Sophie von Kühn

Commemorative plaque for Sophie von Kühn embedded in the wall of the village church of Grüningen

Christiane Wilhelmine Sophie von Kühn (born March 17, 1782 ; † March 19, 1797 in Grüningen ) was Friedrich von Hardenberg's (Novalis) fiancée , who died at the age of 15 and whose memory he has in many of his works, especially in the hymns to the night (1800), preserved.

Life

Sophie was the stepdaughter of Captain Johann Rudolph von Rockenthien and daughter of Sophie Wilhelmine von Kühn. On the castle Grüningen in today's Thuringia , aged twelve, Sophie and the 22-year-old for the first time Novalis met on 17 November 1794th Novalis informed his brother Erasmus von Hardenberg in a letter that a "quarter of an hour" had decided his life. On March 15, 1795, shortly before her thirteenth birthday, there was an unofficial engagement with Friedrich von Hardenberg.

In November 1795, Sophie fell seriously ill but apparently recovered. After three serious operations (at that time still without anesthesia ) between May and July 1796, however, she died on March 19, 1797 at Grüningen Castle. Her family's obituary on Sophie's death appeared in the Leipziger Zeitung on Saturday, March 25, 1797.

Sophie had two sisters (Friederike and Karoline) and two brothers (George and Hans von Kühn). In addition, a half-sister from the first marriage of her father Johann Georg von Kühn, namely Wilhelmine von Kühn, and another four half-siblings from her mother's marriage to Johann Rudolph von Rockenthien.

Thematization in the literature

In Penelope Fitzgerald's novel The Blue Flower , the love between Friedrich von Hardenberg and Sophie von Kühn is the theme. In 1997 Fitzgerald became the first non-American female writer to receive the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for him . In 2015, 82 international literary critics and scholars voted him on the shortlist of the hundred most important British novels .

literature

Regula Fankhauser: The poet Sophia. 1997, ISBN 3-412-00397-2 .
Historical-critical edition Novalis, Volume 5, 1988.

Web links

Letter from Sophie von Kühn to Novalis
Novalis and Sophie von Kühn did a seminar paper at the HU Berlin
Novalis: "Hymns to the Night"

Single receipts

^ Gerhard Schulz: Novalis. Life and work of Friedrich von Hardenberg. Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-62781-1 , p. 84 ; Ernst Behler: Early Romanticism. de Gruyter, 1992, p. 145 ; Herbert Uerlings: Novalis. Reclam, 2015, p. 30.
Other sources mention March 17, 1785 as the engagement date, Sophie's 13th birthday: Lektürehilfe.de, for example .

^ The Guardian: The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? accessed on January 31, 2016

personal data
SURNAME	Kühn, Sophie von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Kühn, Christiane Wilhelmine Sophie von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Fiancee Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis)
DATE OF BIRTH	March 17, 1782
DATE OF DEATH	March 19, 1797
Place of death	Grüningen (Greussen)

[1] Gerhard Schulz: Novalis. Life and work of Friedrich von Hardenberg. Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-62781-1 , p. 84 ; Ernst Behler: Early Romanticism. de Gruyter, 1992, p. 145 ; Herbert Uerlings: Novalis. Reclam, 2015, p. 30.
Other sources mention March 17, 1785 as the engagement date, Sophie's 13th birthday: Lektürehilfe.de, for example .

[guardian-2] The Guardian: The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? accessed on January 31, 2016