Rosa Maria Assing

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Rosa Maria Antonetta Paulina Assing , née Varnhagen (born May 28, 1783 in Düsseldorf , † January 22, 1840 in Hamburg ), was a German poet , narrator , translator , silhouette artist and educator . She is the older sister of Karl August Varnhagen , the sister-in-law of Rahel Levin and the mother of Ottilie and Ludmilla Assing .

Rosa Maria Assing: Paper cut c. 1830 after a facsimile from 1925

Life

Childhood and youth

Rosa Maria Assing came to Düsseldorf on May 28, 1783 as the daughter of Anna Maria Varnhagen , born in Strasbourg . Kuntz, and the town physician and Palatine Medizinalrats Johann Andreas Jacob Varnhagen to the world. Like her mother, she was baptized Protestant , while her younger brother Karl August was to grow up in the Catholic denomination. Otherwise, the siblings received the same training from private tutors and additional lessons in creative subjects. As an enlightened doctor, her father was a supporter of human rights and the ideals of the French Revolution . Rosa Maria played the guitar and also learned revolutionary songs like the Marseillaise , La Carmagnole and Ah! Ça ira . As a young girl in Düsseldorf she was also seen wearing a tricolor sash .

In 1790 the family moved to Strasbourg, where the father tried in vain for a professorship at the university . As the daughter of a Strasbourg councilor, Anna Maria enjoyed civil rights and was left alone with Rosa Maria, while Johann Andreas Jacob Varnhagen returned to Düsseldorf with his son. Despite publicly distancing himself from the Jacobin reign of terror , he was expatriated and settled as a doctor in Hamburg in 1794, where mother and daughter did not arrive until 1796. At the age of fifteen, Rosa Maria wrote a letter novel , lyric poems and short stories.

Educator and poet

After a long illness and an accident Johann Andreas Varnhagen died on June 5, 1798. A family friend allowed his son Karl August, for a time in Berlin medicine to study, while Rosa Maria livelihood for themselves and their mother as a teacher earn had . In a merchant family , she taught two daughters who were a little older than herself. Later she also took jobs with Jewish families, which caused a stir in her circle of friends . She repeatedly “defied this qu'en dit-on” offered " . With a loan from her last employer, Georg Oppenheimer, she founded a boarding school for girls in 1811 , which was moved to Hamburg in 1814 . In the first six months she taught eight pupils.

In the same year 1811, Karl August Varnhagen took the suffix "von Ense" from the noble Westphalian ancestors, which his sister also took over, who published her works under the name Rosa Maria . Her brother introduced her to poets like Adelbert von Chamisso , with whom she translated old French poetry of the troubadours , and Justinus Kerner , who visited her several times in Hamburg as a medical student . Kerner also introduced her to his Jewish fellow student David Assur from Königsberg , who had been blind in one eye after an accident and who passed his doctorate in 1807. Other poet friends from this group were Ludwig Uhland , Karl Mayer and Gustav Schwab from the Swabian Poet School , in whose anthologies and muse almanacs ( poetic almanac for the year 1812 , German poet forest ) she participated. Rosa Maria also took an active part in the literary ventures of her brother and the Nordsternbund he founded, and in the German muse almanac by Chamisso and Schwab.

Amalie Schoppe , who came to her as a student, soon became a close friend and colleague; she was also inspired to write and became a sought-after and prolific writer . Rosa Maria also socialized with Elise Campe , the physician David Veit , a childhood friend of Rahel Varnhagen, with Fanny Tarnow and Johanna Neander.

Marriage and salon socializing

At the beginning of 1816, Rosa Maria was engaged to David Assur, who had taken part in the wars of freedom as a regimental doctor and returned in 1814 decorated with the Iron Cross . He was baptized in order to be allowed to practice in Hamburg, from then on called himself “Assing” and after marrying Rosa Maria kept the old surname as the middle name . In November 1816 he began to practice as a doctor for the poor in the Jewish residential area on Marienstraße. Their first child, Carl Eginhard, died in 1817, the year they were born.

With their daughters Ottilie and Ludmilla Assing, born in 1819 and 1821, the Assings moved to Poolstrasse, where Rosa Maria ran a literary salon . Her house was "one of the most respected in Hamburg, to which she herself made an excellent contribution through a rare combination of high moral dignity, cheerful joie de vivre and rich intellectual talent". Many authors from Young Germany frequented this place, such as Ludolf Wienbarg , Theodor Mundt and Karl Gutzkow as well as their Jewish friends Salomon Ludwig Steinheim , Gabriel Riesser and Rahel de Castro . Even Friedrich Hebbel , David Assing healed of a life-threatening disease, and Heinrich Heine , who had come on the recommendation of Karl August Varnhagen in May 1823 Assings, were among this circle.

At the meetings in "small, dark, tree-shaded home the modest pool street, in a small garden, where not comfortable doing twenty steps were" also were silhouettes made. Rosa Maria brought her art to the greatest perfection of cutting out silhouettes of plants and birds and entire landscape panoramas from colored and black paper ; her fairy tale scenes with tiny, botanically precise details were exhibited in public during their lifetime and were probably also used as sets for paper theaters . Another social pleasure in the Salon Rosa Maria Assings were readings of plays with assigned roles, directed by Gutzkow.

Last years of life

With her children Rosa Maria made several trips to Swabia , Alsace and Paris , where she visited Heinrich Heine. At the age of 57, on January 22nd, 1840 - one day after the 19th birthday of her daughter Ludmilla - Rosa Maria Assing succumbed to an debilitating illness. Her widower published her collected poems and stories and dedicated her own Nenien . When her daughters moved to Berlin, their estate came to the Varnhagen collection . Her books and paper cuttings are now kept in the Berlin State Library, while manuscripts and letters, as part of the cultural assets that were relocated to Silesia during the World War, are kept in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska (the Jagiellonian University library ) in Krakow .

The estate of the Assing couple has been cataloged editorially and digitally since 2015 with the support of the Polish National Center for Science ( Narodowe Centrum Nauki ) by the Germanist Paweł Zarychta from the German Department of the Jagiellonian University .

Works and letters

  • Rosa Maria Assing: Fabio and Clara. A novella by Rosa Maria. In: Wilhelm Neumann and Karl August Varnhagen (eds.): Stories and games. Hamburg: Adolph Schmidt 1807, pp. 233-278.
  • Rosa Maria Assing: The chimney sweep. A true story from the middle of the last century. FG Levrault, Strasbourg 1834; Reprinted as No. 11 of the series of the Association for the Dissemination of Good Writings, Zurich 1894
  • Adelbert von Chamisso and Rosa Maria. (Communicated by Rosa Maria). In: Der Freihafen 2 (1839), no. 1, pp. 1–28 ( digitized version )
  • David Assur Assing (Ed.): Rosa Maria's poetischer inheritance. Hammerichs, Altona 1841 ( digitized version ).
  • Rosa Maria Assing: The sleeping princess. An old fairy tale for intelligent children. In: Telegraph für Deutschland , Jg. 1846, Nos. 93-107, pp. 369 ff., 374 ff., 379 f., 382 f., 386 ff., 391 f., 395 f., 398 ff., 402 f., 407 f., 411 f., 415 f., 419 f., 423 f., 426 ff.
  • Joachim Kirchner (Ed.): Silhouettes from the estate of Varnhagen von Ense: Based on originals in the Prussian State Library. People's Association of Book Friends, Wegweiser-Verlag, Berlin 1925

literature

  • Johann Friedrich Ludwig Theodor Merzdorf :  Assing, David . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 624 f. - Additional entry ( digitized version )
  • Ludwig Geiger: Rosa Maria Assing. In ders. (Ed.): Poets and women. Treatises and communications. New collection. Berlin 1899, pp. 203-225
  • Nikolaus Gatter: “What good women Assing and August have.” Heine's friend Rosa Maria. In: Irina Hundt (ed.): From the salon to the barricade. Women of the Heine Age. JB Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01842-3 (Heine studies), pp. 91-110
  • Renate Schipke: The Varnhagen siblings as a cutter. In: Regina Stephan (ed.): Between black and white. Kulturstiftung Schloß Britz, Berlin 2004, p. 4–8 digitized
  • Paweł Zarychta: “I would be silent if you were there.” On the poetics of the memorial letter after 1800 using the example of the letters Rahel and Karl August Varnhagen to Rosa Maria and David Assing. In the S. / Ingo Breuer / Katarzyna Jaśtal (eds.): Conversation games & idea magazines. Heinrich von Kleist and the letter culture around 1800. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2013, pp. 305–322, ISBN 978-3-412-20932-2
  • Nikolaus Gatter: “Scissors Plastic” - “Landschäftchen” - “Play Art” . The Varnhagen-Assing siblings and their influence on Arthur Maximilian Miller's paper cuttings. In: Peter Fassl (Hrsg.): “Who has the shadow, has the presence of the body.” Arthur Maximilian Miller's paper cutting and shadow theater in the context of the history of paper cutting, his biography and poetry.Bezirk Schwaben, Augsburg 2014 (series of publications of the district home care Schwaben zur Geschichte und Kultur, Vol. 7), pp. 67-103, ISBN 978-3-934113-11-4
  • Nikolaus Gatter: "I always admire your noble, quiet, consistent nature and life." Heine's friends Rosa Maria and Rahel Varnhagen. In: Beate Borowka-Clausberg (Ed.): Salonworthy. Women in the Heine period. Morio, Heidelberg 2016, pp. 25-40, ISBN 978-3-9-45424-31-5
  • Paweł Zarychta: "On the estate of Rosa Maria and David Assings in Krakow or: Why the Varnhagen Collection should be re-cataloged." In: International Yearbook of the Bettina von Arnim Society 28/29 (2016/2017), Saint Albin, Berlin, p. 31-50, ISBN 978-3-930293-28-5
  • Paweł Zarychta: “Cult of memory and artistic conviviality.” The estate of Rosa Maria and David Assings in the Varnhagen Collection: A preliminary project report. In: Monika Jaglarz / Katarzyna Jaśtal (ed.): Holdings of the former Prussian State Library in Berlin in the Jagiellonian Library. Research status and perspectives. Peter Lang, Berlin 2018 (History - Memory - Politics, Vol. 23), pp. 293–304, ISBN 978-3-631-76581-4
  • Paweł Zarychta: "So we will leave Paris in very different ways" - travel letters Rosa Maria, Ottilie and Ludmilla Assings from 1835. In: Ders./ Renata Damp-Jarosz (ed.): "... only women can write letters" . Facets of female letter culture after 1750, Vol. 1, Peter Lang, Berlin 2019 (Perspektiven der Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft. Transdisciplinary Studies on German Studies, Vol. 3), pp. 243–298, ISBN 978-3-631-74125-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Letter from Rosa Maria Varnhagen to Karl August Varnhagen, October 6, 1805. Varnhagen Collection , Bibliotheka Jagiellońska, Krakau [box 16]
  2. ↑ Allgemeine Deutsche Real = Encyclopedia for the educated classes. Conversations Lexicon . 10. verb. u. Probably ed., Volume 1. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1851, p. 744.
  3. ↑ Karl Gutzkow: Looking back on my life. Costenoble, Berlin 1875, p. 177.
  4. ^ D [avid] A [ssur] Assing: Nenien after the death of Rosa Maria. As handwriting for friends. FWC Menck, Hamburg 1840; that., 2nd probable edition. Hamburg 1841 digitized
  5. ↑ See Paweł Zarychta: “Cult of Memory and Artistic Sociability.” The estate of Rosa Maria and David Assings in the Varnhagen Collection: A preliminary project report. In: Monika Jaglarz / Katarzyna Jaśtal (ed.): Holdings of the former Prussian State Library in Berlin in the Jagiellonian Library. Research status and perspectives. Peter Lang, Berlin 2018 (History - Memory - Politics, Vol. 23), p. 293.
personal data
SURNAME Assing, Rosa Maria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Assing, Rosa Maria Antonetta Paulina (full name); Varnhagen, Rosa Maria (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet, narrator, translator, silhouette artist and educator
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1783
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 1840
Place of death Hamburg