Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen
Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen (born January 29, 1797 in Cologne , † October 22, 1857 in Rome ), known as the Rhine Countess , was an archaeologist and the focus of a Rhenish salon .
Life
Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen was the daughter of the Cologne banker Abraham Schaaffhausen and his wife Maria Anna Schaaffhausen, b. Giesen , a "Rhenish winemaker", as Sibylle once calls her, whom the "Freireichsstädtische father" brought home out of love, "without being hindered by councilors and other relatives". Elisabeth Deichmann-Schaaffhausen was a half-sister of hers .
Since 1816 she was married to the Bonn banker Joseph Ludwig "Louis" Mertens . However, it was a marriage arrangement in the sense of the time. Although the couple had six children, the marriage was unhappy. The poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff , who belongs to her circle of friends , spoke of the “marriage hell” of her acquaintances, who had to marry a 16 years older man and was unhappy with him from day one. Divorce was out of the question for religious reasons. However, the financial circumstances made it possible for everyone to go their own way: he lived mostly in Cologne, she in Bonn and on the Petersberg , where she had a summer residence built in 1834. However, every marriage would have been doomed to failure, because Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen did not love men, but women. According to her diary, the greatest love of her life was a Marchesa from Genoa, Laurina Spinola , for whom she mourned for many years. Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen couldn't talk to anyone about her love for women. She dedicated her own diary with very intimate content to Laurina Spinola.
Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen was an enthusiastic archaeologist from a young age. In 1832 she moved into a large villa in Bonn (Wilhelmstrasse 33), the upper floor of which was reserved for her collection. Soon the house became the meeting point of Bonn's intellectual elite, where they ran one of the most famous salons in the Rhineland. A circle of important professors, artists and, above all, ancient researchers belonged to it. Her friends included the poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (since October 1825) as well as Johanna and Adele Schopenhauer , as well as Goethe's daughter-in-law Ottilie . With Adele Schopenhauer, the sister of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer , she had been living a partnership with all its ups and downs since 1826. After the deaths of Laurina Spinola and Louis Mertens, the two women became closer again. Adele Schopenhauer then moved into the Bonn house of Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen on Wilhelmstrasse and lived there until her death from cancer in 1849.
Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen was a talented musician and associated with well-known musicians of her time. For example, it supported the Niederrheinische Musikfest and the erection of the Beethoven monument in Bonn (1845). At first she also organized and directed the Society for Early Music, which rehearsed in her house. Two settings of poems from Goethe's West-Eastern Divan have survived.
Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen traveled a lot throughout her life, especially to Italy. She was a recognized specialist in numismatics and the owner of one of the most important coin collections in Germany. She was a co-founder of the Cologne Cathedral Building Association , which made the completion of the Cologne Cathedral possible.
After the death of her husband, there were inheritance disputes with her six children, who wanted their share of the inheritance paid out. A lengthy legal process for this did not end until 1849, and as a result Mertens-Schaaffhausen had to sell large parts of the property in order to be able to finance the inheritance shares. So she sold - shortly before her death - on May 2, 1857 the " Gut Sülz " (the former winery of the Cistercian Abbey of Heisterbach ) with the associated lands and vineyards to David Cahn. Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen found her final resting place in the cemetery of Campo Santo Teutonico next to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
exhibition
Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen (1797-1857) - On the 150th anniversary of the death of the "Rheingräfin" - Exhibition of the Bonn City Museum in the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Haus from September 13th to November 25th, 2007.
literature
- Heinrich Hubert Houben: The Rhine Countess - The life of the Cologne woman Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen, depicted from her diaries and letters, with an obituary for HH Houben by Hanns Martin Elster, Essen publishing house, Essen 1935
- Karsten Hein: Ottilie von Goethe (1796–1872). Biography and literary relationships of Goethe's daughter-in-law (= European university publications. Series 1: German Language and Literature , Volume 1782). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2001, ISBN 3-631-37438-0 (dissertation University of Düsseldorf 2000, 398 pages).
- Monika Ditz, Doris Maurer : Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and her friends. Turm-Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-929874-05-9 .
- Christine Wittich, Valentin Kockel : Sybille Mertens-Schaaffhausen (1797-1857). Collector, connoisseur and “colleague” of the ancient scholars. In: Valentin Kockel, Daniel Graepler (eds.): Daktyliotheken. Gods and Caesars from the drawer. Bierig and Brinkmann, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-930609-51-7 , pp. 102-107.
- Josef Niesen : Bonn Personal Lexicon. 3rd, improved and enlarged edition. Bouvier, Bonn 2011, ISBN 978-3-416-03352-7 .
- Angela Steidele : Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen (1797-1857). StadtMuseum, Bonn 2007, ISBN 978-3-931878-21-4 .
- Gabriele Büch: La principessa tedesca. Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen 1797–1857. Bouvier-Verlag, Bonn 2009, ISBN 978-3-416-03257-5 .
- Andrea Rottloff : Archaeologists. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-8053-4063-2 ( The famous ).
- Angela Steidele: Story of a Love. Adele Schopenhauer and Sibylle Mertens. Insel-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-458-17454-7 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen in the catalog of the German National Library
- Letters from Annette von Droste-Hülshoff to Sibylle Mertens - in the literary web project nach100jahren.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Angela Steidele: Story of a love. Adele Schopenhauer and Sybille Mertens. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2010 on das-blaettchen.de accessed on May 16, 2013
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mertens-Schaaffhausen, Sibylle |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rhine Countess |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German archaeologist, center of Bonn society |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 29, 1797 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cologne |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 22, 1857 |
| Place of death | Rome |