far exceeded that of the average Christian upbringing for girls. In 1795 she met Goethe for the first time in the Bohemian spa town of Karlsbad , whom she admired as a writer and who judged her to be “a girl of extraordinary understanding”, “strong in every one of her feelings and light in her utterances”, “in short, what I would like to call a beautiful soul ”.

The young Levin had an extensive correspondence with the budding physician David Veit (1771–1814), who visited Goethe in Weimar and had to describe his external appearance to her in detail, which extended to questions of Jewish self-image. She found her outsider role as a woman and as a Jew, which enabled her neither an academic education nor an intellectual participation in enlightened discourse, to be depressing. She expressed her own sensitivity and her inadequacy of the disproportion between claim and reality as follows: “I pretend, I am good, that one has to be reasonable, I know; but I'm too small to take it, too small ; I don't want to assume that I don't know any more sensitive, irritable person, and who always feels a thousand in one discomfort, because he knows the characters they play for him, and always thinks and combines, I am too small , for only such a small body can't stand it. ”At that time she suffered from the idea that“ an extraterrestrial being, when I was driven into the world, thrust these words into my heart with a dagger at the entrance [...]: 'Yes, I have sensation, see the world as few see it, be big and noble, I cannot take away an eternal thought from you either, but one thing has been forgotten: be a Jew! ' and now my whole life has been bleeding to death [...] ”. Rahels Varnhagen's childhood friends also included non-Jews, such as the daughter of a Huguenot immigrant family Pauline Wiesel , née César, with whom she was to have a lifelong friendship, or the Swedish envoy Karl Gustav Brinckmann , who was allowed to use her desk in her absence.

Memorial plaque (designer: Erika Klagge) on Jägerstrasse 54–55, in Berlin-Mitte, the location of the first salon

Rahel Levin's sister Rose married the Dutch lawyer Carel Asser (1780-1836) on February 8, 1801, who had practiced as a lawyer in The Hague since 1799 . Since she refused a marriage arranged for her in Wroclaw with a distant relative, she remained dependent on her family for the first half of her life. She only left her parents' house in the winter of 1808/1809 and moved, which was extremely unusual for an unmarried and not widowed woman at the time, into her own apartment in Charlottenburg (in Trenck's house at 32 Charlottenstrasse, up two flights of stairs) . From 1810, she also lived alone at 48 Behrenstrasse in Berlin ; later her brothers Moritz and Ludwig Robert moved in with her. The eldest of the brothers, Markus Theodor Robert, had taken over the father's banking business and managed their assets, taking advantage of his siblings (Ludwig Robert asked in vain for detailed accounts), according to Rahel's widower.

Salonnière, engagements, marriage

From 1793 to the autumn of 1808, "in its most splendid time" (KA Varnhagen), the Levin-Robert family lived in house no. 54 in Jägerstrasse near Gendarmenmarkt . Here, especially around 1800, social gatherings of contemporaries who were friends with the house took place. (→ see article Salon der Rahel Varnhagen ). These meetings were dominated by their (mostly Jewish) hosts such as Henriette Herz , Amalie Beer or Rahel Robert-Tornow. The “Salonnièren” themselves called such evenings “Thees”, “sociability”, or they used the name to set a recurring weekday (e.g. “Monday”) for the invitation. Rahel Varnhagen only mentions the salon in connection with the very splendid receptions of Fanny von Arnstein in Vienna ; only for many decades one spoke of “ salons ”.

The decisive factor was the union of people of different classes and professions, religious or political orientations for talks: poets, naturalists, politicians, actors, aristocrats and travelers came together. The proximity of the theater, the stock exchange and the French community ensured diversity; sometimes, as in the parents' house of Henriette Solmar (a cousin of Rahel Varnhagen), French was spoken out of consideration for visitors from foreign countries. Famous guests in this first phase were Jean Paul , Ludwig Tieck , Friedrich von Gentz , Ernst von Pfuel , Friedrich Schlegel , Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt , Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué , Prince Louis Ferdinand and his lover Pauline Wiesel. However, there are few contemporary sources and no contemporary images of this conviviality. Not only celebrities were invited, but also many people who have hardly left any traces. Fanny Lewald (who no longer met Rahel Varnhagen), however, points out: “One hears the names Humboldt, Rahel Levin, Schleiermacher , Varnhagen and Schlegel, and thinks of what they have become and forgets that it was only the Humboldt's of their time two young noblemen, that Rahel Levin was a lively Jewish girl, Schleiermacher an unknown clergyman, Varnhagen a young intern in medicine, Schlegel were a couple of rather reckless young journalists ”.

Business cards of Rachel Varnhagen visitors (around 1825, album in the Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural-owning )

In the spring of 1796, the 25-year-old met the count's son and prospective diplomat Karl Friedrich Albrecht Finck von Finckenstein (1772–1811), who was friends with her friend Wilhelm von Burgsdorff , and they became lovers. Rahel Robert tried to part with him the following winter. Finckenstein, who lived in Madlitz unless he was sent to diplomatic missions as a legation counselor, visited her in March 1798 for a fortnight in Berlin. On September 4, 1799 Rahel Robert asked the fiancé to make up her mind. In pain about their ultimate separation, she wrote a farewell letter on February 19, 1800 and left for Paris with Countess Schlabrendorff.

Among other flirtations, Rahel Robert, who thought very critically about civil marriage between men and women, also experienced the failure of the engagement with the Spanish ambassador Rafael Eugenio Rufino d'Urquijo Ybaizal y Taborga (1769-1839), who tormented her with scenes of argument. During the Wars of Liberation in 1813, she met d'Urquijo again in Prague , where she organized the care of the wounded from all warring parties and collected donations for the bereaved. During this engagement you were among others. the Berlin banker Abraham Mendelssohn and the Prague merchant Simon von Lämel assisted. During this time Rahel Robert lived with the actress Auguste Brede (1789-1852) on the second floor with Johanna Raymann (also Reymann) in Prague's Fleischhauergasse (Staré Město, di Rybna) 681/11. Auguste Brede remembered this time in 1853: “'On a piece of paper I write down the names of everyone who had gathered around a table in our apartment on such fateful days in the evening to tell or hear the most important news.” You names Rahel and Ludwig Robert, Alexander von der Marwitz , Gentz, Ludwig Tieck , Burgsdorff's family, Abraham Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Fichte, Karl Maria von Weber , Prince Wilhelm zu Bentheim , Clemens Brentano . She could have added many more, e.g. B. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Count Christian von Bernstorff , Wilhelm von Willisen , Sophie Schröder , wife von Heer, née Princess von Hohenzollern, Count von Pachta etc. "

As for d'Urquijo, whom she had experienced as uncontrollably jealous, she did not hold it against him: “He insulted me too much, too often, and always; I'm good for him too, ”she wrote to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense , to whom she had been engaged for five years. Since January 1813, Varnhagen, the former Austrian volunteer and adjutant of General Bentheim, was still in Russian service with a Cossack army under General Tettenborn from Baden , whose adjutant and confidante he became. On July 15, 1814, d'Urquijo married Louise von Fuchs (1792–1862) in Berlin; nine weeks later, on September 27th, Rahel Robert, also again in Berlin, married the fourteen years younger diplomat , historian and publicist Varnhagen, who in Austria had adopted the suffix of his aristocratic ancestors from Ense. This happened at a time when he was still in danger of being recruited by Napoleon's troops as a native of Düsseldorf. Later, the title of nobility, which both spouses wore, by a patent of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. approved. Shortly before, on September 23rd, Rachel had converted to Protestant Christianity . Their mutual friend Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué was present at the wedding .

Rahel Varnhagen's favorite great-nieces Elise and Pauline Casper. Double portrait of Eduard Magnus (around 1840)

One after the other, both spouses traveled to the Congress of Vienna , where Karl August, who had entered Prussian service, was on the staff of Prince Hardenberg . Rahel Varnhagen initially lived here in the ducal-Savoyen women's monastery in the 1st district of Vienna; at that time Johannesgasse No. 1035, today No. 15–17; Later the couple moved to a landlord Kohn at Judenplatz No. 372. Rahel Varnhagen von Ense had no rooms here where she could gather many guests, but at salons like her childhood friends in Berlin Fanny von Arnstein , their daughter Henriette Pereira and Regina Frohberg gave, she had a share. Karl August wrote memoranda, diplomatic reports, press releases and a draft constitution for the Prussian state chancellor . After Napoleon's return from Elba , the congress dissolved and Varnhagen resumed military campaigns with Tettenborn. Rahel heard the news of the victory at Waterloo in the spa town of Baden near Vienna, where the Duchess of Sagan was teaching her to swim in a bathhouse . Instead of traveling to Paris to celebrate the victory of the Prussians, in the face of the still uncertain travel routes to Frankfurt am Main , she found safety, where she received Goethe's visit on September 8, 1815: “I behaved very badly. I almost didn't let Goethe speak! "

Hardenberg made Varnhagen Prussian charge d'affaires , later Minister-residents in Baden , which is why the couple in the long term Karlsruhe and Baden-Baden settled, of stays in Mannheim interrupted where they Tettenborn left his villa. After Karl August Varnhagen's recall, the couple returned to Berlin in October 1819. At first they lived furnished with a merchant Metke in the Französische Straße No. 20. Here Rahel Varnhagen again gave evening parties, some with multi-course menus, which she described to Ludwig and his wife Friederike Robert, née Braun, in a letter on June 23, 1821: "This for Rieke: who will see how to do this chambre garnie , without equipment! I can and do everything. My guests are always very satisfied and praise the food and the evening. on each end of the table there is a strawberry and a cherry platter and salt and pepper. everything symmetrically everything with grape leaves. beautiful borrowed silver, and white porcelain; some good glasses and cups and tableware. ”.

Rahel Varnhagen von Ense suffered all her life from the fact that she remained childless, as the preacher Marheineke respectfully pointed out in his funeral speech (Schleiermacher had refused to take part in the funeral of his deceased girlfriend). Rahel Varnhagen took care of the daughters of her brother Markus Theodor Robert-Tornow with Henriette Sophie Robert, formerly Hendel, née Liepman / Liman: Johanna (1793–1838) married the Oberregierungsrat in 1819 and (since 1837) director of the Prussian Bank , Gustav Ferdinand von Lamprecht; Fanny (1798–1845) appointed forensic doctor Johann Ludwig Casper in 1823 . The children from these marriages were also given the loving care of their aunt, especially the great nieces Elise Casper (1824–1903, married to Eduard Schläger after 1871) and Pauline Casper (1825–1904), who temporarily lived with the Varnhagens. Rahel Varnhagen also considered her great nieces in her will. In addition, she and later her widower donated significant sums to the Jewish orphanage founded in 1833 under the direction of Baruch Auerbach .

In 1827 the Varnhagens moved into the bel étage at Mauerstraße 36, which their brother-in-law Heinrich Nikolaus Liman (brother of Markus Theodors wife and uncle of Henriette Solmar) rented out to them. Rahel Varnhagen von Ense also gave societies at this address, which was to be her last, in which the Mendelssohn family , the philosopher Hegel , Heinrich Heine , Eduard Gans , Ludwig Börne and Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau took part. The couple Varnhagen visited Goethe in Weimar and the spa in Teplitz, where Friedrich Wilhelm III. danced the polonaise several times with Rahel Varnhagen von Ense in August 1822.

View of Mauerstr. Annotated by Karl August Varnhagen. 36 (letterhead, 1840), daily papers , Jagiellonian Library , Cracow
Rahel Varnhagen's apartment at Mauerstraße 36 (on the 1st floor, 2nd room from the left), replaced in 1914 by a new Deutsche Bank building

Activity as a writer

Rahel Varnhagen did not see herself as a writer in the professional sense and took little part in the literary business, although she was often encouraged to do so. She mainly cultivated the genres diary (whereby excerpts from books were often expanded into critical essays ), aphorism and letter (around 6000 letters from her are known), and more rarely poems . Nonetheless, she is one of the most important representatives and role models of women's literature that flourished in the 19th century , which not only extended to poetry, novels, plays and opera libretti, but also often chose small, more intimate forms. The value of your writing results from the documentation of historical and cultural events, as well as from brilliant style and political foresight.

In 1812 Karl August Varnhagen published excerpts from their letters for educated estates in Cottas Morgenblatt , which concerned the novel Wilhelm Meister by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and subsequently strengthened his fame as a Weimar poet prince. This was followed by further publications in journals and almanacs (including theater and concert reports, but also aesthetic and political theses), which Rahel Varnhagen had her brother Ludwig Robert send in and whose printing she, as a self-confident author, carefully monitored. Ludwig Börne, whom Rahel Varnhagen met in Frankfurt am Main in 1819 through the mediation of the Jewish merchant Helene Brettenheim, printed passages of letters in his magazine Die Wage , Heinrich Zschokke and Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler in the Swiss Museum , Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué in The Muses. A north German magazine.

Goethe seems to have been the actual addressee of her writing, which, regardless of the subject, repeatedly evoked the painful visualization of the experience of foreignness and marginalization. In the spring of 1824, through the mediation of Ottilie von Goethe, the Weimar poet, she had a handwritten manuscript put on her desk. Goethe has these excerpts from letters, an early version by Rahel. A souvenir book for her friends , according to his judgment, which his daughter-in-law was supposed to convey to Berlin, “taken to mind and soul; actually not read; that didn't want to go at first. But since they lay beside me long enough and I looked into them often enough, [...] I was finally lured to see from the beginning to the end the course of my own that such a nature had to take, in order to walk steadily through so many things To go through times and coincidences ”.

Rahel Varnhagen thanked Ottilie for the transmission with the words: “He should never actually have seen her read like that. [...] But how some pious people hurt themselves to show their God what they can and want for him, so for the first time in my most important matter I let myself endure at least. [...] Some things had to appear harsh and harsh: everything broken off and too definitely meant and presented, and I must ask you not to forget to consider [...] that only this torn out can provide entertainment through the completely unexpected place where it is. ”The widower was only able to print it posthumously in the first one-volume and then three-volume edition (1833/34); Most of the Rahel letter editions were only obtained later by Karl August Varnhagen's niece Ludmilla Assing .

Old age, death and burial

With some certainty Rahel Varnhagen suffered for many decades from an unspecific systemic disease that made her constitution vulnerable. She made her last trip to Baden with her husband in 1829, where she also visited the Swabian Weinsberg . "Rheumatic and gouty pains, then oppression and cramp-like seizures in the chest, developed into standing evils that only rarely seemed completely suppressed," wrote Karl August, who was trained as a physician, over the last four years. During this time she received a visit from her friend Pauline Wiesel, now married Vincent, and in 1832 had to see the death of her beloved brother and his wife, Ludwig and Friederike Roberts, whom they had initially kept from her out of consideration. Even when she was no longer able to run salons herself, she made trips, went to the theater whenever possible, and wrote to her friends Brinckmann and Gentz, encouraging them to send the letters back to her husband for copying for the joint literary project.

In her will , which she drew up on July 4, 1831, Rahel Varnhagen von Ense stipulated in a clause for the premature death of her husband: public print ”, and, in order to carry out the edition independently of book trade considerations, set aside a sum of 200 thalers“ plus the interest that had increased up to the time of printing ”. For this purpose, her literary estate, papers and books, should Varnhagen die before her, his sister Rosa Maria Assing , née Varnhagen, and if she was no longer alive, her daughters Ottilie and Ludmilla would take over and carry out the publication. However, the will was not opened until July 25, 1833, when the book of remembrance for her friends had already been distributed among the private circle of friends.

The Varnhagen grave (left), Max Ring : Berliner Friedhöfe III. In: Over land and sea. Vol. 18 (1868), No. 17, p. 280.

Rahel Varnhagen had died four months earlier at the age of 61. Bettina von Arnim , who had recommended homeopathic treatment to her, albeit unsuccessfully, took part in her care over the past few weeks . Out of concern before apparently dead to be buried, they decreed after her death for 20 years in a double coffin with windows above ground laid out to be. The coffin stood in a hall in the cemetery district in front of Hallesches Tor for 34 years until Rahel Varnhagen von Ense was buried in Trinity Cemetery I in 1867 at the instigation of her niece Ludmilla Assing, next to her husband, who had died nine years earlier .

Berlin grave of honor of the Varnhagen couple after restoration in 2007

Two marble cushion stones with inscriptions on the ivy-covered grave mound serve as grave markings on the shared grave of the Varnhagen von Ense couple. Another marble slab with a quote from Varnhagen is attached standing. The burial site was restored in autumn 2007 by the State Office for Monument Preservation and the Varnhagen Society and provided with a resting bench.

By resolution of the Berlin Senate , the final resting place of the Varnhagen couple (grave location DV2-2-38 / 39), in honor of Rahel Varnhagen, has been dedicated as an honorary grave of the State of Berlin since 1956 . The dedication was extended in 2016 by the now usual period of twenty years.

Library and estate

The library or estate of the Varnhagen couple came to the Royal Library in Berlin as the Varnhagen collection in 1881. Today the library Varnhagen belongs to the holdings of the State Library in Berlin. The handwritten estate, on the other hand, is currently in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Krakow due to the war relocations .

Works

Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, plaster medallion after casting molds by Friedrich Tieck (1796, renewed 1835)

Published during his lifetime:

  • G. [= Rahel Varnhagen von Ense]: About Goethe. Fragments from letters. In: Morgenblatt for educated stands. Jg. 1812, No. 161, p. 641 ff., No. 162, p. 647 f., No. 164, p. 653 f., No. 169, p. 673 ff., No. 176, p. 702 (digitized version) .
  • Letter from Prague, October 6th. In: newspaper from the camp. (Printed to high order) No. 10, October 24, 1813 ( digitized ).
  • Fragments from letters and thought sheets. In: Swiss Museum. Edited by Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler and Alois Vock . Vol. 1816, Issue 1, pp. 212–241, pp. 331–376 (digitized version ) .
  • Letters. In: The balance. Edited by Ludwig Börne . Vol. 2, Issue 5, pp. 1–28 (digitized version ) .
  • About "Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre" [under the name Friederike , as a participant in correspondence and dialogues]. In: The partner or leaves for mind and heart. Edited by Friedrich Wilhelm Gubitz . Born 1821, No. 131, August 17, p. 609 ff. ( Digitized version ), No. 132, August 18, p. 614 f. ( Digitized version ), No. 133, August 20, p. 617 ff . ( Digitized version ), No. 134, August 22, p. 621 ff. ( Digitized version ), No. 135, August 24, p. 630 f. ( Digitized version ), No. 136, August 25, p. 634 f. ( digitized version ), No. 137, August 27, p. 638 f. ( digitized version ), No. 138, August 29, p. 642 f. ( digitized version ).
  • [Sent in by Ludwig Robert] Correspondence messages. Berlin, Sept. 19 In: Morgenblatt für educated stands No. 260, October 31, 1825, p. 1039 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Communications about Spontini . In: Morgenblatt for educated stands. No. 264, November 4, 1825, p. 1053 f. ( Digitized version ), No. 265, November 5, 1825, p. 1058 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • [Collaboration] Ludwig Robert: Comments less for Germans than for French, about Goethe's Tasso and that of Mr. Alexis Düval in Paris. In: Morgenblatt for educated stands. No. 37, pp. 145–148 ( digitized version ), No. 38, February 13, 1827, p. 150 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • From the papers of a contemporary. In: Eos, Views of the World and Art. Vol. 10, No. 65, May 5, 1826, p. 266 f. ( Digitized version ); No. 77, June 2, 1826, p. 315 f. ( Digitized version ), No. 78, June 5, 1826, p. 319 ( digitized version ).
  • About a female portrait . In: Morgenblatt for educated stands. No. 48, February 24, 1827, p. 191 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Correspondence messages. Berlin, in March. In: Morgenblatt for educated stands. No. 83, April 6, 1927, p. 331 f. ( Digitized version ), No. 85, April 9, 1827, p. 340 ( digitized version ), No. 86, April 10, 1827, p. 344 ( digitized version ).
  • From the thinking sheets of a Berliner. In: Berlinische Blätter for German women. Edited by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué . Vol. 3 (1829), pp. 137-184 (digitized version ) , Vol. 4, pp. 1-23 ( digitized version ).

Writings published by Karl August Varnhagen:

Writings edited by Ludmilla Assing:

First edition by Rahel. A book of memory for her friends (1833)

Newer editions:

  • Correspondence. 4 volumes. Edited by Friedhelm Kemp . Kösel, Munich 1966–1968 (CVs, Vol. 8–10, 14); 2nd, revised and supplemented edition 1979, vol. 1: Rahel and Alexander von der Marwitz. ISBN 3-538-05301-4 ; Vol. 2: Rahel and Karl August Varnhagen. ISBN 3-538-05302-2 ; Vol. 3: Rachel and her friends. ISBN 3-538-05303-0 ; Vol. 4: Rachel and her time. ISBN 3-538-05304-9 .
  • In fresh, small, abstract ways. Unknown and unpublished things from Rachel's circle of friends. Letters from Bettina von Arnim, Clemens Brentano, Friedrich von Gentz, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Jean Paul , Rahel, Ludwig Robert, Henriette Schleiermacher, Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, among others ed. Friedhelm Kemp. Kösel, Munich 1967. ( News from the Kösel-Verlag. 15, annual edition 3) ( table of contents ).
  • Rahel library. Rahel Varnhagen: Collected works. 10 volumes. Edited by Konrad Feilchenfeldt , Uwe Schweikert and Rahel E. Steiner. Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-88221-342-6 .
  • "Rachel's first love". Rahel Levin and Karl Graf von Finckenstein in their letters. Edited by Günter de Bruyn . Book publisher Der Morgen , Berlin (GDR) 1985 ( Märkischer Dichtergarten ); that., Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-596-25114-1 .
  • Letters to a friend. Rahel Varnhagen to Rebecca Friedländer. Edited by Deborah Hertz , introduction and note from the American by Tamara Schoenbaum-Holtermann. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-462-01883-3 .
  • Correspondence with Pauline Wiesel. Edited by Barbara Hahn. C. H. Beck, Munich 1996 (Edition Rahel Levin Varnhagen, Volume I), ISBN 3-406-41346-3 .
  • Correspondence with Ludwig Robert. Edited by Consolina Vigliero. C. H. Beck, Munich 2001 (Edition Rahel Levin Varnhagen, Volume II), ISBN 3-406-48256-2 .
  • "I still want to live when you read it". Journalistic articles from the years 1812–1829. Edited by Lieselotte Kinskofer. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main and others 2001 ( Research on Young Hegelianism. Source studies. Circumferential research. Theory. History of impact. Volume 5), ISBN 3-631-37860-2 .
  • Family letters. Edited by Renata Buzzo Márgari Barovero. C. H. Beck, Munich 2009 (Edition Rahel Levin Varnhagen, Volume III), ISBN 978-3-406-58683-5 .
  • Rachel. A keepsake book for your friends. Epilogue v. Ulrike Landfester. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-88221-848-0 .
  • Rachel. A keepsake book for your friends . Edited by Barbara Hahn. With an essay by Brigitte Kronauer . 6 volumes. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0528-1 .
  • Rachel. A keepsake book for your friends. Edited by Inge Brose-Müller. Golkonda, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-944720-06-7 . (Digitized version)
  • Diaries and records. Edited by Ursula Isselstein. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-8353-3315-4 . ( Edition Rahel Levin Varnhagen. Volume IV.)

reception

Post fame

“The Germans only gained real respect for female genius through Rahel and Bettine,” wrote Ottilie von Goethe in 1839. “These two women actually brought about the spiritual emancipation of women. [...] Since Rachel we have been allowed to have thoughts that concern themselves with the objects of general human welfare [...] No man denies us the right to count ourselves among the class of thinking beings, not even they who stare at Rahel like a sphinx, misunderstood. ”Infected by her enthusiasm, Ottilie's Irish friend Anna Murphy Jameson put a German-language motto drawn with Rahel in front of her travel diary from Canada. At the same time, the Norwegian author Camilla Collett judged very similarly : “Because she dared the monstrous to express her thoughts, but not because of these thoughts about themselves, which others could have had too, because Rahel says nothing that I could not think too . "

Rahel Varnhagen von Ense had the greatest influence on the next generation of writers in Junge Deutschland and Vormärz . Heinrich Heine , Gustav Kühne , Theodor Mundt , Karl Gutzkow , Rudolf Gottschall and Julius Rodenberg have recognized them in essays and literary historiography. An example is the dedication to Prince Pückler , with which Heinrich Laube provided his novella Love Letters three years after Rachel's death :

"There was a woman who lived and wrote letters in Berlin, an enormous woman who should be read and studied by everyone who wants to be aware of our moral and sociable condition, or in other, usually misused words: by everyone who Make education claim. Ew. Your Highness knows who I mean, [...] You have often seen her in that bright house on Mauerstrasse, where she ruled and spoke, where she received her friends with always the same love, with subordination to all her own interests, every person, accessible, willingly, even to the insignificant, even to the unpleasant. I mean Rachel , the true one, who, in all external and internal storms, kept herself free of the covering varnish, the custom, spread over the hearts and minds of men. If anyone can be appealed to when discussing human conditions, when investigating genuine, moral existences, it is Rachel. We have no book so frank in our literature as your letters, at least not one where so much spirit and speculation would have come to the aid of frankness. [...]
Rahel has completely preserved her own private life in all directions, and her life and thus her book, because it is a diary, always seems to me like a constant struggle for the original, true existence. In this respect, it is our latest, most real epic. "

- Heinrich Laube : love letters . Novelle, Heinrich Hoff, Mannheim 1836, pp. XVI – XIX ( web resource ).

Biography and science

Although Rahel Varnhagen von Ense published exclusively anonymously during her lifetime, her name is already listed in Schindel 's lexicon of women writers from 1825 with a brief biography and references . The Damen Conversations Lexikon published by Karl Herloßsohn also contained a detailed biographical article (signed "E. v. E.") under the Lemma Rahel .

A longer section in the preface to Rahel. A souvenir book for her friends , which her widower took from his autobiographical memoirs of her own life , remained the only source of information for a long time. In 1857 Eduard Schmidt-Weißenfels published the first independent biography , which in many ways was indebted to the statements of Karl August Varnhagen. With Rachel. Her Life and Letters Kate Vaughan Jennings was the first woman to present an (English) representation in 1876; In 1900 the high school teacher Otto Berdrow followed with a biography committed to the positivism of the 19th century. In 1903, the Swiss women's rights activist Emma Graf published the first study on Rahel Varnhagen von Ense with scientific claims, with which she received her doctorate on December 11, 1901 in Bern .

lili rere
Censorship warning stamp on Rachel's portrait in the picture archive of the NSDAP - Reichsleitung and the Reichsbund der Deutschen Officials (Archiv der Varnhagen Gesellschaft e.V. )

Books such as that of the Swedish reform pedagogue Ellen Key (1907), which also appeared in English with an introduction by Havelock Ellis , and the Strasbourg Germanist Jean-Édouard Spenlé (1910), who received the Prix ​​Marcelin-Guérin of the Académie française in 1911 , prove that Rahel belonged to world literature around 1900 . Shortly before the outbreak of World War I , the Serbian literary and linguist Dragutin P. Subotič received his doctorate in Munich on Rahel Levin and Young Germany in August 1914 . Her Influence on Young Spirits (1914). Further scientific work followed (including Hermann Trog 1925, Lore Feist 1926, Charlotte Albarus 1930). The writings of the Swiss Zionists Augusta Weldler-Steinberg and Margarete Susman were also of great influence . Numerous anthologies and small biographical writings, edited by Hans Landsberg (1904 and 1912), Bertha Badt-Strauss (1912, 1928), Kurt Martens (1920), Agathe Weigelt (1921) and Curt Moreck (1923) , among others, bear witness to Rahel's growing popularity Varnhagens in the interwar period.

Against this background, the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote between 1928 and 1951 a study of Rahel Varnhagen, which was shaped by the political circumstances (rise of National Socialism in Germany, Gestapo imprisonment , exile ) : The life story of a German Jewess from the Romantic era . The book is to be understood primarily as the philosophical foundation of the dichotomy of pariah and parvenu, which Arendt later developed, as well as a polemical wake-up call for their Jewish fellow sufferers who, after 1933, still believed in the possibility of Christian-Jewish coexistence in Germany. Despite the subtitle, it is strictly speaking not a biography and should expressly not be a "book about Rahel [...] about her personality, [...] about her world of thought and her 'worldview'". Rather, Arendt intended “to retell Rachel's life story as she could have told it herself. [...] This is achieved by telling your own story to yourself and others over and over again ”, which requires“ a never-ending alertness and pain ability ”,“ in order to remain accessible and conscious ”. This self-referential approach, which blurs the boundaries between author and subject, corresponds to the renunciation of a historiographical or literary-scientific approach in favor of the literary-essayistic, empathetic, inner monologues of the protagonist in the present tense . Although the book was later recognized by the court as a habilitation thesis , for example, passages of letters are cited without references and not always faithfully. For the German edition of 1957, the Germanist and Arendt confidante Lotte Köhler added the data of printed letters.

There is a lack of evidence for Arendt's main thesis, that Rahel wanted to come “out of Judaism” all her life; there is also much to be said against Arendt's assertion that Rahel Varnhagen herself adopted anti-Jewish prejudices from the Christian majority society. Their marriage is presented as a mesalliance without referring to the correspondence from the engagement time, from which Arendt only takes a self-characteristic of the young Varnhagen (“beggar on the way”). The consistently negative characteristic of the husband as unequal and passive, derived from this incidental remark, is presented with recourse to polemics by Heinrich von Treitschke and Reinhold Steig . Speculations about an arbitrary censorship and destruction of the letters left behind by the widower have meanwhile been refuted by recent research. Hannah Arendt also received criticism from the German scholar Käte Hamburger , who also emigrated , who described her portrayal of Rahel Varnhagen as “misleading, yes, falsification”. After all, the life story of a German Jewish woman from the Romantic period , whose sources could no longer be verified after the (supposed) war loss of the Varnhagen Collection, became the authoritative, scientifically canonized work on Rahel Varnhagen von Ense for around thirty years (at least for West German German studies ) .

In the era of National Socialism, several inflammatory pamphlets, some of them scientifically disguised, appeared, which characterized the Rahel Varnhagens Salon as a conspiracy against "Aryan" writers such as Clemens Brentano and Ludwig Achim von Arnim , but characterized them as deranged. During this time, the printing of portraits and - expressly by Joseph Goebbels - the printing of letters from Rahel Varnhagen was prohibited. In Paul Fechter's relevant cultural history Die Berlinerin (1943) there is a chapter on Pauline Wiesel, but Rahel Varnhagen von Ense is not mentioned by name here or anywhere else in the book, and of course no other Berliner from a Jewish family.

Wolfgang Bötsch on Rahel Varnhagen von Ense in a first day paper of the Deutsche Bundespost (1994)
Rahel Varnhagen and Luise Henriette von Oranien in the stamp series Women of German History

After the Second World War, reception was also influenced by formerly active Nazi functionaries . Examples of this are the former SS-Obersturmbannführer and employee at the Reich Security Main Office, Hans Rößner , who, as editor of Hannah Arendts at Piper-Verlag, conjured the unsuspecting author to omit the term "Jewess" from the book title, and the former NS-Oberregierungsrat Herbert Scurla , who in of Turkey Jewish emigrants had denounced. Scurla began his post-war writing career ( Johannes R. Becher Medal 1971, Patriotic Order of Merit 1974) in the GDR by first submitting selected volumes of Heine and Karl August Varnhagen texts under the pseudonym ( Karl Leutner ) and one in 1962 also provided a popular biography of Rahel, which is widely read in the West.

The radicalization of students in the era of the extra-parliamentary opposition called the largely depoliticized curriculum of German studies into question and stimulated interest in neglected authors of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Vormärz. The poet Friedhelm Kemp published a four-volume, annotated edition of Rahel Varnhagen's correspondence in modernized spelling by 1968. Rachel. A book of memory for her friends , the much-read correspondence between Rahel and Karl August Varnhagen in the 19th century and the diaries of the latter were reprinted as facsimiles from 1971–1973 . In 1980, the German émigré Clara Malraux, née Goldschmidt, divorced wife of the Minister of Culture André Malraux , presented a French-language biography in France. The bilingual correspondence with Astolphe de Custine , published in 1870 by Ludmilla Assing , was also reprinted in Geneva. Published in 1986, also facsimile, Rahel Varnhagen's Collected Works in ten volumes. This edition, initiated by Konrad Feilchenfeldt , not only compiled all of Rahel Varnhagen's previously printed texts (made accessible through concordance, directory of correspondents, time table and a register by Uwe Schweikert ), but also included unpublished texts in the final volume - as far as accessible at the time. Several selected volumes were published by West and East German publishers (Marlis Gerhardt 1987 and 1987, Barbara Hahn 1990 in the FRG, Günter de Bruyn and Dieter Bähtz 1985 in the GDR). More recent dissertations were submitted by Juliane Laschke (1988) and Barbara Breysach (1989) and a biography by Heidi Thomann Tewarson (1988).

After rumors in the late 1970s that the holdings of the former Royal Library in Berlin, known as Berlinka, were in no way destroyed, but had been kept in the Polish Biblioteka Jagiellońska since the end of World War II , the American researcher was the first to follow in Rachel's footsteps Historian Deborah Hertz went to Krakow and published her discovery in 1981.

In autumn 1984 the German scholars Barbara Hahn and Ursula Isselstein-Arese met in the manuscript reading room of the library and agreed on a long-term collaboration with the goal of "an Italian-German, text-critical and commented edition Rahel Levin Varnhagen (ERLV) ". In 1990, Barbara Hahn presented the first dissertation which, after the Second World War, was able to fall back on original manuscripts by Rahel Varnhagen von Ense. Journalist Carola Stern published a more recent biography under these circumstances in 1994. At the same time, German scholars Irina Hundt and Carola Gerlach, supported by the Advice Center for Women and Family, curated the Rahel Varnhagen touring exhibition on the 160th anniversary of her death . A Jewish woman in the Berlin Romantic era who toured several German cities.

From the Edition Rahel Levin Varnhagen four volumes of Correspondence and Records (ERLV I-IV), one volume with correspondence from Pauline Wiesel, several conference volumes as well as that of Karl August Varnhagen von Ense with a diverse hand copy (with the dissolution of name abbreviations of the The so-called Third Edition of Rahel, prepared in six volumes by Barbara Hahn, was prepared by Barbara Hahn in 1833 . A keepsake book for her friends .

Movies

Radio plays

  • An evening with Rahel Varnhagen. Radio play by Oscar Ludwig Brandt, first broadcast: WERAG , Cologne, November 14, 1927. Further performance: SÜRAG , Stuttgart, July 11, 1928.
  • Rachel. The trip to Frankfurt . Radio play by Dietmar Schings. Director: Irene Schuck. In the role of Rahel: Margrit Carls. 2005. Original broadcast: Hessischer Rundfunk , March 13, 2005.

Stage works

  • Else Schulhoff: A Berlin salon around 1800. (An evening with Rahel Levin). A sequence of scenes on a historical basis. Lyceum Club, Berlin 1930, first performance: March 28, 1930 in the German Lyceum Club in Berlin. Director: Friedrich Moest . In the role of Rahel: Trude Richard.
  • Hermann Otto: "If only we were larks ..." Rahel Varnhagen - Pauline Wiesel. A dialogue in letters. World premiere: February 22, 1991 in the Ernst-Deutsch-Theater in Hamburg . Director: Merula Steinhardt-Unseld. In the role of Rahel: Edda Pastor .
  • Roland Moser : Rahel and Pauline. Letter scenes for a singer, an actress, an actor and five instruments. With a sequel to a text by Imre Kertész . Edition Gamma, Bad Schwalbach 2007. Commissioned by the Swiss cultural foundation Pro Helvetia . World premiere as part of the Lucerne Festival on September 12, 2007 in the Lucerne Theater ; Director: Peter Schweiger. In the role of Rachel: Desirée Meiser.

literature

Rebecca Friedländer , later better known under her pseudonym Regina Frohberg, had her girlfriend at the time appear with unflattering characteristics as Charlotte von Willingshausen in the novel Pain of Love (1810).

Rahel Varnhagen von Ense first figured under her own name with Fanny Lewald in her novel Prince Louis Ferdinand (1849). In it she is the secret lover of the Hohenzollern Prince , who renounces this love in favor of her friend Pauline Wiesel. Because of the printed dedication to Karl August Varnhagen, which Fanny Lewald had put in front of the novel without his permission, it was assumed that the novel dealt with historical facts, which is why Varnhagen distanced himself from the work in a declaration.

The writer Kathinka Zitz published the novel Rahel or Thirty-three Years from a Noble Woman's Life in 1864 . She also lets Rahel appear repeatedly in the biographical novel Heinrich Heine, the song writer , which appeared shortly afterwards .

Heinrich Heine, in whose work Rahel Varnhagen is often mentioned, dedicated the cycle of poems The Homecoming from the Travel Pictures to her .

When Ludwig Robert named her in the manuscript of his parodistic cycle of poems in Free Rhythms addressed to Ludwig Tieck under the title Promenaden einer Berliner in his hometown , Rahel Varnhagen (letter dated May 12, 1823) wanted her to be mentioned by name in future editions become. Occasionally Robert put passages from her letters into verse:

Should a woman write books?
Or should she leave it?
(After Rachel.) She should
write if she can,
Or if her husband wishes;
And
if he even orders it to her, it is marital duty. -
But she shouldn't write,
if she lacks substance,
or in due time,
or even in ability,
or with a torn dress. - She should
write early and late,
When poverty is
good , When otherwise she does something bad;
But she should never write
If her imagination
suffers from her economy. -
And now I say at the end if
the genius lives in her,
she will write because she has to.

In his volume of poetry, Three Taverns. A Book of Poems (1920) took the American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson on the poem Rahel to Varnhagen ; a monologue in blank verse, which deals with the age difference of the couple from Rachel's point of view.

Other poems on Rahel Varnhagen were written by Karl Gustav Brinckmann, Wilhelm Neumann , Werner Kraft , Aldona Gustas and Geertje Suhr , among others .

The German writer Hartmut Lange made Rahel Varnhagen von Ense and the memorial plaque on Jägerstrasse 54–55 the subject of the story The Encounter in his book The View from the Window , which appeared in 2015. During the building boom in Berlin-Mitte, the protagonist encounters an unsafe-looking woman whose face he knows from the memorial plaque in Jägerstrasse. At home he searches "in Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia that gave information about your life and work". The next day he meets the woman again at the height of the Brandenburg Gate and wants to make her understand what she as a Jew, even if she succeeded in “contradicting her transience”, “would later have encountered”. A week later he finds the memorial inscription changed and scratched and is convinced that the returned Rahel wanted to wipe out her memory.

memory

Berlin street sign of the Rahel-Varnhagen-Promenade
Entry (incorrectly dated) in the stone album on the Weibertreu castle ruins in Weinsberg , which Rahel visited in 1829

In the cities of Hamburg , Cologne , Freiburg im Breisgau , Berlin , Oldenburg and Ludwigshafen streets are named after Rahel Varnhagen. A further education college in Hagen bears her name.

The State of Berlin in 1993 founded a literary prize that Rahel-Varnhagen von Ense medal , which is to writers, translators and to personalities who have rendered outstanding services to the literary life in Berlin, awarded.

An asteroid was named after Rahel and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense.

In 1997 the Varnhagen Society was founded.

literature

Web links

Wikiquote: Rahel Varnhagen von Ense  - Quotes
Wikisource: Rahel Varnhagen von Ense  - sources and full texts
Commons : Rahel Varnhagen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Karl August Varnhagen von Ense: Rahel's apartments in Berlin. Quoted in Irina Hundt: On the biography of Rahel Levin Varnhagen. In: Journal of History . Vol. 42 (1993), p. 243.
  2. ↑ "Write to me: to Mlle. Robert", to David Veit, June 6, 1795, in: Correspondence between Rahel and David Veit. Edited by Ludmilla Assing. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1861, vol. 2, p. 154 ( web resource ); but she is still written down as Levin, cf. David Veit to Rahel, December 4, 1799, p. 240.
  3. ↑ List of Jews living in the towns and on the flat land of the Kurmärk government department, which according to §. 4 and 5 of the edict of March 11th, 1812, the civil conditions of the same in Prussia. Concerning the state and according to the corresponding instruction v. June 25th, 1812. Received citizenship letters. In: Supplement to the 30th issue of the Official Journal of the Royal. Kurmärk government , October 7, 1814, no. 1345; see the brothers Marcus Theodor No. 1321; Moritz No. 1350; Louis (Ludwig) 1356 ( web resource ).
  4. ↑ a b c Renata Buzzo Màrgari Barovero: Epilogue and biographical sketches to Rahel Levin Varnhagen: Family letters . Edited by ders. CH Beck, Munich 2009 (ERLV III), pp. 1415-1470.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Consolina Vigliero: Afterword and thanks as well as time tables to Rahel Levin Varnhagen: Correspondence with Ludwig Robert. Edited by ders. CH Beck, Munich 2001 (ERLV II), pp. 909-942.
  6. ↑ Ellen Key: Rachel. A biographical sketch. Only authorized transfer from the Swedish manuscript by Marie Franzos. 2nd ed. Edgar Thamm, Halle ad Saale 1907, footnote p. 145 ( web resource ).
  7. ↑ To David Veit, March 22, 1795. In: Ludmilla Assing (Ed.): Correspondence between Rahel and David Veit. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1861, pp. 77-80 ( web resource ).
  8. ^ A b Rahel Levin Varnhagen: Correspondence with Pauline Wiesel. Edited by Barbara Hahn. CH Beck, Munich 1997 (ERLV I).
  9. ^ Hannah Lotte Lund: The Berlin Jewish Salon around 1800. Emancipation in the debate. de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012 ( European-Jewish Studies. 1).
  10. ↑ Barbara Hahn: “Answer me!” Rahel Levin Varnhagen's correspondence. Stroemfeld / Roter Stern, Basel 1990, pp. 62–67.
  11. ↑ See his announcement in Berlinische Nachrichten von Staats- und schehrteachen ( Spenersche Zeitung ) No. 156, December 29, 1812, unpag. ( Web resource ).
  12. ↑ Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger offers a list of verifiable visitors to Berlin salons: Die Berliner Salons. de Gruyter, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-11-016414-0 (limited book search at ( google books ); former title: Der Berliner Salon im 19. Jahrhundert. 1780–1914 ; limited book search at google books ).
  13. ^ Fanny Lewald: My life story. Third Section: Liberation and Wandering Life. Otto Janke, Berlin 1862, vol. 1, p. 155 f. ( Web resource ).
  14. ^ Günter de Bruyn: Attempt at a reconstruction. In: "Rachel's first love". Rahel Levin and Karl Graf von Finckenstein in their letters. Edited by dems. Buchverlag der Morgen, Berlin (GDR) 1985, pp. 7–55.
  15. ↑ a b c Ursula Isselstein: Notes and epilogue to Rahel Levin Varnhagen: Diaries and notes. Edited by ders.Wallstein, Göttingen 2019 (ERLV IV).
  16. ^ Karl August Varnhagen von Ense: Diaries. Edited by Ludmilla Assing. Vol. 10, p. 145 (recorded May 8, 1845, web resource ).
  17. ^ To Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, October 4, 1813, in: Correspondence between Varnhagen and Rahel. Edited by Ludmilla Assing. Vol. 3. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1875 (from the estate of Varnhagen von Ense), p. 171 ( web resource ).
  18. ↑ See the Spanish / French-language genealogical website on Genealogy Urquijos.
  19. ↑ Hermann Patsch: "As if Spinoza wanted to be baptized." Biographical and legal history of Rahel Levin's baptism and marriage. In: Yearbook of the free German Hochstift . 1991, pp. 149-178.
  20. ^ To Karl August Varnhagen, June 27, 1815. In: Correspondence between Varnhagen and Rahel. Edited by Ludmilla Assing. Vol. 3. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1875 (from the estate of Varnhagen von Ense), p. 159 ff. ( Web resource ); Sep. 8, 1815, pp. 325-3238 ( web resource ).
  21. ^ Hermann Patsch: Schleiermacher and the burial of Rahel Varnhagen. An annotated edition of the letters. In: New Athenaeum / New Athenaeum. Volume 2, 1991, pp. 69-80.
  22. ↑ Elise & Pauline: What became of Rachel's great niece. In: Gazzettino. Announcements from Varnhagen Gesellschaft e. V. 42 (2018) ( web resource ).
  23. ↑ Karl August Varnhagen von Ense: sheets of Prussian history. Edited by Ludmilla Assing, Vol. 2, FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1868, p. 183 ( web resource ).
  24. ↑ About Goethe. Fragments from letters. Edited by Karl August Varnhagen von Ense. In: Rahel Varnhagen von Ense: “I still want to live when you read it.” Journalistic articles from the years 1812–1829. Edited by Lieselotte Kinskofer. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main and others 2001, pp. 9-22. ( Research on Young Hegelianism. Volume 5).
  25. ↑ Cf. Karl August Varnhagen von Ense to Ottilie von Goethe, March 7, 1824, in: The Sopha beautiful, and yet to the Lottern. Edited by Nikolaus Gatter with the collaboration of Inge Brose-Müller and Sigrun Hopfensperger (= Almanach of the Varnhagen Society. 3 ). Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-8305-0579-2 , p. 221 ff.
  26. ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Ottilie von Goethe October 13, 1823, in: Goethe's letters. Weimar Edition IV. Department, Vol. 38. Hermann Böhlaus Nachsteiger, Weimar 1906, p. 217 ( web resource ).
  27. ↑ Rachel. A keepsake book for your friends. Berlin 1833, p. 31 ( web resource ).
  28. ^ The Varnhagen Collection in wills and dispositions. In: When the story goes around a corner. Edited by Nikolaus Gatter in collaboration with Eva Feldheim and Rita Viehoff. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2000 Almanach der Varnhagen Gesellschaft 1, ISBN 3-8305-0025-4 , p. 261.
  29. ^ Rahel Varnhagen von Ense . Short biography and description of the tomb on the website of the “Foundation for Historical Churchyards and Cemeteries in Berlin-Brandenburg”; accessed on April 6, 2019.
  30. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places. Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 228. Rahel Varnhagen von Ense . Short biography of Rahel Varnhagen and description of the tomb on the website of the “Foundation for Historical Cemeteries and Cemeteries in Berlin-Brandenburg”; accessed on April 6, 2019.
  31. ↑ Honorary graves of the State of Berlin (as of November 2018) . (PDF, 413 kB) Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection, p. 89; accessed on April 6, 2019. Recognition and further preservation of graves as honorary graves of the State of Berlin . (PDF, 205 kB). Berlin House of Representatives, printed matter 17/3105 of July 13, 2016, p. 1 and Annex 2, p. 16; accessed on April 6, 2019.
  32. ^ Website of the Biblioteka Jagiellońska.
  33. ↑ Ottilie von Goethe: For Anna. About Rahel, Bettine and Charlotte. In: G [eorge] H [enry] Needler (Ed. :) Letters from Anna Jameson to Ottilie von Goethe. Oxford University Press, London et al. 1939, p. 235.
  34. ^ Anna Jameson: Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada . 3 vols., Saunders and Otley, London 1838 ( web resource ); translated: Winter studies and summer roaming in Canada. Translated by A [dolph} W [agner] , 2 vol., Friedrich Vieweg, Braunschweig 1839, title page ( web resource ).
  35. ↑ To a friend, May 20, 1838, quoted from Kristin Ørjaseter: About the importance of expressing your own thoughts. Camilla Collett's relationship with Rahel Varnhagen. Translated by Gabriele Haefs . In: The sofa is beautiful, and yet a lot of fun. (Almanac of the Varnhagen Society 3), a. a. O, pp. 421-428.
  36. ^ Carl Wilhelm August Otto Schindel: The German women writers of the nineteenth century. Second part, M – Z, FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1825, p. 383 ff. ( Web resource ); cf. vol. 3 (supplements), p. 93 f. ( web resource ).
  37. ↑ Ladies Conversations Lexicon. Edited in association with scholars and writers by C. Herloßsohn, in commission from Fr. Volckmar, Leipzig 1837, pp. 340–347 ( web resource ).
  38. ↑ Emma Graf; Rahel Varnhagen and romance. Emil Felber, Berlin 1903 ( literary historical research , vol. 28).
  39. ↑ Ellen Key: Rahel Varnhagen. A portrait. Translated from the Swedish by Arthur G. Chater. With an introduction by Havelock Ellis, GF Putnam, New York / London 1913 (The Knickerbocker Press) (digitized version)
  40. ^ Hannah Arendt: Rahel Varnhagen. Life story of a German Jewess from the Romantic period . Piper, Munich 1957, p. 9 f.
  41. ↑ Cf. Liliane Weissberg : Hannah Arendt and her “really best friend, who unfortunately has been dead for a hundred years”. In: Monika Boll, Dorlis Blume, Raphael Gross (eds.): Hannah Arendt and the 20th century. Piper, Munich 2020, pp. 28–38.
  42. ↑ Cf. Nikolaus Gatter: "She became thoroughly stupid and commonplace ...". Hannah Arendt's book about Rahel Varnhagen. In: Gerhard Besier , Andrew Wisely, Katarzyna Stokłosa (eds.): Totalitarism and Liberty. Hannah Arendt in the 21st Century. KA, Kraków 2008, ISBN 978-83-7188-057-5 , pp. 381-419.
  43. ↑ On the history of its origins see Claudia Christophersen: "... there is something meant by life." Hannah Arendt on Rahel Varnhagen. Ulrike Helmer Verlag , Königstein / Taunus 2002, ISBN 3-89741-112-1 .
  44. ↑ Ursula Isselstein: Studies on Rahel Levin Varnhagen. The text from my offended heart. Tirrenia Stampatori, Torino 1993, see the chapter The Varnhagensche writing, collecting and editing workshop, pp. 185–210.
  45. ^ Käte Hamburger: Rahel and Goethe. In: Studies during Goethe's time. Festschrift for Lieselotte Blumenthal . Edited by Helmut Holtzhauer and Bernhard Zeller with the participation of Hans Henning , Hermann Böhlaus Nachhaben , Weimar 1968, p. 92; see Annette Wolf: Humanism as ideal and reality. Kate Hamburger interprets the legacy of Rahel Varnhagen. In: mimeo. Blog of the doctoral students of the Simon Dubnow Institute , May 8, 2019 ( web resource ).
  46. ↑ See Kurt Fervers: Berliner Salons. Story of a great conspiracy . Deutscher Volksverlag , Munich 1940; Hans Karl Krüger: Berlin Romanticism and Berlin Judaism. With numerous previously unknown letters and documents , Röhrscheid, Bonn 1939 ( web resource ).
  47. ↑ Joseph Wulf : Literature and Poetry in the Third Reich. Mohn, Gütersloh 1963, p. 462.
  48. ^ Paul Fechter: The Berliner. Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung, Stuttgart 1943, pp. 174-183.
  49. ↑ Michael Wildt : Correspondence with a stranger. Hannah Arendt and her lecturer, SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. Hans Roessner. In: The gentlemen journalists. The elite of the German press after 1945. Ed. Lutz Hachmeister and Friedemann Sierung, Munich 2002, pp. 238–261.
  50. ^ Herbert Scurla: Encounters with Rahel. Rachel Levin's drawing room. Verlag der Nation , Berlin-GDR 1962; West German licensed edition ad T. Rahel Varnhagen. The great female figure of German romanticism. A biography , Claassen, Düsseldorf 1978, later also paperback in the Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1980. Detailed CV of Gerd Simon with the help of Klaus Popa and Ulrich Schermaul ( web resource ).
  51. ^ Lettres a Varnhagen d'Ense et Rahel Varhhagen d'Ense accompagnées de plusieurs lettres de la comtesse Delphine de Custine et de Rahel Varnhagen d'Ense. Présentation de Roger Pierrot , Reimprimé, Edition Slatkine, Genève 1979.
  52. ↑ Juliane Laschke: We are actually how we want to be and not how we are. On the dialogical character of letters from women at the beginning of the 19th century, shown in the letters from Rahel Varnhagen and Fanny Mendelssohn. P. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-631-40343-7 .
  53. ^ Deborah Hertz: The Varnhagen Collection Is in Kracow. In: The American Archivist. Vol. 44 (1981), H. 4 (Summer), pp. 223-228 ( web resource ).
  54. ↑ Rahel Varnhagen. A Jewish woman in the Berlin Romantic era. 1771-1833. Exhibition on the 160th anniversary of death. Catalog, edited by Carola Gerlach and Francois Melis, Advice Center for Women and Family and Association for Equal Opportunities and Social Protection e. V., Berlin 1993.
  55. ↑ Pauline Wiesel's love stories. Correspondence with Karl Gustav von Brinckmann, Prince Louis Ferdinand von Preussen, Friedrich Gentz ​​and others. Edited by Barbara Hahn, Birgit Bosold and Ursula Isselstein, Beck, Munich 1998 (limited preview in the google book search ).
  56. ↑ Radio mirror . In: Berliner Tageblatt and Handelszeitung vol. 56, no. 538, November 13, 1927; ( Web resource ), scan 22; the manuscript under the title A literary salon in 1830 can be found in the German Broadcasting Archive ; see Walter Roller: Radio texts by Oscar Ludwig Brandt in the German Broadcasting Archive. In: Messages . Edited by Studienkreis Rundfunk und Geschichte 19 (1993), H. 2/3, p. 102 ( web resource ).
  57. ^ Radio Vienna. Illustrated weekly of the Austrian radio traffic AG (RAVAG) vol. 4, no. 41, July 6, 1928, supplement: Auslands-Programs , p. 5 ( web resource ).
  58. ↑ pain of love . A novel. From the author of the novel: Louise or filial obedience and love in quarrel. C. Salfeld, Berlin 1810, p. 110 (digitized version)
  59. ^ Fanny Lewald: Prince Louis Ferdinand . 3 vols., Josef Max, Breslau 1849 ( web resource ).
  60. ↑ Cf. Nikolaus Gatter: "Poison, almost poison for the ignorant public." The diaristic estate of Karl August Varnhagen von Ense and the polemics against Ludmilla Assing's editions. 2nd Edition. Varnhagen Gesellschaft e. V., Cologne 2020, p. 387 ff. ( Web resource ); or: “The prince is dead.” Fanny Lewald's reality poetry. In: The Adventures of Prince Louis Ferdinand. A picture of time. Bastei-Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1997 (classic of the historical novel. Ed. By Edgar Bracht), ISBN 3-404-13921-6 , pp. 397-422.
  61. ↑ K. Th. Zianitzka (di Kathinka Zitz): Rahel or thirty-three years from a noble woman's life . 6 vols., Kollmann, Leipzig 1864, see the review by Eduard Schmidt-Weißenfels: A novel about Rahel. In: Sheets for literary entertainment. No. 26, June 23, 1864, p. 475 f. ( Web resource ).
  62. ↑ K. Th. Zianitzka (di Kathinka Zitz): Heinrich Heine the song poet. A romantic view of life. CE Kollmann, Leipzig 1864, among other things in the chapter suffering and joys in Berlin. Pp. 135-142 ( web resource ).
  63. ^ Heinrich Heine: travel pictures. First part, Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1826 ( web resource ); 2nd ed., 1830 ( web resource ).
  64. ↑ Ludwig Robert's writings . [Ed. v. Karl August Varnhagen von Ense.] Second part, Heinrich Hoff, Mannheim 1838, p. 116 ( web resource ); in the first print the whole line had been left out: Morgenblatt für educated stands No. 221, September 14, 1824, p. 882 ( web resource ).
  65. ↑ First in Rheinblüthen. Paperback for the year 1825, vol. 4, Gottlieb Braun, Karlsruhe, p. 325 ( web resource ); with mention of the name Rahel in Ludwig Robert's writings . First Part, p. 32 ( web resource ); see ibid: Glück in Kunsterzeugung , p. 94 f. ( web resource ).
  66. ^ Edward Arlington Robinson: Three Taverns. The Macmillan Company, New York 1920, pp. 86-95 ( web resource ).
  67. ↑ The view from the window . Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-257-06953-2 .
  68. ↑ The main-belt asteroid No. 2100029 .
personal data
SURNAME Varnhagen von Ense, Rahel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Levin, Rahel (maiden name); Robert, Rahel (adopted family name from the mid-1790s); Robert-Tornow, Rahel (adopted family name from the mid-1790s); Varnhagen von Ense, Friedericke Antonie (baptismal name, from 1814)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1771
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1833
PLACE OF DEATH Berlin