Therese Staufenau

Therese Staufenau b. Gauss.

Therese Staufenau b. Gauß (born June 9, 1816 in Göttingen , † February 11, 1864 in Dresden ) was the youngest daughter of the mathematician, astronomer and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauß . After the death of her mother in 1831, she devoted her life to her father until his death in 1855. She then married the theater man Constantin Staufenau , whom she had not dared to marry during her father's lifetime for reasons of class. Seven years later, like her mother and sister, she died of consumption .

Life

origin

View from the north of the Göttingen observatory. Gauss lived with his family in the right wing.

Henriette Wilhelmine Caroline Therese Gauß was born on June 9, 1816 in Göttingen. She was the sixth child of the mathematician, astronomer and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauß and the third child from his second marriage to Minna Waldeck, the daughter of the professor of law Johann Peter Waldeck and his wife Charlotte Wyneken.

In his first marriage, Carl Friedrich Gauß was married from 1805 to 1809 to Johanna Osthoff (1780–1809), the daughter of a master white tanner. The children Joseph , Minna and a son who died in infancy resulted from the marriage. Joseph was 10 and Minna 8 years older than Therese. She was the youngest child in the Gauss family. Her siblings from Gauß 'second marriage were the brothers Eugen and Wilhelm , who were 5 and 3 years older . Therese was born in the apartment at Kurzen Straße 15 in Göttingen (→  photo ). From October 1816, the family lived in the west wing of the newly built Göttingen observatory , of which Gauss was the director.

youth

Therese's father Carl Friedrich Gauß at the age of 26.

Therese's mother Minna Gauß born. Waldeck.

Like her sister Minna, Therese received her schooling through private lessons. However, unlike their brothers, the sisters did not attend high school. In any case, Therese's letters testify to a solid education.

After the birth of her three children, Therese's mother began to be ailing in 1818. She was sick with consumption, and from 1824 a period of suffering began for her until her death in 1831. The housewife's long illness led to a domestic burden that Gauss and the entire family suffered. The Gauss researcher Theo Gerardy judged the children of Gauss:

“The different mental legacies of the mothers can be seen in the children. Josef and Minna, Johanna's children, are warm-hearted, uncomplicated and capable of life. In addition to many advantages, Minna's children also have clear characteristics of maternal imbalance. Eugene is reckless, violent and unbridled; Wilhelm is easily offended, thoughtless and unreasonable; Therese seems strange, closed and exalted. "

Since the mother was severely restricted in her performance due to her serious illness, Therese's sister Minna, who was 8 years older than her, took over responsibility for the younger sister and the younger brothers Eugen and Wilhelm at an early age.

Infirmity of the mother

In the first years of her childhood Therese's mother was still reasonably strong, and the symptoms of consumption were not yet so evident. From 1822 - Therese was 6 years old - the disease became more and more threatening. Minna Gauß was often seriously ill, bedridden and consistently weak.

While the other children spent the first part of their childhood in the middle of the city, Therese grew up in the observatory. At the time, this was like an exclave outside the city, so that outside contacts were less frequent. In the first half of the 1820s, Gauss spent several months every year on his degree measurement campaigns; the two grandmothers remained as contact persons in the family or, for the younger siblings, the two older children from his first marriage, Joseph and Minna.

In 1824 Minna Gauß went to Bad Ems for a cure, accompanied by her mother and the two youngest children Wilhelm and Therese. The result of the treatment was devastating, and the two children watched as all their mother's hopes were dashed. Another cure the mother took in Baden-Baden in 1825, to which she accompanied Gauß and the eldest daughter Minna, was just as unsuccessful.

1830s

Gauß and his daughter Therese, caricature by Eduard Ritmüller.

The year 1830 was marked by two decisive events in the Gauss family. Therese's brother Eugen fell out with his parents because of his “dissolute student life” and emigrated to America. At the same time Therese's sister Minna married the biblical scholar and orientalist Heinrich Ewald .

At the beginning of the 1830s, Therese also had symptoms of consumption, especially a "bad cough". Minna Gauß died in 1831 after a decade of suffering. After Minna Ewald's marriage and her departure from the observatory, 15-year-old Therese took over the management of the household, which only consisted of her father and his old mother, herself and a maid. The close and lonely relationship between father and daughter was developing, and the daughter dedicated the next 25 years of her life to the great scholar. Since the Ewalds lived near the observatory, the two inseparable sisters Therese and Minna could meet after Minna's marriage, if they weren't too sick and weak to visit each other.

A cure in Bad Ems with her sister Minna Ewald in 1834 and a cure in Bad Kissingen with her grandmother Charlotte Waldeck in 1838 did not bring any improvement, like her mother's cures. In 1837 Heinrich Ewald was dismissed from his professorship as one of the Göttingen Seven . In May 1838 the Ewalds moved to Tübingen, where Heinrich Ewald had found a new job at the university. As a result, Therese also lost Minna as her next contact. In the summer of 1838 and 1839, Minna once again subjected herself to the rigors of a journey from Tübingen to Göttingen. She was there for the last time with loved ones for several weeks.

Unhappy love

Therese Staufenau, drawing by Benedikt Listing.

In 1856 Therese wrote to her brother Wilhelm in Missouri:

“A harrowing pain had gripped my early youth. I had directed a warm, joyful, youthful love full of blissful trust towards someone, had been promised with him for a few years, even when you were with Luise in Göttingen, with the approving prior knowledge of our grandmother Waldeck, then luck and faith collapsed, a deception, as of course thousands experience it. "

Towards the end of 1839 the rumor arose that Therese Gauß had become engaged, as some rumored, to Professor Benedikt Listing , a student of Gauß '. In fact, it was not revealed who the alleged fiancé was. A thick veil of secrecy lay over the relationship, only the grandmother was privy to it. Therese wanted to free her "from a monster who had so deceived her, and who now, in order to get rid of her, tortured her so shamefully". Therese complained in a letter to her sister Minna with vague hints of her suffering. The seriously ill Minna then wrote her last letter to her sister in May 1840 on the hospital bed:

“Whatever your grandmother may have hurt you, and whether she carelessly shattered your hope of happiness in your life… and whatever she did wrong and did, certainly no other motive has guided her than the deepest love and concern for you that you are the dearest who still has your arms on this earth! "

When the relationship broke up in the spring of 1840, Therese blamed her grandmother for it. Grandmother's interference led to a profound rift. In order to avoid this disproportion, the grandmother moved away from Göttingen in May 1840.

In July 1840 Therese toyed with the idea of ​​going to Tübingen to see her seriously ill sister Minna. Since women did not travel alone, she wrote to her grandmother, despite her quarrel, asking her to accompany them, but she was ill and unable to travel. Since an acquaintance was just traveling to Bremen, she took the opportunity to go on a long-planned trip to see her brother Joseph and his wife in Stade. There she received the news of Minna's death. She stayed in Stade for two months and then returned to the observatory.

Retirement

Middle-aged daguerreotype by Therese Staufenau.

After the early death of her mother in 1831, Therese dedicated her life to her father. She faithfully fulfilled her duty, as was expected of a daughter at the time, and Gauss, quite a man of his time, did not seem to have any inkling of the sacrifice his daughter was making. On the one hand she liked to do it and she loved her father more than anything, but because of Gauss's withdrawn life, but also because of her own shy disposition and her complicated state of mind, she wavered between quiet joy and deep sadness. Bowed down by a lost love, sick in heart and body, she curled up more and more in her "domesticity", as she liked to call her home. She often found her self-chosen isolation in the observatory in front of the gates of Göttingen to be unbearable, and she quarreled with fate about it.

Then a man entered her life who understood her and her emotional world. She saw him only a few times for a few hours in 13 years, but she was in constant correspondence with him that made her devoted sacrifice more bearable. After her father's death in 1855 she was desperate because “Everything has collapsed that still gave me a feeling of home and family! ... Everywhere I am a stranger and inwardly lonely, only forced to realize that I no longer belong to anyone! "

In her emotional crisis, she withdrew to Lake Geneva for eight months to take a cure to reflect on her future life. Her friend Constantin Staufenau was an actor and director, and the connection between a professor's daughter and a theater man violated unwritten professional standards. When she pondered “whether it could be right from me to sad opinions of a world that has been so little to me all my life and has given me even less, to sacrifice the loyal, warm heart of friendship, which was always close to me with unrelenting intimacy and devotion - A calm, firm decision has matured in me which, after so much pain suffered, promises me a peace that must be granted to me ! ”And so she made a courageous decision against a world full of incomprehension despite all the hostility to be expected after long anguish.

Daguerreotype by Therese and Constantin Staufenau, 1863.

A year and a half after Gauss's death, she gave Constantin Staufenau the yes in 1856. The couple moved to Dresden in September 1856 and rented an apartment at Waisenhausstraße 27, which they exchanged for their own house at Carolastraße 11 around Easter 1859. Thanks to her parents' inheritance, Therese was a rich woman, but Staufenau also had a small fortune. The couple enjoyed quiet happiness in the few years that Therese was still granted. "Lovingly cared for by her husband, surrounded by Göttingen memorabilia, she tried a second life". According to her husband's report, Therese suffered a great deal in the last years of her life, but in the last year of her life these ailments turned into martyrdom:

“In her tormented body, it seems that the nameless, longstanding ailments of her mother as well as the heart disease and dropsy of her father have developed together! - For a quarter of a year she has only been able to speak in a soft whisper and hardly that any more, - every drop of food, every whispered word, every movement causes the most unspeakable pains, - while she cannot lie down, and yet the doctor thinks these are terrible Suffering as it has never before occurred to him in such a union, not a condition of rapid death, but could expand unpredictably! "

At the time of marriage, Therese was 40 years old, her husband 47 years old. The marriage remained childless. Therese Staufenau died on February 11, 1864 in Dresden at the age of almost 48 years of consumption. Her husband survived her by 22 years. In 1865 he married the doctor's daughter Johanna Horack in his second marriage; this marriage also remained childless. Constantin Staufenau died on November 14, 1886 in Dresden at the age of 77.

Parental inheritance

Therese's mother Minna Gauß wrote her will on January 20, 1831, the year she died. Therese should receive "the very important silver items" and all linen and clothing. The assets of around 9,000 Reichstalers that she left Therese were only paid out to her after her father's death, together with her father's inheritance. In the meantime, she received the interest on the capital as pocket money.

Gauss was the highest-earning professor at the University of Göttingen. He invested his money in government bonds and loans and used his mathematical genius and high level of expertise to constantly increase his fortune. Because of his poor origins, Gauss suffered from the constant fear of losing everything and suddenly being left without wealth. His children were often embarrassed by his stinginess at a time when they needed their father's support.

When Gauss died, according to today's standards, he was a multiple euro millionaire, based on the values ​​of the Deutsche Bundesbank. The Gauss researcher Martha Küssner found

"That the genius Gauss at the end of his life had no other attitude towards money than an old small farmer in Lower Saxony who hid as many thalers as possible in bed for his children".

At the end of 1854, Gauss wrote a testamentary disposition "considering my advanced age and the continual increase in the number, strength and persistence of the associated complaints". As heirs, he named his four children who were still alive with their respective addresses, including "Therese as my loyal nurse with me continuously". As compensation for the belated enjoyment of her maternal inheritance, he bequeathed all of the furniture to Therese, including white and silver items and “all of the books that are kept on the upper floor, especially since a large part consists of gifts that I gave Therese and those consequently are in themselves their property ”. Everything else should be divided equally among the children.

Gauss had entrusted his eldest son Joseph with carrying out the division. In 1857 he sent his sister the securities to which she was entitled to Dresden. The value of her paternal inheritance, including the maternal part, amounted to almost 47,000 Reichstaler, which corresponds to an amount of more than 1.3 million euros according to the valuation of the Deutsche Bundesbank.

literature

• G. Waldo Dunnington : Carl Friedrich Gauss. Titan of Science. A study of his life and work. New York: Exposition Press, 1955, pp. 373-375, 356-360, and others.
• Menso Folkerts : CF Gauß and his sons. Gauß 'sons (Joseph, 1806–1873; Eugen, 1811–1896; Wilhelm, 1813–1879). Lecture at the opening of the Gauss exhibition 2005 in the Landesmuseum Braunschweig, manuscript. Braunschweig, 2005.
• Carl Friedrich Gauß: Testamentary disposition, Göttingen, December 1854, copy by Joseph Gauß: Braunschweig City Archives, G IX 21: 23 No. 4.
• Theo Gerardy: CF Gauß and his sons. In: Mitteilungen der Gauß-Gesellschaft Göttingen, Volume 3, 1966, pages 25–35.
• Silvio John: Little things worth knowing: "Pure, deep happiness". In: Home Calendar for the Land between Elbe and Elster, Volume 64, 2019, Pages 230–237.
• Martha Küssner: The women around Carl Friedrich Gauß. In: Göttinger Monatsblätter, Volume 4, Number 37, March 1977, Pages 2–3, Number 38, April 1977, Pages 6–7.
• Martha Küssner: Carl Friedrich Gauß and his world of books. Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1979.
• Heinrich Mack (editor): Carl Friedrich Gauß and his family. Festschrift for his 150th birthday. Braunschweig: Appelhans, 1927, page 106–120, 125, panel XI, illustration.
• Horst Michling: Carl Friedrich Gauss. Episodes from the life of the Princeps mathematicorum. Göttingen: Göttinger Tageblatt, 2005, pages 115–122.
• Letter from Therese Staufenau to Wilhelm Gauß, January 15, 1856, handwriting: Braunschweig, Stadtarchiv, G IX 21: 28, No. 9.
• Charlotte Waldeck b. Wyneken: Diary from 1840, handwriting: Braunschweig, Stadtarchiv, G IX 21: 14.
• Joseph Weinberger: Carl Friedrich Gauß 1777–1855 and his descendants. In: Archives for kin research and all related areas, year 43/44, 1977/1978, issue 66, pages 73-98.

Web links

Commons : Therese Staufenau b. Gauss  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Footnotes

1. ↑ # Mack 1927a .
2. ↑ # Gerardy 1966 , p. 26.
3. ↑ # Küssner 1977b , page 6.
4. ↑ Wilhelm was in Göttingen in 1837 with his later wife Luise.
5. ↑ #Staufenau 1856 .
6. ^ Letter from Joseph Gauß to Minna Ewald, December 4, 1839, handwriting: Wolfenbüttel, Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, 298 N 166 f. 91r-92v.
7. ^ In Benedikt Listing's diary for 1840 there are no references to a relationship with Therese. Manuscript: Göttingen, Staats- und Universitätsbilliothek, Cod. Ms. Listing 9.
8. ↑ #Waldeck 1840 , page 121.
9. ^ Letter from Minna Ewald to Therese Staufenau, May 26, 1840, handwriting: Braunschweig, Stadtarchiv, G IX 21: 25 No. 40 and 40a.
10. ↑ #Staufenau 1856 .
11. ↑ #Staufenau 1856 .
12. ↑ # Küssner 1977b , page 6.
13. ↑ Constantin Staufenau to Christian Ludwig Gerling, December 1, 1863, manuscript: Göttingen, State and University Library, Gauß, letters D: Therese Gauß 28.
14. ^ Testament of Minna Gauß, January 20, 1831, handwriting: Braunschweig, Stadtarchiv, G IX 21: 4, Waldeck family papers, No. 2–5.
15. ↑ # Küssner 1979a , page 86.
16. ↑ # Gauss 1854 .
17. ^ # Gauß 1854 , Deutsche Bundesbank, purchasing power equivalents of historical amounts in German currencies .