Thérèse Levasseur

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Johann Michael Baader: Marie Thérèse Levasseur Veuve de Jean Jacques Rousseau , watercolor, 1791
Contemporary image by Thérèse Levasseur. In the background the tomb of Rousseau on l'île des Peupliers in the park of Ermenonville . After a sepia by Caroline Naudet (1775–1839)
Last Paris address: attic apartment on rue Plâtrière

Marie-Thérèse Levasseur , also Le Vasseur, (baptized September 22, 1721 in the parish church of Saint-Michel in Orléans ; died July 17, 1801 in Le Plessis-Belleville , Département Oise ) was Jean-Jacques Rousseau's partner : “his wife , his mistress, his servant, his daughter ”(J.-JR).

Life

Thérèse was the fourth child of François Levasseur and Marie Renou, with whom she lived in simple circumstances in Paris in the early 1740s .

Jean-Jacques Rousseau entered the service of Françoise-Louise de Warens at the age of 15 in 1728 and had a relationship with her between 1732 and 1738. He met Thérèse Levasseur in March 1745 in Paris, where she worked as a domestic help. Levasseur and Rousseau lived together from then on, Thérèse Levasseur initially lived at home. From 1747, when Rousseau's financial situation improved somewhat, they lived together in Paris, and Thérèse Levasseur then accompanied Rousseau on the many stages of his unsteady life: to Geneva , to the Val de Travers in the Prussian exclave Principality of Neuchâtel , to England, its language did not control it, and returned to the rue de la Glacière in Paris. In 1754 in Calvinist Geneva they were asked about the nature of their relationship, to which they (had to) answered with excuses.

The wedding ceremony of the Catholic Levasseur and the Protestant Rousseau, which they carried out on August 30, 1768 in front of the mayor of Bourgoin , was not a church wedding, but a promise not to abandon each other until death. Thérèse spent a total of 34 years with Rousseau. For Rousseau's friends, the connection with a woman who could barely read was a mesalliance , a judgment that almost without exception all biographers and historians have adopted. Not only his relationship with Frau de Warens found grace, but also his relationship with Madame d'Houdetot , as she had a literary expression in the epistolary novel Julie or The New Heloise . Allegedly Levasseur had different relationships with other men, including mutual acquaintances, and others. a. around 1766 to James Boswell .

Rousseau described Thérèse and his relationship with her in his autobiographical work Les Confessions . In doing so, he excused her human flaws and weaknesses in order to idealize her at the same time, as did his first lover.

When Rousseau died in 1778, she became his universal heir. The Marquis de Girandin paid her a life annuity in exchange for the Rousseau property he had secured. Girandin and a few friends of Rousseau took care of the literary estate from then on.

The circumstances of Rousseau's death were discussed in public and Levasseur was implicated. Years later, Madame de Staël reported the suicide of a cuckold , and Lion Feuchtwanger had Queen Marie Antoinette appear in his novel Fool's Wisdom or Death and Transfiguration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , who tried to dispel all rumors with a demonstrative visit to Rousseau's tomb in Ermenonville . Since the contemporary statements and the traditions were based on partisan assumptions against the "uneducated", "greedy" and "wicked mother", it is not certain as a fact whether Levasseur still married the valet Montretont in November 1779 and he was with her in Plessis- Belleville resided where she lived for the next 23 years.

The French National Assembly granted her at the instigation of Mirabeau in 1791 a pension of 1,200 francs a year.

The Mount Levasseur in Alaska due to its proximity to Rousseau peak named after her.

children

Levasseur and Rousseau had five children between 1746 and 1753. Each of the children was given to the foundling house as an infant - “for economic reasons” . Rousseau was criticized for this in public, and Levasseur was given either the main blame or at least part of the blame for the brutal separation of children from parents, especially since life expectancy in the orphanages at that time was low. On the other hand, it is noted that in the 18th century a quarter of all baptized children in Paris were abandoned in this way. In order to explain Rousseau's behavior, the assumption has also been made that it was not his biological children at all. Overall, however, he had to be reproached again and again for the discrepancy that exists between the educational ideal of Émile , which he had formulated, and his own failure to raise children.

literature

  • Jean-Daniel Candaux, Thérèse Levasseur ou les avatars d'une image (1762-1789) . In: Cahiers Isabelle de Charrière / Belle de Zuylen Papers 7, 2012 p. 99-108.
  • Klaus Lelek: 300 years of Rousseau - psychopath, philosopher and prima donna . Epubli, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-8442-2107-7 , text excerpts (also via Levasseur)
  • Bruno Preisendörfer : I'm Rousseau's detective lieutenant. Narrative. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . June 9, 2012.
  • Giovanni Incorvati: Translations dissymétriques: crimes et droits d'un couple dans la Correspondance de Rousseau . In: Jacques Berchtold and Yannick Séité (eds.): Lire la correspondance de Rousseau . Droz, Genève 2007 ( Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau , XLVII), pp. 75-123.
  • Dieter Sturma : Jean-Jacques Rousseau. CH Beck, Munich 2001.
  • Laurent Müller: Marie-Thérèse Levasseur. In: Raymond Trousson (ed.): Dictionnaire de Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Champion, Paris 1996, ISBN 2-85203-604-5 .
  • Rudolf Egger: Thérèse Levasseur, Rousseau's widow - for a lifetime. Monologue, 2001.
  • Charly Guyot: Plaidoyer pour Thérèse Levasseur. Ides et Calendes, Neuchâtel 1962.
  • Hanns Julius Wille: The Companion. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1952.
    • Hanns Julius Wille: Dreams and Tears: The Life of Therese Levasseur with Jean Jacques Rousseau. Günther, Leipzig / Vienna 1937.
  • Henriette Roland Holst : Jean Jacques Rousseau: a picture of his life and his works. Wolff, Munich 1921, pp. 62-69.
  • Karl Gotthold Lenz: About Rousseau's connection with women. Two parts in one band. H. Barsdorf, 1906
  • Richard Mahrenholtz: Thérèse Levasseur. In: Journal of French Language and Literature. Volume 11, 1889, pp. 177-187 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • Claude Genoux; Alfred de Lacaze: Les enfants de JJ Rousseau. Serrière, Paris 1857.
  • Loi qui décrète une statue pour Jean-Jacques Rousseau, et une pension de 1,200 livres pour sa veuve. Donnée à Paris, on December 29, 1790 . Impr. D'A. Delcros, Clermont-Ferrand 1791.
  • Isabelle de Charrière , Plainte et defense de Thérèse Le Vasseur. Louis Fauche-Borel, Neuchâtel 1789

watercolor

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rousseau to Count Conti in Montmorency. Quotation and biographical data from: Laurent Müller: Marie-Thérèse Levasseur. In: Raymond Trousson (ed.): Dictionnaire de Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 1996, pp. 539-544
  2. ↑ Henriette Roland-Holst: Jean Jacques Rousseau: a picture of his life and his works. 1921, p. 64.
  3. ^ Richard Mahrenholtz: Thérèse Levasseur. 1889.
  4. ↑ Henriette Roland-Holst: Jean Jacques Rousseau: a picture of his life and his works. 1921, p. 68.
  5. ↑ E.g. Dieter Thomä: His craft was freedom. In: FAZ . June 23, 2012, p. Z2.
  6. ^ Jürgen Tiede: Baader, Johann Michael . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 6, Saur, Munich a. a. 1992, ISBN 3-598-22746-9 , p. 85.
personal data
SURNAME Levasseur, Thérèse
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Levasseur, Marie-Thérèse
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Life partner of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
DATE OF BIRTH baptized September 22, 1721
PLACE OF BIRTH Orleans
DATE OF DEATH July 17, 1801
Place of death Le Plessis-Belleville , Oise department