Sophie Hasenclever

Sophie von Schadow painted by her father Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow, 1833

Sophie Hasenclever (* January 6, 1823 as Sophie von Schadow in Berlin , † May 10, 1892 in Düsseldorf ) was a German poet and translator .

Life

Sophie von Schadow was born in Berlin in the winter of 1823/1824 as the only daughter of Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow and his wife Charlotte von Groschke from Kurland . Her father was a professor at the Prussian Academy of the Arts at the time of her birth and in 1826 became director of the Düsseldorf Art Academy . Sophie von Schadow grew up in the Düsseldorf artistic environment. In her parents' house at Flinger Steinweg (today Schadowstrasse ) 54, the painters of the Düsseldorf School of Painting , writers and composers, including Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , who lived in the neighborhood for several years. Von Schadow, who portrayed his daughter several times, personally gave her painting lessons . At the age of six, Sophie and her parents traveled to Italy for the first time, and ten years later she learned the Italian language for the second time in Rome .

In 1845, at the age of 21, she married the doctor Richard Hasenclever , who was medical advisor from 1847 . The couple lived in Grevenbroich until 1848 , where he worked as a district physician . Richard Hasenclever was artistically, literarily and politically active in a variety of ways, and later became a co-founder of the Old Catholic Movement and a member of the Reichstag . The couple had two children, Anna (* 1846) and Felix (1851-1892). Her son later went to the Navy and became a corvette captain and naval attaché . Their daughter Anna married Eduard Daniel (1849–1907) in 1877. In the two decades after the birth of the children, Sophie Hasenclever did not appear in public as a poet, but devoted herself to family life, which corresponded to the social expectations of married women. In fact, Sophie Hasenclever also worked on her own poems and translations during the family phase.

Goltsteinstrasse 24

In Düsseldorf they lived at Hofgartenstrasse 8 until the beginning of the 1860s, including the house where their father died in 1862. She later had a house at Goltsteinstrasse 24. Direct neighbors at the end of the 19th century were the family of the painter Karl Rudolf Sohn and the Else Sohn-Rethel . The then older sculptor August Wittig and around 1880 the painter Hermann Schmiechen lived in the house of the Hasenclevers . Here she and her husband ran an artistic-literary salon in which many greats of the time came and went, among them the poet Karl Immermann and Gottfried Keller , as well as the composers Ferdinand Hiller , Robert Schumann and the composer and pianist Clara Schumann . The painter Carl Gehrts found social connections in the circle of the writer Hasenclever.

In 1873 her husband and like-minded people founded the Old Catholic Association, from which the old Catholic community in Düsseldorf emerged. Sophie Hasenclever joined them, "following her conscience, with full conviction" - said Pastor Wilhelm Schirmer at her funeral.

Gravesite Sophie and Richard Hasenclever (2020)

Sophie Hasenclever died in 1892 at the age of 68, leaving behind a wealth of unpublished manuscripts. Her grave is in the Golzheim cemetery .

plant

Sophie Hasenclever's works include various poems critical of civilization, while her novels are often about people who have to prove themselves in a crisis situation. Many of her poems , fairy tales , comedies and satires have remained unpublished. Sometimes she wrote under the pseudonym S. Rolant , including the historical novel "Ghost Battle". Sophie Hasenclever also made a name for herself as a translator. She mastered not only the Italian but also the French language. Over the years she has created translations with her own introductions, in which she classified the respective work in terms of literary history.

From the 1870s Sophie Hasenclever published, among other things, the novellette, "From the War Time 1870-71" and the collection of poetry "Rheinische Lieder", which received great attention. With this collection, the literary historian Heinrich Groß certified Sophie Hasenclever “a permanent place in German literature” (Germany's female poets, 1882). Her translation of the poems of the Breton poet Auguste Brizeux appeared in 1874 . In 1875, on the occasion of Michelangelo's 400th birthday, she presented a translation of his entire poetic work, which she had worked on for a full decade, which has not been outdated to this day.

In addition to natural hymns and poems critical of civilization, in which she warned of advancing industrialization, there were variations on love, loneliness and death. In the two-volume edition of her “Novellen und Märchen” (Novellas and Fairy Tales), published in 1884, which she dedicated to the Swiss writer Gottfried Keller , she primarily addressed crisis and conflict situations in which people have to prove themselves.

She composed the text of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's “ Athalia ”, which was performed privately at the court of the Prince of Hohenzollern , who was then resident in Düsseldorf . The composer Ferdinand Hiller based his cantata for solos, choir and orchestra " Nala und Damayanti " on Sophie Hasenclever's adaptation of this Indian material. The story is about King Nala, who loses his kingdom through a passion for gambling and finally regains it, and about his faithful wife Damayanti. In preparation for this, Sophie Hasenclever had studied ancient Indian literature for years. In 1890 her translation of Dante's “ La Divina Commedia ” appeared.

Works (selection)

• A. Briseux, poems , translation, 1874
• From the war period from 1870 to 1871 , short stories, 1877
• Rhenish songs , poems, 1881
• Short stories and fairy tales , 2 volumes, 1884
• Dante's Divine Comedy , translation 1889, hardcover, Felix Bagel, 1915
• Michelangelo's poems. All of Michelangelo's poems in Guasti's text, with German translation by Sophie Hasenclever, introduced by M. Jordan . Dürr, Leipzig, 1875
• Michelangelo , poetry album (lyric series), 1973

literature

• Adolph Kohut : Wilhelm von Schadow’s daughter . In: Adolf Kohut: From my Rhenish study portfolio. Character pictures, literary portraits and sketches from the present . Breidenbach & Baumann, Düsseldorf 1877, p. 83 ff. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Wikisource: Sophie Hasenclever  - Sources and full texts

• Sophie Hasenclever, poet and Dante translator , at alt-katholisch.de, accessed August 9, 2015
• Sophie Hasenclever , source: Towards oblivion. Women in the intellectual history of Düsseldorf. Life pictures and chronicles. Documentation of an exhibition in the women's culture archive. Neuss 1989
• Sophie Hasenclever , from schadow-gesellschaft.org, accessed August 9, 2015
• Maria Carolina Sophia von Schadow , on geneanet.org

Individual evidence

1. ^ Corvette Captain Felix Hasenclever since September 24, 1889; died in London on August 23, 1892
2. ^ Address book Düsseldorf 1870 Excerpt: Goltsteinstrasse 24, Hasenclever, wife geb. v. Schadow
3. ↑ Herrmann Schmiechen, Goltsteinstrasse 24 , in the address book of the Lord Mayor's Office in Düsseldorf 1882
4. ^ Golzheimer Friedhof: Sophie Hasenclever (304)
5. ↑ Sophie Hasenclever , biography and estate in the portal rheinische-literaturnachlaesse.de
6. ^ Rheinische Lieder, Sophie Hasenclever, Berlin 1881
7. ↑ Musikalisches Wochenblatt, Leipzig 1874: Coln, 14 Dec. The main number of the 2nd Gürzenich Concert (4th November) was the novelty: “Nal und Damajanti”, dramatic cantatas, composed by Sophie Hasenclever geb. Schadow, composer for solos, choir and orchestra by Dr. Ferd. Hiller.
8. ↑ Sophie Hasenclever: The Divine Comedy , Hell, Singing 01 ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ↑ Sophie Hasenclever: The Divine Comedy , Hell, Singing 02 ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ^ Translations of the Divine Comedy , on dante-gesellschaft.de, accessed on August 9, 2015
11. ↑ Examples of the Michelangelo translations by Sophie Hasenclever ( Memento of the original from 23 September 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.